Sunday, November 20, 2011 Lethbridge

6:00 am

The temperature is -13° C, with a high predicted of -7° C. From the Environment Canada website: Today Sunny. Wind southwest 20 km/h. High minus 7. Tonight Clear. Wind west 20 km/h becoming light this evening. Low minus 15 with temperature rising to minus 6 by morning. Wind chill minus 25. Normals Max: 2°C Min: -9°C.

7:30 am Literature

Here are a few more notes for "Infinite Jest" (green indicates the additions) (bright yellow indicates fascinating sections):

 

 

 

 

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.
2000		15d	283-299	Orin. Joelle	Orin quits tennis and by accident ends up becoming a spectacular football place kicker. At the same time he falls in love with Joelle who is a very pretty cheerleader. She is a light user of cocaine, but Orin is not. She is also interested in Film Studies.
<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
		16h	379	James Incandenza, Lyle, Mario	The two men would often drink together and were good friends. Lyle is a fitness guru at ETA. Mario was often present at these sessions.
		18b	386-390	Lyle	Lyle often listens to the tennis kids.
		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.
	Jan		249-258	James Incandenza	Quits drinking.
	Apr 1	14c	249-258	James Incandenza	Date of suicide
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]
	Feb	15b		Don Gately	Becomes a resident live-in at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House.
	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 1	16c	317-321	Marathe, Steeply	A powerful exchange as they discuss the general state of the USA that focuses on Entertainment and personal gratification.
		18e	418-430	Marathe, Steeply	Their discussion continues with a comparison between Canadian and American culture.
	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.
		19b	449-450	Mario, Joelle	The Madame Psychosis radio program is now off the air.
	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
	Nov 5	14b	240-249	Orin, Hal, Helen Steeply	Orin phones from Arizona. He thinks he is being followed by people in wheelchairs. He is also being inteviewed by Helen Steeply, ostensibly for a human interest story in a magazine. Orin wants information about their father's death. Hal says he (age 13 at the time) was the first person to see the body after he had put his head in a microwave oven. Hal recalls that their father spent the month before he committed suicide in the small post-production room off the lab in their basement.
	Nov 6	13c	198-200	tennis boys	Verbal play while lifting weights in the training room
		13d	200-211	Tiny Ewell, Kate Gompert, Don Gately	Further descriptions of life at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House. Tiny Ewell has an obsessive interest in tattoos when his Substance is taken away. (He has been here over 2 months - (e.g. early 2010) Kate Gompert is still clinically depressed. Don Gately is a live-in staffer.
		13e	211-219	Michael Pemulis	Michael has obtained a small amount of the new, and very potent, drug DMZ.
		15a	258-270		Details of a tennis tournament. Hal and John Wayne do particularly well.
		15b	270-281	Pat Montesian, Geoffrey Day, Don Gately	More details of life at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House. Day is a new patient (he has only been there 6 days) who has moved in from the Dimock Detox center. He is a former instructor who "has been in and out of a blackout for most of the last several years". Gately has been a resident for about 9 months and a staff member for 4 months. He has been completely Substance-free for 421 days. He is almost 29 years old.
		15c	281-283		Describes the bus ride home from the tennis tournament.
	Nov 7	14a	219-240	Joelle van Dyne, Molly Notkin	Joelle is planning to commit suicide at Molly's house later this evening. She was in most of James Incandenza's films. "Jim at the end had filmed her at prodigious andmulti-lensed length, and refused to share what he'd made of it. Her mental name for the man had been 'Infinite Jim' " [p. 225] Joelle is aka Madame Psychosis - who ran the MIT late night radio program. She was Orin's lover for 26 months and was his father's optical beloved for 21 months. She locks herself in Molly's bathroom and takes an overdose of drugs as someone begins knocking on the door.
		16a	306-312	Jim Troeltsch	a weak tennis player who provides sports scores on the radio
		16b	312-317	Mario	Brief history of Mario as a premature baby with handicaps to the present as a photographer at ETA
	Nov 8	17a	321-342		A group of younger tennis players play an ETA game that mimics the global situation and which disintegrates into chaos.
		17b	342-374	Don Gately	A fascinating description of an AA meeting. Incredible! Joelle is now at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House where Gately notices her.
		17c	375	Marathe, Steeply	Steeply has been assigned to "cultivate some of the Entertainment's alleged filmmaker's relatives and inner circles". (i.e. the Incandenzas)
		17d	376-379	Don Gately	A continuation of a Boston AA meeting.
		18a	380-386	Mario, Johnny Gentle	Mario's first film cartridge is described in detail. It is shown at ETA every Nov 8 (Interdependence Day). Gentle, now President of ONAN , is the head of the CUSP - Clean US Party - which swept to power in 2000.
		18c	391-410		Continuation of Mario's cartridge
		18d	410-418	Hal	Hal reflects on the history of the media giants in American tv.
		18f	430-442		Continuation of Mario's cartridge
		19a	442-449	Don Gately	A continuation of a Boston AA meeting. Gately talks about his failure to identify with a god of any kind.
	Nov 9	19c	450-461
	Nov 14	15d	299-306	Tony Krause	Poor Tony is trying to withdraw from heroin and has a seizure. A superb description of what withdrawal feels like.
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?"

 

7:30 PM Model Trains

I have completed the train operations (and printed out the revised operating steps) for the period 7:00 am. At the moment there are only 2 trains running: #601, a local freight going west from Coaldale to Jasper, and presently idling in the Valemount siding having completed a series of switching moves at Black Diamond, and #700, a local freight going east from Jasper to Coaldale, and presently sitting in the siding at Queenston.

This is taking longer than I expected but there is satisfaction when I complete each hour and find that it is all working well.

There are a couple of principles that I am trying to follow. One is to stop the train in front of each mainline switch that needs to be set open, and then stop it again after the train has cleared the switch and reset the switch to closed. The second is to have each train complete two loops of the outer mainline in the appropriate direction each time it travels from one town to the next.

The new detail is making sure that each train is "parked" in an appropriate siding at the end of the hour's moves. The siding must be one that does not interfere with any of the moves of the other trains during that time period.