BEg2 chapter 10 asynchronous addenda

[Michael Bailey]

Kozmo.com
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com

This article contains the logo and the fact that there was no delivery fee.

How is there any money in that at all, then? Very mysterious.


Marvin, the magical Trinidadian delivery man -
“We’re everywhere, like Duane Reade.”

Duane Reade being a ubiquitous drugstore chain in that time/space
 (acquired by Walgreens in 2010)

Marvin is an extrapolation of the irrationally exuberant vision of kozmo.com
:
If they can deliver for free,
then it’s only a short step for Marvin not to accept tips, and only another
step for him to anticipate her needs, obviating any necessity for ordering!

For me, it’s a reminder of how very much easier technology is making a lot
of things, and how much easier they stand to become, for which I can’t help
but feel some gratitude. (Both to technology and its purveyors*, and to
Pynchon for showing it)

Since this is a work of fiction, a shimmer of magical realism - and used
for good! to inform Maxine about Windust - is like a measure of Maraschino
liqueur in a Papa Doble.

The part of one’s mind which is reluctant to accept magical realism, but
fine with wheels-within-wheels paranoidish explanations, might be happier
with the notion that somebody, say - Ice? - is tracking Maxine’s progress &
is paying Marvin to do this.


* when I was a dishwasher at TGI Fridays in 1981, some of us were relaxing
after work, & the cook mentioned the restaurant’s purveyors - a word I’ve
often found to be, if not as hilarious as flying buttress, still quite
amusing.

I asked him if a purveyor was a perverted surveyor, and without blinking he
replies yes, it’s a fellow who goes around with a plumb bob up his ass!