ATD (Aid to the Totally Disabled)

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

            p. 3 "mental disability check"    
            This instantly identifies Zoyd as a sixties character with 
            a sixties scam. In the late sixties, Bay Area actor/writer 
            Peter Coyote wrote and performed a then-popular song 
            called "ATD" celebrating the coolness of getting onto 
            ATD (Aid to the Totally Disabled) for feigned mental 
            problems to avoid having to work at some 
            evil-collaborative (i.e., straight) job. The trick, of course, 
            was convincing your caseworker that you were a nut. 
            Zoyd's annual window-dive is a comic version of a 
            now-classic ritual-scam turned into a media circus 
            (as are most remains of the sixties). Given the 
            importance of the Tube in Vineland, it's no accident 
            that what was originally a private act of financial 
            desperation has become a filler on TV news 
            (complete with a fake window). Of course, as it turns 
            out, this particular scam is not Zoyd's idea. 

More cool stuff from: Babies of Wackiness, A Readers' Guide to Thomas Pynchon's 
Vineland by John Diebold and Michael Goodwin, seeing as a little overview of 
Vineland might yield up echos of Against the Day, find a  

            " then-popular song 
            called "ATD" celebrating the coolness of getting onto 
            ATD (Aid to the Totally Disabled) for feigned mental 
            problems to avoid having to work at some 
            evil-collaborative (i.e., straight) job."

Yes, I know, there's a tenous non-connection going on here, can't say O.B.A. (as 
I lke to call him) 

http://people.uvawise.edu/roots/mike/oba/obaphotocu.jpg

would delibrately have cross-referenced an abbreviation that isn't even on his 
mind anyway (like, say, H.C.E. is for the Wake) still there's lots of folks in 
AtD who go plumb crazy anyway, so as long as we're visiting the neighborhood:

Right now, I can't recall her name, but she performed as a street-monger 
at the California Renaissance Faires in the 70's/80's. She had had this 
sthick of performing as a Dutch codpiece maker with a little action on the side, 
hawking a spectacularly odiferrous cheese of low-lands origin. In addition 
to many unintended pratfalls on the behalf of flabbergasted audience 
members/victims when she proffered her toxic cheese---how could anything 
that smells that bad as that be manufactured, shipped, marketed, much 
less eaten?---there was general hilarity when, as a codpiece maker, she got to the 
measuring stage, a golden opportunity to publiclly humiliate Nixon/Reagan types, 
usually wearing bermuda shorts, balding, and in their 60's. She and her "Old 
Man" (who, if I recall correctly, was considerably younger) led a comfortable, 
middle-class life in Petaluma, her means of support increased considerably by 
some of that "crazy money". 

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808451330/photo/607520

http://www.6degreesfilm.com/images/over_the_hedge_hammy_the_squirrel.jpg