"Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can't stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk and you cannot get sober; you cannot get high and you cannot get straight" (347).

I thought this little section was pretty interesting for a number of reasons. First, the use of the second person was really effective, I thought. There are a bunch of sections like these, all in second person, that are interlaced with the stories of AA members. I found that being directly addressed pulled me in and somehow made me more sympathetic to the story, if that makes sense.

I thought this "horrible" movie was incredibly clever and hilarious. It is so sarcastic and interesting! I was laughing out loud to think of the ads saying "You are strongly advised not to shell out money for this film (397)" and that all the snooty art goers are intrigued by this concept and actually buy tickets to watch themselves on the screen as Himself and Mario film their stupidity! The sheer audacity! I'm still laughing.

I am amazed by the mass corporatization of the future in this book. Everything seems embellished with advertisements. The statue of Liberty is now a lady that holds up a routinely changed product, companies with names like "Burger King's Pilsbury" or Pizza Hut's Pepsico pervade headlines, and the years are subsidized by major companies. What does this infatuation with products in the year 2009 say about our brand-touting tendencies?

I find it so interesting that these 100 pages are largely made of up of extremely long segments of certain scenes. Two of the longer ones, the Eschaton game and the Boston AA meeting, create a nice juxtaposition in the novel. The Eschaton game is clearly very rule oriented and players must memorize the long rule book and adhere to them to play the game correctly. However, as one notices, the players end up disrupting the clever rule system and all chaos breaks loose, just as Pemulis said it would. The AA meeting, on the other hand, prefers to stress that there are no rules. Gately is puzzled as to why "these AA meetings where nobody kept order seemed so orderly" (357).

I loved the whole "selected transcripts of the resident interface drop-in hours" section and found the transcript of the lawyer's rhetorical refusal to deny or affirm his alcoholism for lack of a sufficiently fleshed out definition absolutely hysterical: "Im not denying anything. I'm symply asking you to define "alcoholic." How can you ask me to attribute to myself a given term if you refuse to define the term's meaning?...Am I having pancreas problems? Yes. Do I have trouble recalling certain intervals in the Kemp and Limbaugh administration? No contest. Is there a spot of domestic turbulence surrounding my intake? Why yes there is. Did I experience yes some formication in detox? I did...But what is this you demand I admit? Is it denial to delay signature until the vocabulary of the contract is clear to all parties so bound? Yes, yes, you don't follow what I mean here, good! And you're reluctant to proceed without clarification. I rest. I cannot deny waht I don't understand. This is my position" (177).

I thought it was really interesting that Himself commits suicide on April 1st. I feel like this has to have some significance. Killing yourself on a day of practical jokes? Was it meant to be the biggest joke of all time? Or maybe he felt he was a joke? I'm not sure.

This is a bit of a silly post, but it's things like this that are making Infinite Jest infinitely easier to read for me than the other novels. The book is alienating sometimes (Joelle section starting 227) when I don't understand it, but Wallace includes some odd stray thoughts that I've pondered before, thoughts that I never imagined I would see in print. I'd be grateful if someone could tell me what's going on in that 227-235 section though, is she just watching one of James Incandenza's movies?

But back to the odd tidbits, on 221, in the middle of a lengthy description of a city street drenched in rain, Wallace describes the swish of cars driving by: "sheening by with the special lonely sound of cars in rain, wipers making black rainbows on taxis' shining windshields" (221). It was strange to read this because I've always considered cars driving on a rainy day lonely. All the windows stopped up, and sheets of water, glass and metal effectively plug people up in their cars, and the cars from each other. The wiper noises are the cars whining.

"You will find out that once MA's Dept. of Social Services has taken a mother's children away for any period of time, they can always take them away again, D.S.S., like at will" (200).

"Chronic alcoholics' hearts are -- for reasons no M.D. has been able to explain -- swollen to nearly twice the size of civilians' human hearts, and they never again return to normal size" (200).

"Ewell decides this is what gives profundity to the tattoo-impulse's profound irrevocability: Having a tatt removed means just exchanging one kind of disfigurement for another" (208).

Over and over, DFW reminds us of the permanent affliction of addiction. The rehabilitation and recovery process only helps stave off the further progression of the disease, but can never erase or return affairs to their original proper state. Even more troubling, the battle continues after rehab; the slide back into addiction, like having the state take the children away, is so much easier than managing to keep hold. Moreover as stated on page 201, the addicts remain in permanent want of Substance even after quitting use. There seems to be no "health," only a new disease. Saving one's physical life, does not entirely improve their mental outlook.

I found the scene on pages 255-257ish to be really thought provoking. This is the scene when Orin and Hal are on the phone; Hal is telling Orin about his grief-therapy after he found his father ("Himself") who had comitted suicide by putting his head in a microwave. This scene was kind of sickly-humorous--like when Hal said that his first thought when he had come home that day was that "something smelled delicious!" (256). But it also kind of gave us some insight into Hal, or at least, I thought it did.

It was interesting how Hal went through anger (vented towards the grief-therapist) and then a kind of guilt-denial and then accepted things and then absolved himself, all within one visit to the therapist's office.

I have a few things I don't really get, or perhaps find problematic. Maybe someone can help me out.

What's with Orin putting the infinity symbol on any girl he sleeps with?

What is going on in the section that starts on page 181 "Late October Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment"? Who is narrating? What's the scene? Is that Joelle? Any clarification would help, even if it seems painfully obvious.

Did Pemulis do something to his opponent on page 281?

That's all I have to ask now...