The Infinite Jest Challenge

Day 27 - Board game review

Posted in Aaron's Postings by aaronjoseph on February 14th, 2008

First of all, can I just direct everyone joining us to the comments section of Day 25? I think you’ll agree with me that it was the only substantial discussion of the merits of Infinite Jest thus far in this blog. Thank you for doing our jobs for us, readers.

I admit that I have done little to no work on my place mat. But by the grace of President’s Day weekend, I will make some prototypes. What’s even more strange than making a first draft of an Infinite Jest themed board game is spending more than one week just planning an Infinite Jest themed place mat.

Things I love about the board game:

1. The fact that it is completely unclear how to play it. How do you move forward in the game? Are those page numbers directing me to the novel or to other squares? What does the penny have to do with anything? How many moves does heads represent? Tails?

2. The incongruity between the slapdash layout of the squares and the cute little pictures of bunnies, anthropomorphized joints, and bouncing tennis balls. Makes me want to tear my hair out!

3. The squares contain mostly sincere recapitulations of the novel, except for once in a while when they lapse into grudges against parts you obviously dislike - i.e. “You come across two unusual characters hiking in the Southwest. They seem suspicious but everything that they’re saying seems is really boring… p. 510″ LOVE that still visible cross-out.

4. The wood surface that it’s on top of. Is that your floor? I bet you and siblings could do / have done some serious sock sliding/skating (terms widely recognized by Google’s lexicon, but not yet sanctioned by urbandictionary.com) on that waxy surface. Can that be part of our Day 31 finale celebration? I think you can beat these kids in a 200 meter speed skate, especially The Republic of Make A Doo Doo:

2 Responses to 'Day 27 - Board game review'

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  1. Billifer said, on February 14th, 2008 at 9:01 pm

    As common as the concept is these days online, there really is should be a term for those still-visible cross-outs that are intentionally still visible.

    Regarding the substantial discussion of the merits of IJ — you two may or may not have discovered by now that you hadn’t met quite all the characters earlier on.

  2. kat azzo said, on February 25th, 2008 at 8:24 pm

    i enjoyed the sock skating video but feel that you may be condoning a dangerous sport. at a young age i was the victim of a tragic sock-speedskating accident that resulted in multiple stitches.

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