Chapter 31

Page 338

remember those twin statues of the Buddha that I told you about?
That would be on page 31.

Page 339

Shawn, somebody I know, maybe dead, maybe not, enough with the zombies
Some kind of encrypted Shaun of the Dead joke? Sheer coincidence?

Page 340

diffident long-haired person . . . doing stand-up
Mitch Hedberg appeared on the NBC show Late Friday Oct. 12th, 2001 (season 1, episode 24).

Keenan and Kel
Spelled wrong. Should be "Kenan." Kenan & Kel was a sitcom on Nickelodeon 1996 to 2000. The episode in question was Season 1, episode 2 (1996). You can laugh along with Horst here.

Page 341

Global Consciousness Project
The Global Consciousness Project is a parapsychology experiment begun in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of "global consciousness" with physical systems. The project monitors a geographically distributed network of hardware random number generators in a bid to identify anomalous outputs that correlate with widespread emotional responses to sets of world events, or periods of focused attention by large numbers of people. The GCP is privately funded through the Institute of Noetic Sciences and describes itself as an international collaboration of about 100 research scientists and engineers. Skeptics such as Robert T. Carroll, Claus Larsen, and others have questioned the methodology of the Global Consciousness Project, particularly how the data are selected and interpreted, saying the data anomalies reported by the project are the result of "pattern matching" and selection bias which ultimately fail to support a belief in psi or global consciousness. Other critics, whilst disagreeing with GCP findings, have noted that the open operation of GCP "is a testimony to the integrity and curiosity of those involved." From WIKI.

Page 342

Guy's walking around holding a blazing hot coal
Buddhist Parable of the Burning Coal, from page 182.

Page 344

halo of Daffy Duck forth droplets
Fair number of halos in this book. There's the video game references scattered throughout, and then there's page 17's "halo of faded morality," and page 183's "paranoid halo." Nice line on page 183, by the way: A paranoid halo thickens around Maxine's head, if not a nimbus of certainty.

the ill-regarded Comet Cursor of the nineties
Comet Cursor was a software program manufactured by Comet Systems. It allowed users of the Microsoft Windows Operating System to change the appearance of their mouse's cursor and to allow websites to use customized cursors for visitors. The product was introduced as an enhancement to website design and to enable advertisers to use customized cursors for their campaigns. Companies using Comet Cursor for advertising included AT&T Corporation, Energizer, and Procter & Gamble. Wikipedia

Page 345

woowoo
X-Files theme song reference? Urban dictionary definition.

malloc(3)
From this page "The malloc() function allocates size bytes and returns a pointer to the allocated memory. The memory is not initialized. If size is 0, then malloc() returns either NULL, or a unique pointer value that can later be successfully passed to free()."

Page 346

little tiny people who come out from under the radiator...with little brooms, and dustpans
A reference back to page 333: the hallucinatory effects of Ambien causing Eric & Driscoll to mistake Maxine's children for "small people running around doing a variety of household tasks."

Harry Potter House Elf?
Elves and the Shoemaker fairy tale, keeping with the foot fetish?