"Do not ask why if you don't want to die Do like your told if you want to get old." (Sic)

I read the most of this section over the course of one Saturday, and I don't think it was digested nearly enough. The book is blurring together more than it should and I don't think it is making as much sense to me as it might in reality, but then again there hasn't been much logic anyway, so I'm not sure why I would expect any now.

ETA as a whole, as we learn more and more, sounds like an increasingly odd but dynamic place to be. Specifically, the classes at ETA, as discussed in the early 300s, sound sort of fantastic, though extremely abnormal and incredibly ridiculous. The premise on page 308, about the agoraphobic kleptomaniac, was definitely something I contemplated about for more than a small amount of time; I can't imagine how great classes like that might be, nor how DFW comes up with half of the stuff in this book. It's sort of how I used to imagine college: crazy sociology teachers and old preaching professors; I can only hope that my own college experience is anything like that, or at least as far away from mundane as one could hope. As mentioned in the related footnote, ETA does indeed seem like an extended term specialty camp, despite the 'classes' they offer and the 'professors' who work there.

Keeping up with Wallace's vocabulary is a tremendous job in and of itself. I am really entertained by times when you can tell that at a specific point he learned a new word or at least started to use it more often, as it will appear frequently over the course of a rather small section of IJ but then disappear or at least fade out.

I'm curious as to why Boston's Alcoholics Anonymous is considered so different in the grand scheme of AA's; I mean this in terms of why the city specifically, as there is definitely much focus on the intricate differences in terms of group.

I've become profusely annoyed with the acronyms that I'm sure DFW is using just to confuse us. On p.325 ish, he even goes into discussing some and somewhat explaining them, but keeping track is really beginning to frustrate me. Though I'm enjoying (ish) more or less reading Infinite Jest, whether I like it or not, finishing it has become more of a conquest, necessary perhaps as only a test of my own willpower; I will read the rest whether my logical and conscious mind likes or not.