STetc - Towards a theory of cheese in ST

[Mark Kohut]

I love this, THANK YOU, MICHAEL...

On Fri, Sep 4, 2026 at 10:58 PM Michael Bailey via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> (this sounded a lot better in my head...)
>
> Cheese as a transformation of milk (as in human kindness)
> Cheese as a slang for money, replacing kindness in human interactions
>
> That's not necessarily completely bad; kindness can also be hard to come
> by, easy to squander, and evanescent - arguably it's convenient in a human
> society to have a tangible thing one can count on to evoke a
> near-universally conditioned love response... countable, bankable...&
> cheese can be stored longer and more easily...
>
> So then, mixing and mingling the ideas - love, money, cheese, human
> intercourse - love & kindness are like Lacan's true but unattainable object
> of desire, the big A, while cheese and money are the unsatisfying (cheese
> unsatisfying, money as a further abstraction even more unsatisfying) but
> sometimes attainable little a.
>
> but radioactive cheese?
>
> normal accumulation of cheese would range from, like, little appetizer
> cubes on toothpicks, to a sandwich, a compartment in the fridge, a shop, a
> wholesaler, a producer, and eventually those Cheese Combines so concerning
> for Praediger and others;
>
> normal accumulation of cheese's further abstraction - wealth - might
> operate like accretion of dust in a new solar system, in that uneven forces
> gradually create clusters that can grow and grow into heavenly bodies which
> acquire an attractive force of gravity
>
> whereas radioactive cheese as it accumulates would emit alpha and beta
> particles and x-rays and so forth, while it grows closer to a critical
> mass; instead of an attractive force, it could generate a catastrophically
> dispersive force -
>
> and radioactive money, as it piles up and inevitably fails to generate
> "jouissance", instead starts to send out destructive rays of greed,
> Mammon-worship, disregard for other values; how much money does it take to
> create a critical mass? - you read about winning the Lotto messing up
> people's lives...
>
> and then, Bruno was advertising Radio-Cheez as a boost for people's sex
> lives?
> even after the dangers became known?
>
> Heinous!
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>