Category: Business & Finance

Un Chien Reaction

LAST TIME

Earlier on today I finished a shamble that ended somewhere different to where I imagined it would when I first started constructing it. Namely, this week’s fall in the Dow and Shake Sphere’s Marc Anthony quote…

“Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the Dogs Of War.”

Julius Caesar: Act 3, Scene 1, line 273 

… And I’d seen reference to Julius Caesar just the day before…

Cade tells Roob he no knows hamletCade tells Roob he no knows hamlet 1

*Caesar… seizure… seize her… Faint heart never won fair lady, Clicky… /winks and lights up…*

Okay then, Dear Reader… Let’s cry…

Havoc (n.)

early 15c., from the expression cry havoc “give the signal to pillage” (Anglo-French crier havok, late 14c.). Havok, the signal to soldiers to seize plunder, is from Old French havot “pillaging, looting” (in crier havot), which is related to haver “to seize, grasp,” hef “hook,” probably from a Germanic source (see hawk (n.)), or from Latin habere “to have, possess.” General sense of “devastation” first recorded late 15c.

Hawk (n.)

c. 1300, hauk, earlier havek (c. 1200), from Old English hafoc (West Saxon), heafuc (Mercian), heafoc, “hawk,” from Proto-Germanic *habukaz (source also of Old Norse haukr, Old Saxon habuc, Middle Dutch havik, Old High German habuh, German Habicht“hawk”), from PIE root *kap-“to grasp” (source also of Russian kobec“a kind of falcon”). Transferred sense of “militarist” attested from 1956, probably based on its opposite, dove.

Birds, hawk and falcon…

tumblr_m8x15e4s7s1rvjt2vo1_500

 

Elon Musk Sent a Tesla into space playing David Bowie

‘SpaceX’s newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, lifted off at 3:45 p.m. Tuesday on it first demonstration flight from Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A.’

To be honest, I haven’t taken much notice of the hoopla, but Red universe Frank has posted today about the amazing feat…

Merovee The Seoul Mate

Ah Soles

*Ah… /drags… soles… Nice dogs! …/rolls eyes…*

Anyhoo, next week seas/seize/sees the start of the new Chinese year, Dear Reader. Sew, farewell then Red Fire Roobster and “Hello!” Brown… Earth… Dog…

brown earth dog

… And Have a Song…

Art Amiss & Apollo Chicken Shamble

I read the latest post at Too Long In This Place on Tuesday morning, Dear Reader, over my Milk Ana Dash breakfast coffee, and wake up ciggy…

*/lights up… Dallas is Cade’s home town, Clicky…*

…A post in which the writer, mentions that Dallas sounds like Delos, the birth place of the Greek god Apollo and his twin sister Artemis…

‘Ancient Greek writers, by way of folk etymology, and some modern scholars, have linked Artemis (Doric Artamis) to ἄρταμος, artamos, i.e. “butcher“.

I mentioned as much to Cade whilst we were DMing on Twitter on Tuesday night. I couldn’t remember if Apollo and Artemis’s mother was Leda (seduced by Zeus transformed as a swan) or Leto…

giphy

*Um, that’s the actor called Leto, Clicky… /drags… Actually, thinking about it, the Joker’s girlfriend ‘Harley Quinn’ is play on ‘harlequin’, a character originating from Commedia dell’ARTe…*

Roob and Cade convo 1

*Oh it’s ‘Lord of Illusions’… /puffs steadily… *

*Interesting… /taps ash… from the earlier link, Artemis and Apollo’s mother, Leto, is associated with wolves…*

Roob and Cade convo 2

*Dis-ease, yes…*

*At ease?*

Roob and Cade convo 3

shambles (n.)

early 15c., “meat or fish market,” from schamil“table, stall for vending” (c. 1300), from Old English scamol, scomul“stool, footstool” (also figurative); “bench, table for vending,” an early Proto-Germanic borrowing (Old Saxon skamel“stool,” Middle Dutch schamel, Old High German scamel, German schemel, Danish skammel “footstool”) from Latin scamillus“low stool, a little bench,” ultimately a diminutive of scamnum“stool, bench,” from PIE root *skabh-“to prop up, support.” In English, sense evolved from “place where meat is sold” to “slaughterhouse” (1540s), then figuratively “place of butchery” (1590s), and generally “confusion, mess” (1901, usually in plural).

*******

The above was written on Wednesday evening, Dear Reader, but then I got diverted preparing for a job interview, and undertaking day-to-day generalities like ironing, washing, cooking, sleeping, working and reading others’ blog posts.

It is now Friday lunchtime and I cannot remember where the fuck I intended this shamble to end up, so I’ll let it go where it will…

*I saw that last night, Clicky, pronouncement from Apollo…*

josh

*T’ease… /squints… Sew a joker?*

*Ah huh… /grimaces… I know you posted that on MEROVEE last night, Clicky…*

*DOW… Dogs Of War… /thinks… and ‘to top’ is slang for ‘to kill’… that’s where this post started, Clicky, with ‘Too Long In This Place’…*

That’s my lunch hour over, Dear Reader… I’ll be back later with a new post. In the meantime… Have a Song 😉

 

 

Fangs For The Mammaries…

This is going to be a post that requires you to employ your own ‘Clicky’, Dear Reader… It starts with a word…

wolf (n.) Old English wulf “wolf, wolfish person, devil,” from Proto-Germanic *wulfaz (source also of Old Saxon wulf, Old Norse ulfr, Old Frisian, Dutch, Old High German, German wolf, Gothic wulfs), from PIE root *wlkwo- “wolf” (source also of Sanskrit vrkas, Avestan vehrka-; Albanian ul’k; Old Church Slavonic vluku; Russian volcica; Lithuanian vilkas “wolf;” Old Persian Varkana- “Hyrcania,” district southeast of the Caspian Sea, literally “wolf-land;” probably also Greek lykos, Latin lupus).

This manne can litle skyl … to saue himself harmlesse from the perilous accidentes of this world, keping ye wulf from the doore (as they cal it). [“The Institution of a Gentleman,” 1555]

Probably extinct in England from the end of the 15th century; in Scotland from the early 18th. Wolves as a symbol of lust are ancient, such as Roman slang lupa “whore,” literally “she-wolf” (preserved in Spanish loba, Italian lupa, French louve). The equation of “wolf” and “prostitute, sexually voracious female” persisted into 12c., but by Elizabethan times wolves had become primarily symbolic of male lust. The specific use of wolf for “sexually aggressive male” first recorded 1847; wolf-whistle attested by 1945, American English, at first associated with sailors. The image of a wolf in sheep’s skin is attested from c. 1400. See here for a discussion of “wolf” in Indo-European history. The wolf-spider so called for prowling and leaping on its prey rather than waiting in a web.

…Last night I posted about a certain ‘wolf‘ on MEROVEE…

Merovee Twilight Sleep

Some background: last July, the Red Granite Hollywood production company was accused by the DOJ of using $100 million that prosecutors said had been diverted from the 1MDB fund to finance DiCaprio’s 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Last October, DiCaprio said he was cooperating with the probe and would return any gifts or donations if they were found to have come from questionable sources.

Di–Cap–Rio

…And MJ put up two posts overnight at Blade and Chalice. She’s been to visit the Scopes Trial museum in Dayton, Tennessee:

There’s a specific message for Hugo in Part 2…

House of S-tone, please read this. https://at37.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/137-69-draft/

…Of course I’ve also had sum ideas about 137….

137-maths

…So I was interested to read today that grocery stocks are crashing in the US and Europe…

Whole Foods stock was halted for ‘news pending’… and now we have the answer – Amazon to acquire Whole Foods Market for $42/share in an all-cash transaction valued at ~$13.7b, including Whole Foods Market’s net debt.

…Amazon is one of the FANGs…

A little bit of paranoia is always healthy.

In the 1980s, the totalitarian fear was that some overenthusiastic government agent would go to the library and pull your library card to see if you were reading seditious texts.

Seems a bit quaint now, doesn’t it?

It didn’t at the time.

Of course, the East German Stasi went to those lengths to spy on its citizens, but there was never any real danger of it happening in the US.

Fast forward to today.

  • Facebook knows who your friends, friends of friends, and acquaintances are. It knows what you look like, and what your friends and family look like. It knows what TV shows you watch, what music you listen to, and in all likelihood, your political activities.
  • Amazon is today’s library card—it knows every book you’ve ever ordered, along with more pedestrian purchases like vitamin supplements.
  • Netflix is a database of pretty much every TV show and movie you’ve ever watched.
  • Google has a repository of every Internet search made by every American citizen.

F, A, N, G. What does that spell?

Those four stocks have outperformed over just about any timespan.

Does anyone else find it more than a coincidence that they are also potentially the biggest threat to online privacy?

Like I said, that library card thing seems a bit quaint.

… Library card and groceries… Food for thought…

Also last night, I read Part 5 of a series at The Secret Sun, that seemingly started with a drowning in Wolf River Harbour…

I first began to follow this story when I heard about the drowning death of Jeff Buckley. I’m not sure why but the first thought that came into my head was that it had something to do with Elizabeth Fraser.
I had no idea that all of this had been prophesied for years and years before, in ways that actually give me chills.

The Secret Sun The Eyesies

That’s a lot of ‘Clicking’ and reading for you, Dear Reader, so I’ll finish up with a snapshot of Red Frank’s MEROVEE post…

Merovee Twilight Sleep The Long Way Round

… And a drawing I created to depict the process of construction logistics for my boss’s book, for the layman (‘Sun’ reader) to understand, showing how employing a logistician on a construction project ensures your mega costly building is achieved on time and budget… And the client at the top who Doo’s knot…

TIT at the top is the client going the long way round

… Alas he didn’t use it…

*Clicky! …/rolls eyes… That Song! …/huffs…*

Enough of this shambles, Dear Reader… Have another…

 

 

Phallic Frigg Day and the Rise of the Power Tools

It’s Friday and on Friday mornings I receive digital copies of ‘Building‘ and ‘Estates Gazette‘ magazines. I usually post the issue covers on MEROVEE because they sync so much, but with the overflowing comments, the latest page has become difficult to load…

So for the Meroveeps, or Mirror VIPs, here’s what’s…

Building cover 131115

Ding Dong, Clicky! What does the little Gazette (‘e states *rolls eyes*) have to say?

Estates Gazette cover 141115

Kinda black and white, Clicky. I wonder what it means…

Etymologyonline is a fantastic resource if words grab your inner rest…

property (n.) c. 1300, properte, “nature, quality,” later“possession, thing owned” (early 14c., a sense rare before 17c.), from an Anglo-French modification of Old French propriete“individuality, peculiarity; property” (12c., Modern French propreté; see propriety), from Latin proprietatem (nominative proprietas) “ownership, a property, propriety, quality,” literally “special character” (a loan-translation of Greek idioma), noun of quality from proprius “one’s own, special” (see proper). For “possessions, private property” Middle English sometimes used proper goods. Hot property“sensation, a success” is from 1947 in “Billboard” stories.

If you clicked on ‘property’ EOL you’ll see four pages of listings where the word is used. These can be fascinating – both ‘black’ and ‘white’ via ‘bleach’ are Shining words, revealed to me whilst looking for hidden things in ‘The Shining’

Look down the first page for ‘Property’ and you’ll find ‘waif’…

waif (n.) late 14c., “unclaimed property, flotsam, stray animal,” from Anglo-French waif (13c., Old French guaif) “ownerless property, something lost;” as an adjective, “not claimed, outcast, abandoned,” probably from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse veif “waving thing, flag,” from Proto-Germanic *waif-, from PIE *weip- “to turn, vacillate, tremble ecstatically” (see vibrate). Compare Medieval Latin waivium “thing thrown away by a thief in flight.” A Scottish/northern English parallel form was wavenger (late 15c.).

Meaning “person (especially a child) without home or friends” first attested 1784, from legal phrase waif and stray (1620s), from the adjective in the sense “lost, strayed, homeless.” Neglected children being uncommonly thin, the word tended toward this sense. Connotations of “fashionable, small, slender woman” began 1991 with application to childishly slim supermodels such as Kate Moss.

Look again at the ‘Building’ cover *scrolls up* and find the waving flag…

Wow, Clicky… Big Ben, flag and Kate Moss…

Anyway, it was whilst I was taking digital snapshots of the magazine covers, when the fire alarm suddenly screamed into life. A drill – just enough time to grab cigs, phone, hat and coat before being ushered down the spiraling fire escape by orange fluorescent wardens.

Too wet and windy to smoke during roll call, so I waited until everyone else sprinted for the lifts and settled my back into a covered corner to smoke and read. “Yippee!” there was a new post from The Slog to think about…

Now if you add all this mayhem up, you could be forgiven for concluding that the two government institutions Britain should steer completely clear of are The United States of America, and the European Union. And if you then look at their disgraceful citizen rights record and parlous econo-fiscal positions, you’d probably add Saudi Arabia, Turkey and China to that list. So it does say quite a lot about the judgement of the so-called British élite that they continue to laud the Special Relationship with the US, are desperate to stay in the rapidly collapsing EU bed, like nothing better than selling arms to the Saudis, have hired Beijing to oversee our nuclear power development, and toddle off to Ankara at regular intervals in order to praise Recep Erdogan to the Heavens.

“Not just power, John” thought I, “quite a bit of London.”

Oh we just have to waif until… TY, Clicky 😉 Have a Song…