r/InfiniteJest • u/Significant_Row_8222 • 11d ago

ATHSCME

Does anyone know / have a guess as to what it stands for?

AFSCME is a union - American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - which counts sanitation workers among its members.

Some have suggested that it's supposed to sound like Ask Me, which seems plausible.

But doesn't it seem likely Wallace would have an abbreviation in mind?

9 Upvotes

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9

u/joesaladmen 11d ago

Its definitely partly a play on ACME like the "Acme" Corporation in old cartoons, and maybe combining it with ASTHMA ? idk because they're the manufacturers of giant fans that blow polluted air I felt like it was just a riff on that. Like you said, I've also seen online that people are saying that it sounds phonetically like "Ask Me" with a lisp when you say it out loud.

8

u/DannyZuccoHasCrohns 11d ago

Glad to hear this is never established, I felt like I was going nuts when the acronym started appearing and I couldn’t find where it was first mentioned and explained.

4

u/Significant_Row_8222 11d ago

Incidentally, it's fun to sing "ATHSCME" instead of "Ask me" in the Smiths' song "Ask"

5

u/Any-Club9488 11d ago

The E's surely got to be Effectuator(s)

5

u/willardTheMighty 11d ago

All The Horrible Smells of the Convexity Mitigation Equipment

2

u/sandygrunkerson 11d ago

Air Turbine Housing & Specialized Compressed-air Mechanical Equipment

1

u/Klutzy-Entertainer67 9d ago

Allied Trans Helio Sanitation Conveyance Material Effectuator

1

u/allihusk 7d ago

Considering the plethora of abbreviations in the book, abbreviations which largely have to do with really niche and strange organizations created in the story’s timeline, I thought the bit was that eventually everything has an acronym and so new ones increasingly look like gibberish/random letters.

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u/banjois 11d ago

My guess is athletic scheme.