To say that the pond was astonished by the feast prepared by the reptiles for a TGIF is something of an understatement ...
For those who like there irony pure and undiluted, there was Gra Gra of the Swiss bank accounts being righteous about bludgers - on the sound basis that it takes one to know one - and there was the meretricious Merritt getting legally excited about gold standard Gladys, and lordy lordy what's this, a damn good groaning on a Friday?
For a moment, rather like Gough, the pond felt the earth move ...
Oh so long ago, that one ... but it seemed to strike the right salty note, because the reptiles cruelly juxtaposed Trinca with the hole in the bucket man, as our Henry exposed, neigh flaunted, his junk ...
The pond can scarcely believe it's back on that painful topic, not so much the exposure of junk as something to do with cricket ... and yet the pond must deal with what the reptiles serve up, and it rarely involves the Sapphic sight of a female leg spinner doing saucy, tricky things with a ball...
Instead, as always, it's about the cruelty of the world to men ... oh the injustice of it all, as if exposing your junk was somehow a thought crime ...
The depths of our conceptual morass?
Should the pond have turned to the truculent Trinca, just asking questions?
No, no, it's on with our Henry's junk, cruelly exposing his naked bits and sending the bits off to other adults ... if that term may be used for readers of the lizard Oz ...
What's most distressing and disappointing in all this?
Not a single classical reference, perhaps as a way of suggesting that things aren't as bad today as they were in ancient times ...
The pond always flicked through Suetonius to get to the naughty bits ... and there's a cheat site here which delivers a goodly supply of sauciness ...
All our Henry had to do was head back to the gross old days at the foundation of Western civilisation to reassure folks that if Tiberius had had a mobile phone, he wouldn't have been afraid to use it ... and by golly he would have shown more imagination than your average cricketer ...
But sadly the pond isn't subbing for our Henry ... and had to settle for a reference to Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment ...
Uh huh ... guess our clueless Henry couldn't answer the question ... a simple enough one ...
The answer is easy enough to find ... just ask Suetonius ...
Of course our Henry might have spent his time, and that of his readers, more wisely, what with their deep hunger for truth, justice and the Australian way, and what's more with an appropriate historical and philosophical reference, of the kind offered up by the infallible Pope ...
But no mind, no matter, after that exquisite image, the pond went in search of a Friday bonus, still chewing on faith, which frankly had the texture and taste of the pig's trotters much loved by the pond's grandfather ...
Speaking of the wayward ways of modern sex lives, the pond could have gone with the meretricious Merritt, caught up in a fit of gold standard Gladys madness ...
What a pity the reptiles couldn't find room for a reference to Stalinist show trials, the Stasi, and the Star Chamber in that splash ...
But tempting as it was, the pond turned to the expert groaner for a good groaning, if only because of the unexpected pleasure of it landing on a Friday ...
Sssh, don't mention the madness of the Sydney housing market ... though with a bit of luck, no one will be injured, unless they happen to be mortgaged up to the hilt ...
Indeed, indeed, and there was the pond thinking that can do capitalism was the answer ...
That said, the pond felt that Dame Groan's groaning was a little dull. How about a little more Suetonius as a distraction?
After all, it'd be what a bored Australian cricketer might do ...
Good old Suetonius, good old Caligula, talk about unnatural relations and inflations, and so on to the brace position ...
A splendid groan, even if resembling desiccated coconut in the odd spot for a piece heralding the end of the world in an almighty crash, but helping the pond to brace for Rowe's occasional inclination to go anal, with more bracing images here ... because it turns out that it's not just inflation that's off the leash ... there's that pesky integrity already summoned by the infallible Pope ...
Courtesy of Chad, we have some idea of the honesty and veracity of Roman "historians"; about on a par with a Murdochian reptile: occasionally accurate by mistake.
ReplyDeleteSo, looking at their lifetimes, we have"
Tacitus 56AD - 120 AD
Suetonius 69AD - 122+ AD
Tiberius 42BC - 37AD
Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius were actual contemporaries of Tiberius, so where did they get their information about him and his doings ?
Anyway, here's a perhaps slightly different view:
Has History Got Roman Emperor Tiberius All Wrong?
https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/has-history-got-roman-emperor-tiberius-all-wrong/
Just don't tell the Holely One.
Our Dame tries to imitate an economist by referring to this possible factor or that unexpected influence. While she - the Dame - acknowledges that housing could be in there somewhere (oh, what a pity it is not included in the tabulation of things that get inflated) and, as Aunty Groan, hints that dirt cheap money may not be forever, she does not mention stupid behaviour by many home ‘investors’.
ReplyDeleteWhen your house is apparently ‘earning’ a lot more money each year than you are - even if you are in a salary bracket of 2 or 3 times the ‘average’ rate of pay - a lot of Aussies with houses tend to spend that money that their busy little abode has supposedly made on their behalf. That has been one of the factors that explains why the major statistical indicators of the Australian economy have shown little adverse impact from what dreadful (state) governments have done to businesses, in the name of protecting us from being seriously ill, or dying, from COVID.
Such a reason for some of this apparent robust condition of the broader economy has not sat well with the LNP in several states - even though they have been in opposition, or because they have been in opposition - and the message they want to see in the Courier, Tellee, Herald et. al. is that (insert name of unbelievably incompetent premier) is innately anti-business, and is trying to put us all into serfdom.
So - as money resumes some actual value - and the bank tells you how much more your monthly payments will be - it is little consolation that ‘Oh well - the house is now worth half a mill more’, because a lot of that now resides in the new dual cab ute, which was necessary to tow the new boat, both of which needed the bigger garage - you know the drill.
The other feature of dirt cheap money is that larger businesses, rather than being entrepreneurial powerhouses, finding new and better ways, have, quite naturally, been buying up smaller businesses, hoping for either economies of scale (remarkably difficult to realise in practice) or to be sufficiently close to a monopoly position in their patch to be able to mulct their buyers without the various business regulatory bodies being able to pin down just how they are doing it.
Which does go to explain why increases in ‘productivity’ are all somewhere up ahead of us - and nothing to do with supposedly recalcitrant workers.
Ah well, I guess it just shows that "the economy", being as it is composed of "fiat money", is simply a mental construct that is continually reimagined. And now we have the proletariat "fiat", aka cryptocurrency. And those wondrous "positional goods", the NFTs
DeleteHow will it all end ?
As you have suggested, GB, it won't end. Even as we sit at our keyboards, 'smart' people are trying to think up new kinds of derivatives, that can be accepted as 'property', of sufficiently restricted quantity that those who take up an entitlement can be assured that the relative value of their 'bit' will continue to increase; ideally in a way that is treated considerately by governments, as in - given favourable treatment by the taxation system because it is 'creating wealth'.
Delete