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p. 5
Cashpoints - automated teller machines. Mutual Cyclops - Spanish bank.
p. 9
A30 - The main road from London to Cornwall. In the 1960s, when Staines was a common starting-point for hitch-hikers heading south-west, the A30 was still a relatively narrow road; it is now rebuilt as a four-lane highway.
p. 10
Collaged from misprints and line-breaks in T. Wilson Hayes, The Birth of Popular Culture: Ben Jonson, Maid Marian and Robin Hood, Duquesne UP,
1992.
p. 13
M4 - A motorway connecting London to South Wales.
p. 14
From First World War British Navy codebook.
p. 15
All phrases in quotation marks (and typo therein) from The Globe & Mail.
p. 16
IMOOS (Images Moving Out Onto Space) is a series of constructions made by Bryan Wynter in the 1960s. IMOOS VI consists of three pairs of brightly-coloured geometrically- patterned mobiles which revolve inside a black box in front of a parabolic mirror; the effect is a constantly shifting abstract which appears to move sometimes towards and sometimes away from the viewer and frequently seems to expand beyond its 'frame'. The work was on exhibition at the Tate St Ives in 1996.
p. 19
Title of poem - supermarket. "Can you sell the colour of speed?" - Canon advertisement for a laser colour copier. Narrowcasting - the opposite of broadcasting. Endcaps - baskets of selected goods at the end of the aisle in supermarkets. "[S]tewed duck ... " and "potator beef ... " both from menus (translated into English) in Vietnam (from The Globe & Mail). In-aisle gondolas - like endcaps, but mid-aisle. Flankers - variations on profitable brands used to "sop up" shelf space. SKUs - stock-keeping units (i.e. shelves). Aroma management - creating a uniform smell throughout the store (all supermarket entries from The Guardian newspaper, UK)
p. 21
The new mineral is a blue rock from Morocco.
p. 22
Title of poem - Registered Retirement Savings Plan. "Terror has no shape" - from a poster advertisement for the 1980s version of the film The Blob.
p. 23
Croeso, Welsh for "welcome". Loegr is the Welsh name for England, Logres an older variant. The text conflates two events: the opening of the new Severn Bridge (the southernmost border of England and Wales) and the launch of the anthology Conductors Of Chaos.
p. 24
From Isaac de La Peyrere, Relation de l'Islande, Paris 1663.
p. 25
Italicised words except 'ship ... still afloat' from Thomas Lovell Beddoes' letters and Death's Jest-Book.
p. 28
Collaged from The Guardian Crossword No 20,707.
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p. 29
The title is the name of a team of computer scientists working in the British Telecom laboratories at Martlesham Heath.
p. 31
In part describes the talking-machine devised by Erasmus Darwin, founder member of the Lunar Society.
p. 32
'The ultimate source of life ... ', the typo 'sentinent' and other material from The Guardian's coverage of the discovery of meteorite ALH884001 in Antarctica. The meteorite is believed to show traces of life on Mars. The text also uses a 1996 report of an alien landing on a Herefordshire farm in 1947.
p. 33
SPF 30 - sun protection factor.
p. 34
Proofs of Evidence are written submissions required to support objections to the 'Local Plans' which define land use and related matters under British planning regulations. 'ufdropTHEY'RE off' comes from a football report in The Guardian. To be ex-directory is to have an unlisted telephone number.
p. 35
Emanci-patio - typo in The Globe & Mail. "Hurricane buys site" - headline for Globe & Mail article stating that Hurricane Hydrocarbons Ltd. wins right to become major oil producer in Kazakhstan in 1996.
p. 39
Zennor Quoit is a prehistoric dolmen on moorland in the Penwith peninsula (Cornwall). Levant zawn is one of several eroded copper-rich inlets on the Cornish coast.
p. 40
"Puerto Rico: Hurricane hits, misses" - headline in The Globe & Mail. TAGS - Temporal Annotation Generators.
p. 42
Title of poem from article in The Globe & Mail.
p. 43
Title and contents of poem from article in The Globe & Mail on virtual insurance companies.
p. 45
Local Inquiry - the hearing at which Proofs of Evidence (see above) are presented.
p. 49
'The other person has hung up' is a recorded message used by British Telecom.
p. 53
Title of poem from a typo in an essay found on the Internet. Various events described are from the Los Angeles Times and a flyer for Bottom Line magazine.
p. 54
LT - London Transport. 'The second happiest place in the world' is taken from an advertisement brochure for Twenty-nine Palms in the Mojave Desert, California.
p. 59
Fidelity Information Recovery - service offered in Orange County, reported in the Los Angeles Times.
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