You never did the Kenosha Kid?

[adam]

>I'm not convinced that the point of the Sodium Amytal injection
>is to put Slothrop to "sleep", or that that's what happens when one is
>under the drug's influence. It's a "truth serum", isn't it? He's 
>resisting the intended effect of the drug -- that much is clear -- but
>I don't agree that the intended effect is to put him to sleep. It's
>pretty obviously an interrogation.

there might be somthing in looking at the other uses of sodium amytal in the 
book to help clarify its effects. when he gets abducted on Peenemunde, 
Gerhardt von Goll is "behind [a metal door]... singing and babling like a 
drunk", on "that sodium amytal," and as he's being taken along out he 
(seemingly at random) cries "she baffs at nothing, the heterospeed" 
(511-12).... "Zhadev's jacket with the gold-starred pogoni on the shoulders 
gets draped around the Springer, who is now humming everyone a Kurt Weill 
medley"... "about halfway up [the embankment] Springer blows a tremendous 
fart that echoes for minutes across the historic ellipse, like now to do for 
you folks my anal impression of the A4.... 'Oh, fuck you,' Slothrope snarls. 
'An erect green steed of planetoid and bone,' nods the Springer in 
reply."... "It isn't clear if Springer knows who he is" (514). 
SA is obviously a "truth serum," right, because here too the pretty blond 
auxillary is noting everything he says down in shorthand. but its more 
relevant to look at how springer is acting - its pretty random and 
impulsive. i don't have much uh experience as to how truth serums work 
normally, but maybe this is a kind of automatism/"stream-of-conciousness" 
inducing type of drug. its easy to assume given the general paranoia themes 
(surrealism-derived techniques???). there is more randomness and von goll on 
SA in the movie under the rug again on p746. its seems to me like this kind 
of behavoir _is_ an exception for von goll, he is on dope, but its also 
possible its not and that this is just attributal to his character, i've 
only read the book once. i guess there is one mention of him maniacally 
chasing a rocket (?) on his movie-director-camera's crane thing i remember. 
the point is, if SA is meant to induce random psychological utterance, this 
would fit the randomness of the kenosha kid, wherever the reference is from. 
but does the kenosha kid come around before or after the SA? based on the 
sentence everyone's been looking at so much ("These changes on the text ... 
are occupying Slothrop's awareness as the doctor leans in out of the white 
overhead to wake him and begin the session. The needle slips without pain 
into the vein.. : 10% sodium amytal, one cc at a time, as needed." 61), i'd 
think it was before. "occupying AS the doctor" and _then_ the SA injection. 
if he's being awakened than he was either asleep or possibly recovering from 
some other kind of drug. it depends on whether you think people have 
"awareness" when they're asleep. and the credibility of the automatism 
effect of SA depends on the reasons people are using it, which is far from 
clear (for me at least...) 

what exactly are slothrop's interrogators "after" (p90, haha) anyway? i 
doubt its really to find out why slothrop "knows" where the rockets are 
falling, later on mexico's whole resistance joining is induced by his 
realization that pointsman has known about the connections to the chemical 
cartels all along. there are relations between the fake schwarzkommando and 
slothrop's SA-induced anal raping in his toilet dwelling hallucination (and 
all the other racist overtones--- WW2 theme?). its maybe relevant that 
pointsman _doesn't_ know about the real schwarzkommando(?). is he carrying 
out the continually referenced pavlonian experiments just for his own ends, 
given the opportunity under the war? what is the point of setting up the 
hoax schwarzkommando?
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