GRGR (6): Ick Regis

[Daffydh Antalyan]

[Freshwater Ichthyophthirius ("Ich" or "Ick") - Symptoms: Many or few
[small white pustules, the size of grains of salt, on body and fins. 
[ Pustules are consustent in size.  Fish may scratch against... 
[     ...brochure,  TetraWerke / Dr. rer. nat. Ulrich Baensch GmbH

Presumably, part of the image of an accumulating encrustation of
transparency or whiteness [=sterility, death, soullessness].  Wasn't
this, too, part of J.G. Ballard's _Terminal Beach_ of the same era,
things becoming encrusted with a glassy integument as time ran down
and causes ran out time to have effect in?

Ringing in, too, with Le Froyd / Freud / Froide.

A question:  "39 degrees of frost."  (Bantam, p.100):  That's seven
below zero.  That's unreasonably cold for Minnesota in November or
December (by mid-December the Scheldt was clear and there was fighting
only in Holland proper, way to the north of Flanders), and
lunatic-crazy cold for Kent in any month.  Why that number?