Pages 321-342

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321* · Eschaton

Page 321

Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment

GAUDEAMUS IGITUR
Latin: Let Us Rejoice

Page 322

Eschaton
The name of the game is based on "eschatology" (from the Greek ἔσχατος, Eschatos meaning "last" and -logy meaning "the study of") which is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what is believed to be the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world. Wikipedia

frisson
a sudden sense of excitement

puerile
childish

Wilmington DE
a city 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia

Y.P.W

Bunyan
John Bunyan (1628-1688) was an English-Calvinist preacher and writer. You can read Pilgrim's Progress here.

Luger
a German brand of handgun

AMNAT
The United States of America and other NATO nations

SOVWAR
The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations

REDCHI
The People's Republic of China

LIBSYR
Libya and Syria

IRLIBSYR
LIBSYR plus Iran

INDPAK
India and Pakistan

Page 323

Mean-Value Theorem for Integrals
Read all about it here.

Endnote 123

Extreme Value Theorem
This is explained here.

datums
The proper plural is "data."

ordnance
explosives

Page 323 (cont'd)

synoptic
by way of summary

Yahtzee
a popular parlor game played with dice

Endnote 124

Aapps Inc.
There is an actual company by this name, though whether this is the same company to which Wallace refers, I don't know.

Page 323 (cont'd)

three-prong
a three-pronged outlet

Dürer's 'The Magnificent Beast'
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was a German painter and mathematician. You can see the work cited here.

bellicosity
a warlike disposition

Presque Isle ME
a city of Maine about 20 miles west of the border with New Brunswick, Canada

Chyonskrg Kurgistan
Assuming (a) the town is spelling correctly and (b) the country is Kyrgyzstan, I can't find this town on a directory of towns in Kyrgyzstan.

Pliscu Romania
There doesn't seem to be a real city by this name either, though pliscu seems to be a word pertaining to the nose.

Page 324

PCs
Personal Computers

topspin
spin given to a ball in tennis causing it to rotate forward

profligate
recklessly extravagant

metastasizes
spreads like cancer

EM
electromagnetic

baroque
extravagantly ornate

quorum
the required minimum number of people required to carry forth a particular task

Page 325

DEFCON
Defense Readiness Condition, i.e., the measure of the activation of the U.S. Armed Forces in reaction to a real or perceived threat. The higher the number, the lower the threat; the numbers as used in Infinite Jest are used incorrectly, i.e., the higher the DEFCON number, the higher the risk.

theater
here used as a military term for an area in which warfare is carried out

Endnote 125

dilettantes
people who (in this case) play tennis merely for amusement

Page 325 (cont'd)

Achilles' heel
This denotes a single weakness, taken from Greek mythology and the warrior Achilles, hero of the Iliad, who was made invincible to weapons by his mother dipping him in the river Styx. However, because he was held by his heel, he was vulnerable in this single place; Paris was able to kill Achilles by wounding him in the heel with an arrow.

goes tactical
enters the phase of using tactical nuclear weapons

Sinkiang
an alternate spelling for the Xinjiang province of China

Aleutians
an archipelago of Islands stretching west from the coast of Alaska toward (and over) the International Date Line

SS10s
a type of Soviet surface-to-surface (SS) missile

El Al
Israel's national airline

airbus
a short- or medium-range passenger aircraft

both H'sseins
Hussein I (1935-1999), king of Jordan, and Saddam Hussein (1937-2006), president of Iraq

Ft. Chimo
another name for Kuujjuaq, Québec, in the Arctic Circle

Labrador
the mainland part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland

Volgograd
Formerly known as Tsaritsyn and then Stalingrad, this is a city of Russia on the Volga River, downriver from Moscow.

Stolichnaya
a Russian brand of vodka

Endnote 126

picayune
small or trifling

TRISITs
triggering situations

Page 325 (cont'd)

Mikhail Gorbachev

F16s
American fighter jets

Cape Flattery Naval Base
It's not clear whether there is a naval base at Cape Flattery currently, but the town itself is in the state of Washington, about 140 miles west-northwest of Seattle.

Irkutsk
a large city in Russian Siberia

Dzhugdzhur Range
a mountain range in far east Siberia

SOVWAR's bald and port-wine-stained premier
This is no doubt a reference to Mikhail Gorbachev (see right), the last head of state of the USSR, although he was never premier.

Endnote 127

Wolf-spiders
a type of arachnid

Page 325 (cont'd)

Prince albert in a can
a really old, bad phone gag

Sakhalin
a Russian island in the Pacific Ocean

Page 326

Portsmouth OH
a town about 90 miles due south of Columbus, Ohio

four kilgrams
about 8.8 pounds

Sixth Fleet
the fleet of the U.S. Navy that patrols the Mediterranean

MiG25s
Russian aircraft

apoplectic
as if suffering from a stroke

"...only to be asked if his refrigerator's running..."
another ancient, terrible phone gag

Air Force One
the official personal plane of the President of the U.S.

Abu Kenal
apparently not a real place

En Nebk
a city in Syria, not far from Damascus

dip-mil
diplomatic-military

sues for terms
i.e., sues for peace

Tripoli
a city in Lebanon

Médenine Tunisia
a city in the far south of Tunisia

Ostrava
a city in the Czech Republic about 200 miles east of Prague

Howitzer
a large piece of artillery

NSA
National Security Agency

Tientsin
alternate spelling of Tianjin

Air Force Two
personal plane of the Vice President of the United States

Provo UT
a city about 45 miles south of Salt Lake City

Page 327

advertorial
Normally this word denotes an advertisement written to appear as if it's journalism, but here Wallace seems to mean bearing an ad.

thanatoptic
contemplating death

adepts
expert players

Talmudic
Normally referring to the Talmud, here it means making fine distinctions.

pique
resentment

Commentary
the flagship publication of neoconservative Jews

Beersheba
a major of Israel at the northern end of the Negev desert

Page 328

probity
integrity or honesty

1300-m.²
a bit over 1554 square yards

purloined
stolen

subterranean
literally underground

Peoria IL
a city around 160 miles southwest of Chicago

topographic
descriptive of the altitudes of the land on a map

Interstate 74
This road runs from Davenport, Iowa, to Cincinnati

Minuteman
a type of missile

irregardless
not a real word, though a frequent usage mistake

2π
used because we're dealing with circular and spherical areas of damage

Page 329

1,400,000 curies
A curie (Ci) is a measure of radioactivity, defined as 3.7×10¹⁰ decays per second. The more commonly used measurement in science is the becquerel. 1.4 million curies is equal to 59.2 million gigabecquerels.

microcephalic
having a tiny head

Tenuate
drug marketed as an appetite suppressant

left-eye-nystagmic
Troeltsch's left eye is nystagmic. Nystagmia is an involuntary eye-movement characterised by the combination of a smooth pursuit, which usually acts to take the eye off the point of regard, interspersed with the saccadic movement that serves to bring the eye back on target.

cerebral
oriented toward thinking

Page 330

Roentgens
The roentgen (R) is a unit of measurement for ionizing radiation and uses the units charge divided by unit weight (C/kg). The preferred scientific unit is the gray (Gy), a unit of absorbed dose (of radiation).

Minsk
the capital of Belarus

extant
still existing

Edina MN
a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul about 3 miles southwest

arational
not irrational, but also not rational -- rather lacking the ability to tell one from the other

cod
a type of fish

EMP
electromagnetic pulse

Page 331

gander
A gander, as used here, is a look or peek.

SJOG
St. John of God

obtuse
difficult to understand

Decision Tree
a tool used in decision analysis

Imam'd
Here used as a verb for "to lead," an Imam is a Muslim cleric.

Page 332

strip-mining
According to Wikipedia, "Strip mining is the practice of mining a seam of mineral by first removing a long strip of overlying soil and rock." The implication here seems to be simply that Ingersoll is picking rather deeply.

ad service box
the box to serve into when an odd number of points have been played (so when on player or the other has the advantage, i.e. is ahead in points); as opposed to the "deuce service box" where one serves when an even number of points have been played (in particular when the game is tied at deuce).

n.b.
Nota bene

parley
to hold a discussion

Sierra Leone
a country of West Africa

Nunhagen
a real brand of aspirin

Page 333

Karachi
the largest city in Pakistan and capital of its Sindh province

verisimilitude
proximity to reality

eminence grise
French for "gray eminence," this is a powerful adviser or decision-maker.

Miles Penn
a combination of the names of two early British settlers of America: William Penn and Miles Standish (1584-1656), the military commander of Plymouth colony who traveled to Massachusetts on the Mayflower.

'Its showing on the goddamn map, not the territory...'
This is a reference to the statement "the map is not the territory," i.e., the thing representing some other thing is not that other thing in reality -- just a representation of it. Count Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (1879-1950), the founder of general semantics, coined the phrase. It's interesting that the term "map" appears so often in Infinite Jest, as in reference to suicide (eliminating one's own map). Clearly Wallace is doing something with this general idea.

Page 334

contrite
apologetic

rugby-scrum
a way of restarting a game of rugby after a point has been scored

Arabian Sea
the part of the Indian into which the Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf) leads

metatheoretical
regarding a theory devised to analyze a previous theory

El Greco
El Greco (Spanish for "the Greek") was the byname of Doménicos Theotokópoulos (1541-1614), a Greek-Spanish painter. Presumably a "bad" El Greco, i.e., a bad piece of art by El Greco, would have the characteristics Hal considers in Pemulis's face.

Page 335

paralytic thought-helix
Paralytic would imply that this "thought-helix" stops everything else both physical and mental in Hal's actions/thoughts. A helix is a spiral, so a thought-helix is a thought-spiral, which goes on and on but never really gets anywhere.

1.3 m.
about 4.25 feet

utility
In economics or statistics, this is a quantity/quality to be maximized in decision making.

haunches
the hips, buttocks, and upper thighs

cerebrate
to think about something

Page 336

Toltec
a catch-all term for the pre-Columbian cultures of what is now Mexico

Ivory Coast
the English name for Côte d'Ivoire

Senegal
another nation in west Africa

metadecision
a decision about a previous decision

solander
a case for maps or plates made to look like a book

Page 337

aggregate
total, e.g., the aggregate IQ of the people in a room would be all their individual IQs added together

equivocationary
not a real word

Abu Kemal and Es Suweida
Abu Kamal is in eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border. As-Suwayda is also in Syria, near its border with Jordan. This is to say that Ingersoll is patrolling Syria's eastern frontier.

hoofer's cane
the cane of a tap dancer (which is what a hoofer is)

de facto
As opposed to de jure, which would mean legally, de facto implies a situation is true even if not legally true.

One True Faith
Islam

vacillation
inability to stick with a choice

Page 338

boat-wake
water made to rise by the motion of a boat

compromise Eschaton's map
which here would seem to mean that Lord may just kill Eschaton as a game

Page 339

something anatomically impossible
i.e., to go fuck himself

tripartite
having three parts

thiamine
another name for vitamin B₁

Nigeria and Chad
bordering nations in North Africa, just south of the Sahara

Page 340

triangulating
dividing into triangles

on point
furthest up front, as in military formation

pincer movement
a military maneuver whereby an enemy is attacked not from the front, but at both sides or flanks

Page 341

contact-bursts
a type of nuclear strike

left cross
According to a boxing Web site, "the right cross is thrown in a straight line to the target and comes back in a straight line to the chin." The left cross is delivered with left hand.

accreting
gathering increasing amounts

doze
Todd is trying to say "nose."

equivocation
ambiguity

Asian subcontinent
Better known as the Indian subcontinent, it includes India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Page 342

Indochina
The colonial name for what is now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

baseline
the line at the end of a tennis court, parallel to the net, that marks the boundary of play

hasp
a clasp for a door or lid

modem
An acronym for modulation-demodulation, it is a data-transfer device.

chassis
the construction forming the sides, top, and back of a piece of equipment

y-axis
the vertical axis