Monday, August 22, 2005

Anyone out there help me with this?

One literary turn of phrase that has stuck with me (unfortunately) is "necrotizing hemorrhoids." Was it used by Hunter Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Was it used by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash? I just can't seem to recall. Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

They have to walk past the desk in order to reach Göring, who is spread across an equally massive couch at the end of the car, underneath a Matisse, and flanked between a couple of Roman busts on marble pedestals. He is dressed in red leather jodhpurs, red leather boots, a red leather uniform jacket, a red leather riding crop with a fat diamond set into the butt of the handle. Bracelet-sized gold rings, infected with big rubies, grip his pudgy fingers. A red leather officer's cap is perched on his head, with a gold death's head, with ruby eyes, centered above the bill. All of this is illuminated only by a few striations of dusty light that have forced their way in through tiny crevices between curtains and shutters; the sun is up now, but Göring's blue eyes, dilated to dime-sized pits by the morphine, cannot face it. He has his cherry-colored boots up on an ottoman; no doubt he has trouble with circulation in his legs. He is drinking tea from a thimble-sized porcelain cup, encrusted with gold leaf, looted from a chateau somewhere. Heavy cologne fails to mask his odor: bad teeth, intestinal trouble, and necrotizing hemorrhoids.


Cryponomicon chapter 58.

I was looking it up myself, one useful tool that e-books have.

I still don't know what it is. Perhaps it might be best I never find out.