Tuesday, November 15, 2011 Lethbridge

5:30 am

The temperature is -10 C (wind chill -16 C), with a high predicted of -1 C. From the Environment Canada website: Today Increasing cloudiness. Wind becoming west 40 km/h gusting to 60 this morning. High minus 1. Tonight Clearing early this evening. Wind becoming west 20 km/h late this evening. Low minus 10. Normals Max: 3°C Min: -8°C.

7:15 am Literature

I want to continue with my notes for "Infinite Jest". I am adding a yellow background to sections that I find particularly impressive. I will also add a green background to identify today's additions.

 

 

 

 

 

Year	Time	Section	Pages	People	Description
1960	winter	12a	157-169		Hal's father gets a pep talk from his father when he is 10.
<2002
2002		11b	137-138		Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House founded. It provides a 9-month program of closely supervised residency and treatment.
2003	Apr 1	3	27-31	Hal, James Incandenza	Hal, age 10, in a meeting arranged by his father, with a child psychologist. Hal quotes from the OED and says that he often gets beat up when he does that with his friends. Hal's father is an avant-garde film maker who founded the Enfield Tennis Academy. Hal finally realizes that the psychologist is actually his father, wearing a disguise.
		5b	37-38	Wardine, Clenette	Two poor black girls living in a violent family situation, Reginald, Roy Tony
		5c	38-39	Bruce Green, Mildred Bonk	Two high school tough kids.
2004		8a	63-65	James Incandenza	Ph. D. in optical physics. research funded by the military. Commits suicide at age 54.
2005		11c	140-142	Hal	paper written in course Introduction to Entertainment Studies (grade 7) that compares the heroic action of Hawaii Five-O with that of the complex scenarious of Hill Street Blues
2006
2007	Apr	12c	172-176	Hal, Mario	Script for an 11 minute Entertainment cartridge on tennis produced By Mario and narrated by Hal.
2008		7b	55-60	Don Gately	A 27-year old burglar and oral narcotics addict who kills a man (unintentionally) while engaged in a robbery.
		8d	67-68	Hal?	recalls his first use of drugs when he was almost 16
2009		2	17-27		A detailed description of Hal (?) waiting for a woman to deliver some marijuana. He is clearly an addict in need of a fix. He had been in treatment 2 years earlier. This is a superb section describing the situation through the eyes/mind of an addict.
		11e	144-151		Fewer than 10% of phones were video phones. "Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her." [p. 145-6]
	Apr 1	5a	33-37	medical attache	The attache arrives home and begins watching an Entertainment cassette that has arrived in the mail from Arizona.
		9a	68-78	Kate Gompert	is on suicide watch in a psych ward, her 4th hospitalization in 3 years
	Apr 2	9b	78-79	medical attache	his wife arrives home and finds him dead, in front of the tv screen, which she then looks at.
		9d	87	medical attache	a number of other people have entered the room and are all in a trance watching the Entertainment cassette
		9c	79-85	Gerhardt Schtitt, Mario	Schtitt, almost 70, is head coach at ETA. He and Mario (age 18) get along well.
	Apr 30	10a	87-95	Marathe, Steeply	Marathe uses a wheelchair. He is an informer about the activities of a Quebec-based radical group because of his need for money to help finance his wife's illness. Steeply is an Unspecified Services field operative. He wants information about the Entertainment cassette that the medical attache and a few others (about 20!) have been watching. The cassette was delivered through a series of channels known to be used by this Quebec radical group.
		10g	126-127	Marathe, Steeply	There is a rumor that there might also be another tape cassette that is an anti-dote to the one that is causing people to become catatonic.
		10h	128-135	Roy Tony et al	urban hoods in downtown Boston
	May 9	4	32-33	Hal, Mario	Hal and Mario are brothers who share a room in the tennis academy dorm
		6a	39-42	Hal, Mario	They chat before going to sleep. Their mom (Avril) became Headmistress of the ETA after their dad (James) died.
	Aug 10	11d	142-144		A woman with an exterior artificial heart has her purse snatched (which contained the device) and dies. The assailant was a transvestite drug addict known to police. (Roy Tony)
	Oct	6b	42-49	Orin	Now a placekicker for the Phoenix Cardinals. Generally seems depressed with no real purpose in life.
		7a	49-54	Hal	Hal, age 17, regularly hides in the academy's Pump Room to get high on dope. He is an addict.
		10f	121-126	Hal, Mario, Millicent Kent	Millicent is a tennis girl who notices a new tripod that has been set up in a thicket. She is a very good tennis player but actually prefers dance. Millicent tells Mario that she is madly in love with him.
		11f	151-156		Describes the black market in urine samples so the tennis players don't get caught using drugs.
	Oct 22	13a	181-193	Madame Psychosis	She runs a one-hour radio program at MIT which often includes commentary on Entertainment cassettes.
		13b	193-198	Don Gately	He is a resident at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House which is described in some detail.
	Nov 1	8b	65-66	Orin	is in a cardinal costume in a pre-game show. He hates it.
		8c	66-67	Pemulis	is leading a big buddy get together of younger tennis players at ETA
	Nov 3	7c	60-61	Jim Troeltsch	age 17, gets suddenly ill before practice drills.
		10b	95-97	Disney Leith	teaches high-optics courses at ETA. A number of the boys are quizzing one another on entertainment technologies
		10c	97-105		locker-room banter at the ETA among the tennis boys
		10d	105-109	Marathe, Steeply	Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith." [p. 107] "Who teaches your U.S.A. children how to choose their temple? ... For this choice determines all else." [p. 107]
		10e	109-121	a group of tennis boys	"I feel this what, dread, this dread, I see seven or eight years of unhappiness every day and day after day of tiredness and stress and suffering stretching ahead, and for what, for a chance at a like a pro career that I'm starting to get this dready feeling a career in the Show means even more suffering, if I'm skeletally stressed from all the grueling here by the time I get there." [p. 109]
		11a	135-137	Orin, Hal	Orin wants to know what Hal knows about Quebec separatism.
	Nov 4	12b	169-171	Michael Pemulis	Pemulis has been doing some serious reading about a new drug called DMZ which is purported to be even more powerful than LSD.
		12d	176-181	Patricia Montesian	She is the executive director of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House. A woman, Nell, (a former personal-injury attorney) has just stabbed another resident with a fork because he wouldn't stop drumming with his fingers.
		7d	61-63	Hal?	thinks to himself about nightmares and dreams
		9d	85-87	Tiny Ewell	an elf-size man who is on his way to a detox center
2010		1	3-17	Hal	Hal, age 18, in his last year of high school, is being interviewed for admission to a university in Arizona. He is a top-ranked junior tennis player. He also has a photographic memory for the meaning of words. His understanding of the interview process is very perceptive although his attention to detail is bizarre. At the end he has some form of seizure and babbles incoherently. He has been in residence at the Enfield Tennis Academy since he was 7.The interview is to clarify the discrepancy between his standardized test scores which are subnormal and his desire to go to university. But Hal's perception of the interview indicate that he is abnormally intelligent. He not only remembers detail, he understands what he has read whether in language, philosophy, or mathematics. But he seems to be socially backward. "Yet he has some trouble with excitability in conversation." He had a previous episode a year earlier when he was restrained and taken to Emergency in a straight jacket. "I'm not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I'm complex. ... I'm not a machine. I feel and I believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting." The section ends with, "So yo then man what's your story?"

 

11:30 am Model Trains

I have formed the consist for train #601, a local freight travelling west from Coaldale to Jasper. The cars have been blocked (i.e. all cars for the same town together) to facilitate switching later. I really like the logic underlying the switching while trying to form the consist.

12:30 PM Geocaching

I continue to nibble away at the local caches, limiting myself to only one per day. Today was the third day in a row when I went out to find one and thus fill in another square in the grid that keeps track of the number of finds for each day of the year. So far I now have one for the first 15 days in November. Silly but why not? So far the weather has been cool, but not impossibly cold.

• GC354BZ - Industrial Soccer Pitch