The Windup Girl Chapters 7 - 8

Mah bunny, Charlie, tries to eat the coffee table.

Chapter 7:

 Jaidee and Kanya stop disease-resistant pineapples from being smuggled in (the fuck? Don't they need stuff like that? Explain stuff, Paulie!) and then they bitch about how awful the world is and how it's all the fault of those terrible foreigners over a lunch of snakehead pla. Ahh!! Frankenfish! A wonderful reminder that invasive species go both ways. Jaidee is surprised to learn that his men are resentful that his rogue ways net them nothing but career stagnation and that he doesn't share the money he steals. He protests that they know it's there whenever they need it but I guess his men don't know how to read minds.

 This is one of those books that portrays all Westerners as the source of all men's ills with the poor brown and yellow people helpless against their greedy ways, incapable of any agency and certainly not fucking up their own genetic engineering projects. Everything the exotic Thais and Japanese create is wholesome and good for society (including the secretaries doubling as sex dolls, I guess) and everything Western (read: American) companies create is corrupt and imperialistic. Oh, blow it out your ass, Paulie. You do know this is a very neo-colonial, dare I say racist, world view? Also, I don't believe vegetation is that pathetic and incapable of adaptation. It'll be here long after we've gone. Haven't you seen The Happening? No? Good. That movie was terrible.

 Chapter 8:

 The next 15 pages are spent in a bar patronized by foreigners (farang, in italics, often) called The Sir Francis Drake. They bitch about losing their cargo to Jaidee's arson spree and how hard it is to be exploitationist smugglers. Anderson learns that ngaw is probably Rambutan. Carlyle, a big Trade man who involves himself in politics, comes in. He tells Anderson that a change in government is coming. Thailand uses a system of pumps to keep the sea from flooding the city (it's immersed other low lying cites like New York and New Orleans) and Carlyle has the necessary repair equipment in a warehouse in another country. He intends to hold it hostage so he can pressure the Thai government to allow laxer trade laws. He also lets Anderson know that he's onto him because most of Anderson's equipment originates in Des Moines. (Why? Why doesn't his company set things up so he can order from India or something?) Carlyle wants to make a deal. Anderson decides to kill him. Eventually.

 Also, Grahamites. A new sect of Christianity set against generipping. They also hate global trade because "food should come from the place of its origen, and stay there." p. 93. Apparently global trade causes famine. The food companies and their "calorie men" out of Des Moines engineer sterile crops so that people have to keep buying them. They export all over the world where they sterilize native crops. And this is somehow legal even after the practice has caused widespread devastation all over the world. Trade and politics! My God, this is boring.

 I'm also reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Two cousins in 1939 want to make their own comic to capitalize on Superman's popularity. Joseph Kavalier managed to escape Prague with the help of an old escape artist, smuggled to Lithuania in a coffin containing the golem. Samuel Clayman lives in New York City, dreaming of making his fortune as a cartoonist. When his cousin Joe turns out to be a trained artist he realizes the two of them have a shot at success. So far it's a fine read. This is not a book to rip through. The prose takes its time to set things up and explain background. There's a great explanation of the start of comic books and Superman's beginnings.