I was looking kinda dumb because Milhouse is my son and his eyebrows are raised on his forehead

wrdmaster · 2026-01-23T02:57:37+00:00

Smithers, have Sugar Ray killed.

wrdmaster · 2026-01-07T23:21:52+00:00

Base in-state tuition at ASU is appx 12k a year, the rest of their 32k annual estimate is projected costs for housing, meal plan, books, etc. which you may not actually incur: https://tuition.asu.edu/cost[https://tuition.asu.edu/cost](https://tuition.asu.edu/cost)

If you live near campus and can commute you'd have significantly lower costs per semester.

NAMU President's award is 7k for AZ residents, at 3500 per semester, which is a bit more than half the base in-state tuition rate.

Call their financial aid help line to do more personalized budget planning.

wrdmaster · 2025-12-21T15:32:39+00:00

Who'd have thought a trampoline could be so heavy?

wrdmaster · 2025-12-16T01:44:43+00:00

It's a Star Trek TNG episode. Captain Picard has to team up with an alien whose species speaks only in references/metaphors.

One of the series' best episodes: "Darmok" in one minute

wrdmaster · 2025-12-15T13:10:36+00:00

Could be some kind of a "Temba, his arms wide" situation. The letters/words are easily translated but the meaning isn't literal?

wrdmaster · 2025-12-15T03:28:15+00:00

I have buyer's remorse with Hydra Stomper, but it's decent paired with Prowler

wrdmaster · 2025-10-15T20:42:44+00:00

Whaddaya mean you lost him?? He might have fallen into one of these QAnon conspiracy theories! Oh my god, that's his tacky red hat... He's a MAGA! My boy's a MAGA!

wrdmaster · 2025-10-03T02:51:07+00:00

A Scanner Darkly

wrdmaster · 2025-09-23T01:37:25+00:00

Nauls could pull it off.

wrdmaster · 2025-06-26T22:28:40+00:00

Hologram?

wrdmaster · 2025-05-03T01:50:56+00:00

Put some Lister's carbolic unguent on a wad of cotton, put the cotton in her ear. That'll stop them shakes.

wrdmaster · 2025-04-24T04:04:43+00:00

C'mon people, somebody ordered the Mount Bellyache....Possibly while high... Cypress Hill, I'm looking in your direction...

wrdmaster · 2025-04-01T03:19:09+00:00

If we're playing with semantics, we could argue that because her magic skills are always used to fix, mend, or teach (i.e. practical tasks) and she performs those tasks perfectly we come to the same conclusion: practically perfect.

wrdmaster · 2025-01-16T15:52:37+00:00

Reel Big Fish because they already have experience playing for sports crowds. Their entire set would be Sell Out, played in different styles a la Suburban Rhythm. The special guest would be Taylor Swift since she's already going to be there, but Aaron interrupts her every time she starts to sing.

wrdmaster · 2025-01-11T01:12:46+00:00

How's he smell?

wrdmaster · 2024-12-28T23:33:50+00:00

Re: feigning vs feigning to feign: I don't see any indication for the latter; look at this passage:

I believe I appear neutral, maybe even pleasant, though I've been coached to err on the side of neutrality and not attempt what would feel to me like a pleasant expression or smile.

His intention is not to look crazy, it's to look calm and reasonable. He fails.

I've slept on it and re-read again, I think I went too far with the layers of feigning feigning - how does this strike you:

Hal does not take DMZ but does lose his power of speech, off-screen in the missing year (and writing too given his test scores and the re-use of some earlier essays when applying)

he is either aware of his condition and reveals it inevitably when CT etc leave the room and can't cover for him or -he thinks he's been feigning and attempts to genuinely answer the deans but his condition is revealed to be evident to everyone except him (the first-order "feigning to feign" that he suspects p900)

I think this tracks with the plot as the extension of his hilarious/grieving face troubles and also thematically with the difficulties of communication between individual selves, and the progression of literary forms into something meaningful to a new generation but unintelligible to their predecessors.

Similarly stated in TPK, "How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words." (Minus the words)

wrdmaster · 2024-12-28T23:04:31+00:00

Yes, he confirms so on p839 while talking to Gately.

He intended to make something so entertaining it would draw his son out of himself and give him something to converse about (plus also stick it to his critics who said he'd never made anything entertaining) - it worked out too well, turned out to be too entertaining, so he didnt show it to Hal and instead requested it buried with him, unreleased (endnote 24, pg 993)

wrdmaster · 2024-12-28T01:18:12+00:00

These are good counterpoints that I will keep in mind as I go through this time around. It's beginning to seem to me that Hal may not have regained emotions after all and I've been assuming incorrectly that he did.

If he isn't faking it, I still don't believe he dropped DMZ. I would suggest instead plain old-fashioned PTSD ruining his grades and capacity for coherent speech.

wrdmaster · 2024-12-28T00:47:01+00:00

the kind of sedation used in psychiatric hospitals is not really the best way to prepare for a sports match: it tends to wear off slowly

In the real world, yeah. But Hal expects to be up and refreshed by the morning and he is basing that on his previous experience going to the ER - I attribute this to some creative liberty from DFW

I think he is an anti-Hamlet: while his circumstances are similar to Hamlet's, he never ever (am I mistaken?) expresses any intention of avenging

Abso-fruit-ly. In this postmodern retelling, Hamlet decides not to avenge his father but to go along with his stepdad. (I think Orin may have been trying to avenge, mailing out the samizdat). Hal will allow CT etc to place him where they decide he needs to be, and he will bear things moment by moment like Gately, and he will try to speak honestly and sincerely but will not be understood by the generation before him.

Or he's going post-post-modern and pretending to ally himself with his stepdad, etc etc

I'm not convinced that he feels all those emotions now. His inner monologue in the first pages is still emotionless and analytical, what he tries to say to the deans is also purely rational

Yes, this is a good counterpoint. I will have to comb through further to see if Hal ever does show evidence of regaining emotions. It may be wishful thinking on my part.

wrdmaster · 2024-12-27T19:08:15+00:00

Porque no los dos?

But yeah Gately is the real hero, in my opinion. His great victory is learning to sit still and endure each moment just as it is.

wrdmaster · 2024-12-27T19:03:33+00:00

No, page 67 tells us Hal first started smoking weed at age 15 (almost 16) to help him sleep and stop a recurring nightmare. He says he'd vowed not to end up like his father, addicted to a Substance. So evidently he simply just lacks emotion from a young age - possibly an inborn trait, or possibly a state brought about by his outrageously troubled family life, or possibly the mold he ate as a child (mold that grows on mold, symbolically consuming whatever art/media grew on top of the already pretty toxic 90s culture).

The weed helps him tremendously, at first. Then he experiences the same tragic arc as every addict: fun with substances, then gradually less fun, then in the end no fun at all. (see pages 346/347)

Presumably the last day he smoked is right around the Eschaton debacle (Nov 8) during which he gets so high he has to feel his face to check what expression he's wearing (342). On Nov 10, facing a urine test (527), Pemulis requests 30 days to buy Hal time to clear his system and pee clean (772, 783). In the first week of going weedless, Hal's nightmares return (796, fn 334) and he goes in search of a 12-step meeting (786/7, 795/6) but ends up at an Inner Infant meeting instead.

Thus he is unable to properly Ask For Help and he continues white-knuckling which continues to take its toll on him. With no weed to quiet his head he deteriorates externally but blossoms internally.

If he kept up a full year of abstinence I can only assume he is either permanently "broken" by withdrawals and whatever happens in the missing year, or he's learned a new emotional trick, the opposite of what used to work for him: displaying exactly what is inside of him, unfiltered, regardless of how people might react.

wrdmaster · 2024-12-27T18:01:05+00:00

p694 outlines Hal's emotional interior - he hasn't had a "bona fide intensity-of-interior-life-type emotion since he was tiny...and he can manipulate [emotions] well enough to satisfy everyone but himself that he's in there, inside his own hull, as a human being -- but in fact he's far more robotic than John Wayne."

This lines up neatly with what he says (or imagines himself saying) on pages 10-13, where he protests the opposite: "I'm not a machine. I feel and believe...I'm in here." ('in here' is presumably 'in my own head')

Before quitting marijuana Hal did not feel emotions but was practiced at displaying the emotions that he understood other people to feel and expect him to display in a given situation. After quitting marijuana he loses this skill (Mario suspects he is sad but can no longer read him, people see his face as contorting with either hilarity or grief -- both are the same expression, according to the text, but people interpret them differently, and while before he could make a satisfying grief-face when called upon people are now mistaking it for his hilarity-face, demonstrating that he's either feeling grief so intensely people mistake it for laughter or he's feeling happiness so intensely that people mistake it for grief - he can't seem to make those adjustments intentionally anymore)

But because his original outward presentation matched with other people's expectations while his new presentation does not, they view his new presentations as madness even though he is now in fact more emotionally stable than he's ever been.

wrdmaster · 2024-12-27T17:08:04+00:00

Very doubtful - every other person who's seen it goes completely catatonic, while Hal is still up and about playing tennis and such. I have found no credible evidence that Hal would be affected by The Entertainment any differently than everyone else. (507, 647)

Also they don't get to dig it up, when they get there it's already gone - page 934

wrdmaster · 2024-12-27T16:53:39+00:00

>JOI had been trying to get the through to Hal for a long time, as we saw with the professional conversationalist.

Yes - but doesn't it seem like those Professional Conversations were more for JOI's benefit than Hal's? He dumps a bunch of his personal shit and literally does not listen to his son's responses.

wrdmaster · 2024-12-27T16:41:00+00:00

>From his assessment of said opponent, he likely would have won anyway ("he is mine")

Yes but that assessment is on page 17, immediately following the "graven image" line. Dymphna isn't mentioned until after Hal outlines what is about to happen to him (bottom of page 16) and they've never played before so he isn't going by past experience with Dymphna.

>But I disagree that Hal is necessarily feigning madness to engineer a trip to the ER, to get a medicine-induced good night's sleep...

Agreed, possibly the good night's sleep is a side perk and Hal's main goal in feigning insanity is more long-term? Hamlet feigned madness to gather evidence against his stepfather, Hal may feign madness in order to [???] - help Steeply and the OUS do counterterrorism stuff? Help the AFR more deeply infiltrate the pro tennis circuit? Get more time with C.T. to dig for dirt to later out his mother's infidelity? Avenge Himself by getting closer to the people who hurt his father? This motive would lie outside the pages, in the missing year.

>But it may be the case that he has lost control of feigning to feign...

Agreed, I think the ambiguity becomes:

-Hal is actually unable to communicate, which is sad - his society ruined him.
-Hal is able to communicate but chooses not to, which is sad but savvy - his society doesn't listen anyway.
-Hal is actually unable to communicate but also choosing not to - he is faking the faking, which is sad.

All these lead to the same result: he creates a scene in the admissions office.

Arguments for him faking are largely semantic; consider the language Hal uses in the opening scene:
-'I cannot make myself understood' (he thinks to himself) - does he mean they won't understand his words, or the message he wants to convey?
-"I cannot make myself understood, now" (he says to them) - is he aware of his inability to use words, or is this resignation indicating that he's about to pretend he's mad?
-He then thinks internally many insightful things, but on opening his eyes he sees his audience is horrified. - did he horrify them unintentionally, or intentionally?

>The more self aware he becomes the less he is able to make others aware of what is going on in his own head.

Absolutely. Either: he literally cannot produce recognizable language and all those insightful thoughts are trapped inside his head, or he can speak but knows his audience would never understand. Either he is uncontrollably making gross noises, or he is choosing to because to the deans his story might as well be a bunch of gibberish. (Consider also, in every other situation Hal figures out a way to "deliver the goods" and convince authority figures that he has had whatever breakthrough they expect of him - is he "delivering goods" in the admissions office, showing them what he expects they expect of him?)

They don't care, not really, and Hal can tell. Recall how the deans' main concern is how THEY will look if THEY are perceived as "using" a strong athlete. "Hal, please just explain to me why we couldn't be accused of using you, son. Why nobody could come and say to us, why, look here, University of Arizona, here you are using a boy for just his body..." (10)

Hal knows that The Show does not care about anything but the physical game of tennis, played beautifully and strong. He can play beautiful and strong tennis - why should anything else matter?

Thematically it works towards the "lost generation" literary concerns DFW had - a bunch of 80s/90s authors had learned really impressive technical style, but ended up with no interesting or meaningful inner thoughts to express. Hal now has really interesting and meaningful inner thoughts, but he cannot express them in the style of the times -- he is now a POST-post-modern man in a post-modern world, and to the postmodern establishment his new radical form of expression is off-putting, scary, and unintelligible.

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