Page 761, "...in an extreme corner are fleur-de-lis pennons on tall sharp polished sticks. C.T.'s office has an O.N.A.N. flag and a 49-star U.S.A. flag."

50 states - New Hampshire- Maine - Rhode Island - Vermont...
49??????? any ideas anyone

Okay, so in this section, we witness another dream about teeth. First, Hal had a nightmare about losing his teeth (449), and now Joelle on 723-724 worries obsessively about hers and has a dream about going to the dentist. Additionally, James had also made a movie called "Fun With Teeth" (987) about a dentist performing unanesthetized root canals on patients. I remember hearing that the most common dreams are about flying, falling, or losing teeth. I thought this was interesting, so I looked it up online: "This classic dream has a number of interpretations. It can literally mean that you are frightened of losing your teeth. It can show the beginning of a new phase of life just as we lose our teeth when we pass from early childhood and head towards adulthood. You may be worried about your self image or the dream may signify unexpressed anxiety."

So, my friend from out of town and I were discussing Infinite Jest. Believe it or not, he's read it before (for FUN!) and is going through it a second time. Anyway, it was a really interesting conversation and I asked him what he thought about Marathe, since I remember we were talking about him in class the other day. My friend thinks that Marathe is not a double or a triple agent, but a QUADRUPLE agent. Ultimately, he is loyal to the Americans because his wife is sick from all the toxic poisoning and the Americans are the only ones who are willing to help her.

Any thoughts?

I'm wondering why Wallace decided to include so much vital information in the footnotes section! This section of reading was especially footnote-heavy, with two entire chapters in the footnotes instead of the main text (fn #324 and #332). These footnotes even start with the classic "17 November- Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" heading. I don't understand the stylistic reasoninig behind putting such info in the footnotes. Anyone have any ideas?

So I'm not sure if I even knew this was possible, but Ortho Stice got his forehead stuck to a window. This scene (865- 876ish) was hilarious, but I'm also not entirely sure I get the significance of it (although maybe the significance has yet to come by page 900?). Throughout all of Hal's plotting to get Stice loose ("Dark, prepare yourself mentally" (870)), Stice is speculating about paranormal matters. I thought it was interesting how a.) Stice seems more concerned about ghosts and stuff than about having his forehead stuck to a window and b.) that neither Hal nor Stice immediately refutes the idea that there may be paranormal "things" in the ETA. Hal says that "Mario says he's seen paranormal figures, and he's not kidding, and Mario doesn't lie . . . so belief-wise I don't know what to think. Subhadronic particles behave ghostishly. I think I withhold all prejudgment on the whole thing" (871). So obviously there's been some speculation on the matter, and even Hal has a hard time refuting the fact that there may be paranormal things floating around the ETA.

I was amused at Himself's movie about nuns. The fact that he is using nuns and violence to talk about AA and the very things we discussed in class: trading in one addiction for another one (cigarettes, coffee, AA meetings, God).

Also, the young new nun is disfigured, and addicted. This all made me think of Joelle's experience at AA. This film would have been made before all this, but it still seems like it might connect.

Someone mentioned during today's discussionn that neither tennis players nor drug addicts do anything important or essential for society. It made me think of a theory I once heard about the evolution of man. The theory holds that we are no longer homo sapiens but have moved on to a new order of homo: homo ludens. While homo sapiens translates from the latin as "wise man" or "knowing man", homo ludens means "man the player" or "playing man." The transition doesn't suggest that homo ludens are physiologically different from homo sapiens but that our priorities as a species have shifted from "knowing" towards "playing".

Has anyone else noticed/blogged about Orin having the same defects that we're beginning to see more of in Hal? Or Orin's similarities to the Entertainment?

When Orin is having sex with the non-Swiss spy woman, there's a scene that describes how "Orin can only give, not receive, pleasure." (596), which makes him seem as though he's a wonderful lover to the bajillion girls he's slept with. He's found that he needs these women to feel pleasure and completely in love with him, or under his control (very drug and addict-like, but not the point of this post).

Later in this scene, when the Wheelchair Assassin/survey-taker knocks on the door, Orin feels at his face, and then describes missing sneering at things he loves (p 599). This was especially interesting seeing he was feeling at his face, an action we usually see in Hal to confirm what expression he's currently wearing, paired with the description of an incompatible facial expression/emotion set. As in, "sneering" and "love" just don't generally go together. The passage ends with "Orin's smile wasn't as cool as he thought..." (601).

It was mentioned at some point earlier that ETA didn't buy into the idea of a corporate sponsorship for the entire academy as Port Washington did, but Wallace still draws distinct connections between tennis and consumer culture. I thought it was interesting that he'd take the time to mention who was sponsored by whom, who's logos were plastered on whose gearbags. And this is just in the Jrs, the tournaments that rarely make it on television.

In our reality, sports is a huge outlet for consumerism, the incredible SuperBowl ad prices, and the brand recognition that seems to skyrocket the moment a popular athlete signs on with the brand.

I really liked "infamous Boston AA cake analogy" which compares AA's methods to baking a cake on page 467. I liked the tone of determined frustration in Gately's thought process as he describes it: "It didn't mater one fuckola whether Gately like believed a cake would result, or whether he understood the fucking baking-chemistry of howa cake would result:if he just followed the motherfucking directions, and had sense enough to get help from slightly more experienced bakers .... a cake would result. He'd have his cake." I think the analogy goes a long way to show that we can't understand everything on our own and that sometimes we just have to accept a blind faith in the directions in order to obtain the end result. I think one of the great ironies of these addicts and culture as a whole is how far they are willing to figure out how to be progressively more entertained when simple directions could pretty much do about the same. In other words, sometimes it just works.