E.T.A. drug culture and the O.N.A.N.T.A. urine-testing regime — the chemical cadre and Pemulis's clean-urine trade

texture · standing; urine-day 15 Oct YDAU

• When: standing "since the place's inception"; O.N.A.N.T.A. collects urine four times a year (the YDAU day dramatized 15 Oct)
• What: A structural feature of the institution. "Since the place's inception" a percentage of E.T.A.'s players "manage their internal weathers chemically" — 'drines before matches, benzos after, weekend Black Star to "blow out all the circuits." The admissions catalogue makes any use grounds for immediate expulsion, but enforcement is "flaccid": the alumni prorectors who supervise are themselves demoralized failed pros who get high, and the JOI-then-Tavis administrative attitude is that anyone wanting to compromise his faculties wouldn't come to a place built to stress them. Against this sits the O.N.A.N.T.A. quarterly urine scan of every top-64 player — subverted by Pemulis and Axford, who collect sub-ten-year-olds' urine and vend it from a ballpark tub across the Comm.-Ad. lobby on testing day ("Clean urine is ten adjusted dollars a cc"). The reverse side: the halfway-house (Ennet) employees who come up the hill pull "unscheduled Urines all over the place" and are exactly whom Pemulis won't transact with (050) — the "sullen and shifty-eyed residents from Ennet House, the halfway facility at the bottom of the hill's other side" being a standing presence on the grounds (048). Institutional ironies ride the same scene: the E.T.A. tow truck still carries the "good old pre-Tavis E.T.A. traditional motto TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT… unironically emblazoned on the passenger" door, and Pemulis — the urine-vendor himself — holds "the coveted James O. Incandenza Geometrical Optics Scholarship," the founder's optics legacy endowing the academy's best chemist (048). See Pemulis's timeline (event 10).