Beyond the Zero

It's the weekend, we don't need no stinkin' weigh-ins...

Rode down the towpath last night, down to Sand Island and across the river to the Banana Factory, where I hung out with Doug and Eric before starting my return trip. I saw they had the Christmas City Craptacular going on in giant circus tents, over where Musikfest is held...

Talking with Dawn at the gym this morning, she mentioned it doesn't seem like Christmas, bit of consumerism burrnout going on. I think it's endemic, and the ever-more-strident marketing has sort of reached the saturation point. Sort of like Pavlovian psychology (as explained in the ever-handy Gravity's Rainbow), and the extinction of learned responses in trhe absence of the reward. Transmarginal, ultraparadoxical, the silent extinction beyond the zero... just realized, the events in GR's Part 1, titled "Beyond the Zero," and heavy into Pavlovian psychology (as well as psi and seances, & post-death existence in general), are set at Christmastime 1944.

Sinister quote:

"Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

-- Wernher von Braun

That's the quote for Part 1, and the next page kicks it off wih the famous "A screaming comes across the sky..."