BEg2 chapter 4 summary part 2

[Michael Bailey]

Shawn the emotherapist claims knowledge from the Far East, but Maxine knows
his real experience, though not expertise, is with surfing.

Maxine’s session with Shawn revolves around Shawn rather than Maxine.

Shawn is irritated at the Taliban for blowing up the
thousand-five-hundred-year-old Buddha statues. He lets his tongue run free,
conflating the fundamentalist Taliban with Islam itself.

In fact, Shawn apparently spends the whole session on this rant, with
Maxine nudging him towards calmness.

 Looking forward to a Brady Bunch marathon, he ends the session early with
no therapeutic efforts other than an insincere query for her thoughts about
the Brady Bunch episode where Jan gets a wig
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0531167/


Maxine picks up Otis and Fiona at the Kugelblitz School, but Ziggy is
headed for Krav Maga class with his classmate Nigel and Nigel’s sitter.


The rest of the chapter, in Maxine’s apartment, consists of

a)settling Otis and Fiona in to watch The Aggro Hour, with non-sugar soda
and health food Cheetos.

b) Ziggy coming home from Krav Maga with a “ haze of early-adolescent sex
angst” engendered by the female instructor, Emma Levin, and indulged by her
ex-Mossad boyfriend Naftali “who will kill anybody even looks at her sideways,
unless maybe it’s a kid who can’t help having some preadolescent longing.”

c) Maxine walking in on Fiona showing Ziggy and Otis the new first-person
shooter game her father has created. At first scandalized, Maxine’s lured
in & comes to appreciate the way it gives her an opportunity to disappear
ill-mannered yuppies and give their children up for adoption.

d) Convo with Vyrva about the latter’s meeting which was with Gabriel Ice.
Ice offered to buy her husband & his partner’s software, which they called
Deep Archer. Apparently there’s a piece of it that can enhance
untraceability, and that’s the piece that Ice is willing to buy the whole
thing to get.
Maxine reflects on how secure privacy inevitably leads to abuses.
Vyrva relates that the partners are both torn on whether to accept the
offer, or to release the code for free.
Maxine understands that choice is not a no-brainer, that money isn’t always
desirable: “…above a critical amount, it’s all bad.”

e) the last part of the chapter relates Mrs McElmo’s Beanie Baby
obsession/side hustle. Ostensibly collecting them for Fiona, she is much
more the mover in this hobby, and thinks it’s a great investment.
Ziggy quite maturely (and out of Vyrva’s presence) critiques the pitfalls
of Beanie Babies as an investment: moth and rust and wear and tear - and
concludes that Vyrva, at least as regards Beanie Babies, is crazy.