6 Except in certain very esoteric variations on the game.
organizing cultist with occlusive tape, who then expertly employed the thumb and forefinger of both hands to seal the combatants’ nostrils. Thus, the battle of the Endless Kiss had been joined. The entire lung contents of the designatedly inhaled player was then exhaled orally into the emptied lungs of his or her opponent, who in turn exhaled the inhalation back to its original owner, and so forth, back and forth, the same air being traded back and forth, with oxygen and carbon dioxide ratios becoming progressively more Spartan, until the organizer holding their nostrils closed officially declared one combatant or the other to be “evanoui” or, “swooned,” either fallen to the ground or out on his or her feet. The theoretics of the contest lends itself to an appreciation of the patient, attritive, grinding down tactics of traditional Quebecois Séparatisteurs such as Les Fils de Montcalm and the Fronte de la Liberation du Quebec, as opposed to the viciousness and brinksmanship of “Le Prochain Train”‘s Root Cult’s disabled heirs. The figurative object of the “Bai$ser” competition appears---according to Phelps and Phelps---to involve using what one is given with maximally exhaustive levels of efficiency and endurance before excreting it back whence it came, a stoic stance toward waste utilization that the Phelps somewhat cavalierly employ to illuminate the Montcalmistes’ relative indifference to a continental Reconfiguration that constitutes Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents’ whole “raison de la guerre outrance” ‘b
a. Pimple cream.
b. ‘Reason for all-out war,’ which Struck inserts without bothering even to check for the definition Day’d been too befogged to give, which is in and of itself almost suicidal, given that Poutrincourt knows exactly how much French facility Struck’s got, or rather hasn’t.
[305] (she thought then)
[306] Some of her and Jim’s best arguments had been over the connotations of ‘Everybody’s a critic,’ which Jim had liked to repeat with all different shades and pitches of ironic double-edge.
[307] Joelle van Dyne and Orin Incandenza each remember themselves as the original approachee. It’s unclear which if cither’s memory is accurate, though it’s noteworthy that this is one of only two total times Orin has perceived himself as the approachee, the other being the ‘Swiss hand-model’ on whose nude flank he’s been furiously tracing infinity signs all during the Moment Subject’s absence.
[308] = point of view.
[309] In the Chestnut Hills Shopping Center on Boylston/Rte. 9, which the E.T.A. A-squad staggers past several times a week, on runs — a chain, but a very top-shelf and fine one, and the Brookline Legal puts on a particularly fine marine spread, and the boniface seemed to know Dr. Incandenza and called him by name, and brought him a double bonded without being asked.
[310] Jargon: Film/Cartridge Studies.
[311] Trilateral North American immigration bureaucracy.
[312] Boston AA jargon. Y.E.T. is ‘You’re Eligible Too,’ a denial-buster for those who compare others’ ghastly consequences to their own so far, the point being to get you to see the street-guy with socks for gloves drinking Listerine at O7OOh. as just slightly farther down the same road you’re on, when you Come In. Or something close to that.
[313] The bureaucracy of Quebecois pensions, which had ruled against buying anything more than a used Kenbeck pacemaker for Marathe’s father, now deceased.
[314] See Note 304 supra.
[315] Marathe’s malentendu of live-in, 316. Like e.g. the times C.T. and the Moms would come out to Logan to pick Mario and Himself up from a filming trip, Mario lugging gear, Himself damp and pasty from the cabin pressure and not enough leg-room and his sportcoat pockets always clicking with little plastic bottles with unopenable caps, and in the car up to Enfield Mario’s uncle would keep up an Opheliac mad monologue of chatter that would get Himself’s poor teeth grinding so bad that when they pulled over to the breakdown lane and Mario came around to open the door and let Himself lean out and be ill there’d be grit in the throw-up that came out, white dental visible grit, from all the grinding.
[316]
[317] © B.S. 1981, Routledge & Kegan Paul Pic, London UK, wildly expensive hdcover; not on disk.
[318] Maine having been lost altogether, recall.
[319] Incandenza family idiom for leftovers.
[320] Main library, M.I.T., East Cambridge.
[321]Q.v. for a confirming example!93Oh. Thurs., 12 November Y.D.A.U., Rm. 204 Sub-dorm B:
‘No, look, it’s still Rise Over Run. The derivative’s the slope of the tangent at some point along the function. It doesn’t matter what point until they give you the point on the test.’
‘Will this even be on the Boards? Do they go past trig?’
‘This is fucking trig. They’ll give you word problems that may involve changing quantities — something accelerating, a voltage, inflation of O.N.A.N. currency over U.S. currency. Differentiation’ll save you half the time, all those triangles inside triangles to figure change with trig. Trig’s a Unit-bender on rate-changes. Derivatives’re just trig with some imagination. You imagine the points moving inexorably toward each other until for all practical purposes they’re the same point. The slope of a defined line becomes the slope of a tangent to one point.’
‘One point that’s in fact actually two points?’
‘You use your goddamn imagination, Inc, plus a couple prescribed limits. Which they won’t fuck with you on limits on the general test, trust me. This is a big pink titty compared to an Eschaton calculation. You move the two points you’re doing Rise-over-Run on infitesimally close together, you end up with a plug-in formula.’
‘Can I tell you about my dream now and then we’ll use the momentum from that to plow through this?’
‘Just write this on your wrist or something. Function x, exponent n, the derivative’s going to be nx + xn-1 for any kind of first-order rate-of-increase thing they’re going to ask you. This assumes a definable limit, of course, which no way they’re going to fuck with you on limits on the fucking Boards.’
‘It was a DMZ-dream.’
‘Do you see how you’re going to apply this to a rate-of-increase-type little story they’ll pose?’
‘It involved your experimental soldier, the massive dose.’
‘Let me just close this door, here.’
‘It was the Leavenworth convict. The one you said had left the planet. The one belting out Ethel Merman. It was horrific, Mikey. In the dream I was the soldier.’
‘So you’re now going to assume a real you-know-what experience will be similar to the experience of a nightmare.’
‘Aha. Why nightmare? Why do you assume it was a nightmare? Did I use the word nightmare?’
‘You used the word horrific. I assume it wasn’t a romp through the heather.’
‘In the dream the horror was that I wasn’t really singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” I was really screaming for help. I was screaming like “Help! I’m screaming for help and everybody’s acting as if I’m singing Ethel Merman covers! It’s me! It’s me, screaming for help!” ‘