ATDTDA p115 a paragraph of wackiness

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

trying to put one's finger on the nacreous globular point of maximum humor,
requires a defter touch than I perhaps have;
need some smart drugs or something...

...some kinda flip remark, like, "yeah, those messages in bottles
have been makin' my life hell for years, a-and now I'm gonna
hafta contend with attack pearls - those fiendish Orientals!"

and of course the longer I dwell on this, it both becomes funnier
and more meaningful (as does the following passage where they
go inside the bottom of the globe, finding the entrance has
sphincterishly contracted (literalizing the title of their
adventure, "Chums in the Bowels of the Earth, and giving
oddball props to the Gaia hypothesis as well,) throughout echoing 
Edgar Rice Burroughs adventures, which are sometimes unintentionally 
hilarious - there was one book of his I brought along on a 
camping trip, dealing with the "forbidden city of Ashair", 
which was just an "s" away,
and triggered much mirthful Beavis and Butthead laughter)

Pearl couldn't refer to "Pearl Harbor", could it, or the Russian 
revelations hundreds of pages later about Manchuria?
Choosing to deplore a peaceful commercial invention like
cultured pearls while really pointing to Japanese Imperialism?

These might be overtones...but also messages in bottles are such
a "preterite" way to communicate that linking them to gleanings
from jewelry - offshoots of the WASTE system, are they? -
would place the Chums within a satrapy of the Tristero...