Words, Words, Words - Infinite Jest Vocabulary Building

Today's word: O.N.A.N.

O.N.A.N. = Organization of North American Nations - formerly the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Onanism/onanisme (for the French Canadians) - masturbation baby, probably conflated from a passage in Genesis about Onan and his brother Er who were both killed by God. Did you know that Yahweh only personally killed seven people? The rest was left up to floods, fires, etc (acts of God according to my insurance policy.)

Er - Judah's first born son. Onan's brother killed by God because of his own (Er's) wickedness. In Hebrew Er spelled backwards spells the word for evil.

Onan - Second son of Judah. Killed by God for pulling out too soon, as in coitus interuptus with his dead brother Er's wife, Tamar. Genesis 38: 6 - 10. This is where masturbation and sin get conflated. In fact, what God objects to apparently is Onan pulling out of Tamar and disobeying Jewish Law. It was acceptable to have sex with your brother's wife provided your brother was dead and had no children. It was considered an obligation. Onan apparently doesn't object to having sex with Er's wife, but doesn't want to lose his share of his father's inheritance. Having sex with Tamar and begetting children would seriously work against his interests. What the Bible says about masturbation. (Just FYI.)

And although this is possibly reaching even more than I already have, there is a Ham in the Bible who is one of Noah's three sons. Ham is Noah's youngest son and gets cursed because he sees/and exposes his father's nakedness to his brothers. Some version of the phrase "expose father's nakedness" is used elsewhere in the Bible and is thought to be a euphemism for having sex with one's mother.

What does any of this have to do with Infinite Jest? Maybe nothing. Maybe just little guidelines or reinforcements of the storyline, and/or possibly deadends, visual interest spots along the road to nowhere. Mental masturbation. Onaniste c'est moi [sic].

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words. (Hamlet, Act 2, sc2)

UPDATE: Lauren Ambrose stars in Loving Leah, a romantic Hallmark Channel comedy about a woman who marries her dead husband's brother in accordance with an all-but-forgotten Jewish law.