IJ study archive

The colon-mad energy class, the Pemulis détente, and going the extra click for the Booger

timeline_event

pivotal · Fall YDAU term; class frame 7 Nov, Doucette crisis ? Nov

  • When: The class runs across the Fall YDAU term (a once-a-week Saturday thing); the class-frame scene is 7 Nov; the Doucette crisis is an undated-Nov afternoon.
  • What: Like every prorector, Watson teaches one class a term for certification reasons, and his is the joke elective with the immortal title: "the colon-mad Tex Watson's 'From Scarcity to Plenty: From Putrid Stuff Out of the Ground to the Atom in the Mirror: A Lay Look at Energy Resources from Anthracite to Annular Fusion.'" The Dean of Academic Affairs files it as satisfying no quadrivial requirement, and the narration is candid about the ceiling: "though Tex Watson's overall handle on Cold-Containment DT-annulation is shaky, his lay-physics survey of combustion and annulation has some sort of academic validity to it, especially because he some terms gets Pemulis to guest-lecture when he and Pemulis are in a period of détente." Pemulis's verdict on the course is "kiddie-physics," and on the man: "Watson's basically got like a little liquid-filled nubbin at the top of his spine where his brain ought to be." But when Anton ("The Booger") Doucette — on academic probation, "close to flunking in Watson's laughable Energy survey class," which would mean the Boot — thinks himself into a brainlock and ends up weeping in the weight room with Lyle, the same conversation gives Watson his best moment in the book: "Watson's gone the extra click with him. Watson's good-hearted if nothing else. He's tried flash-cards, mnemonic rhymes, even claymation filmstrips from over at Rindge-Latin Remedial." One rhyme survives verbatim — for the Concavity's sped-up time, "Wasteland to lush: time's in no rush." (Schacht's aside in the same scene — "'I wouldn't mention the name Watson near that weight room in there if I were you.'" — goes unexplained in so many words; the weeping Doucette is in that weight room, which a reader can connect unaided.)

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