Don't Worry, Things Will Get A Lot Less Frothy In Short Order
Seeking inspiration, Your Humble Scribe had a peruse of 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' and what do you know, lots of bubbly entries. There were two that I hadn't heard of, and, at the risk of going off on a tangent ("No! Surely not! For shame!" etcetera from the loyal readership) I shall detail both of them. Art!
THE MISSIPI BUBBLE: The French equivalent of the 'South Seas Bubble', wherein a Scot, John Law - horribly ironic name! - got permission to set up a General Bank in France, which was dubbed the 'Compagnie de la Louisiane ou d'Occident'. Somewhat confusingly, the bubble was known for the Mississippi River, which divides Louisiana from Mississippi the state. Art!
Obviously the share price rocketed upwards during 1719, then collapsed over 10 months in 1720, causing utter ruination amongst speculators.
'BUBBLES': In 1886 Sir John Millais painted a portrait of William James, blowing bubbles through a pipe. Art!
When adopted by Pears' Soap it became the viral equivalent of it's day. Young Bill went on to become - honest, no word of a lie - Admiral Sir William James.
I am now going to add an entry that I doubt any more than one person in a hundred thousand will be aware of. Art!
Meet 'Mr. Bubbles', described as a 'bubble imp', who lived inside a plastic washing-up liquid bottle, and whom would emerge when it was squeezed, granting three wishes to the squeezer.
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| The perils of offering 3 wishes to a dog |
Conrad vaguely recalls reading a few of the strips, which tended to end up with the wishes backfiring in whimsical or comic fashion, probably because people tended to wish from the hip, without hiring a solicitor to parse things in a logical manner. Nor do I remember anyone wishing for more wishes. Mr Bubbles - truly a djinn for the twentieth century.
ANYWAY I did say 'short order' and we're already 333 words in, so let's get on with the darker stuff.
Okay, if you're familiar with Conrad's pontifications about autocratic despots, then you're aware of my contention that they inevitably end up suffering from 'Dictatoritis', wherein they become victims of their own brutal systems in terms of living inside an 'information bubble'. There are various causes and consequences of this, and don't imagine for one minute that it's a modern phenomenon. O noes! It goes back as far as dictators do. Art!
This is Darius III, the Persian king, coming a cropper at the Battle of Issus, 330 BC. His opponent was <drum roll> Alexander Meglos, the Macedonian enfant terrible, whom had utterly scragged all the Persian armies encountered to date.
Darius was surrounded by courtiers who flattered and pandered to him, leading him to discount the earlier Macedonian victories, and whom pushed the narrative that Persian might was irresistible, certainly against a rabble of provincial barbarians. Darius lapped all this up because it chimed with his own beliefs. He was over-confident enough to bring his family on campaign; after all, what could possibly go wrong? Well, his bubble of complacency and superiority was burst at Issus and he was killed by one of his own generals shortly after. Art!
Yes, Ol' Nero, playing music whilst Rome burned. In fact this is utter twaddle, he was nowhere near where the fire started, had nothing to do with it starting and was responsible for initiating emergency firefighting and housing the homeless.
HOWEVER! - that word at last - he was not a popular emperor. Not that he knew anything about that, or he might have sought to mitigate the bad feelings of his subjects. His inner circle of courtiers were bootlickers to a man, fulsome with praise about his artistic bent, ensuring that he knew nothing about more serious matters, such as the Senate gradually, and then increasingly, growing hostile to him. Thus being declared an enemy of the state came as a complete and horrid surprise to him. Even his Praetorian Guard turned on him, which takes some doing. Nero did away with himself in 68 AD to prevent the plebs doing it for him. Art!
Chap-in-need-of-grooming is actually the Emperor Domitian, whom was a bit of a targe. In fact he got progressively more paranoid as his reign elapsed, executing people he suspected of being disloyal to him, which naturally results in one of the first-order consequences of Dictatoritis: nobody was willing to give him bad news. Or any news, since that was the best tactic for staying alive. Or, if he was informed of anything, it would be massaged into a more palatable form, meaning the messenger survived. Naturally this led to him living in a bubble completely divorced from reality and he had no idea a plot to murder him was in the offing, until he was offed. September 18 96 AD. I like to keep you informed.
I was going to follow up these examples from antiquity with more modern ones, but that would mean the whole blog being taken up by the Intro. Expect us to return to this topic. I bet you can hardly wait.
Conrad The Arch-Cynic Out-Bierce's Bierce
One thing you cannot miss on my Twitter feeds are the innumerable clips of enormously long queues of orc cars at petrol stations. A couple of weeks ago this was restricted to Krim. No longer, there are shortages of petrol across the entire nation of Mordorvia, This includes Barad Duh, centre of the empire and where the most privileged orcs of all have their demesnes. Art!
Yes, that last word is 'Moskvi', meaning 'Moscow' so this isn't some squalid, poverty-stricken province, this is the imperial hub.
What's going on? Well, Putinpot and his generals will guarantee that the army, navy and air force will all get priority when it comes to fuel allocation, so if petrol runs short, what's left gets sent to power golf buggies and motorbikes.
The other aspect of this is that, should Putinpot finally take the plunge and declare mobilisation, a citizenry without the means to travel are a lot less able to rise up in protest thanks to the geographical restrictions a nation the size of Mordorvia imposes.
They still have Telegram, ironically enough, because everyone whom can has gotten a VPN in order to avoid using the government spyware 'Max', whose usage is thus at a - waitforitwaitforit - Min. Art!
More Ungentle Shoeing
Tangential to the above, the UK government finally - FINALLY! - put on it's big boy pants and seized a Ruffian shadow fleet tanker in the ENGLISH CHANNEL (ha! take that, Lavrov!). Art!
Perfidious Albion, living rent-free in the Ruffian's minds since 1857!
The Scene Is Green
There has been considerable brouhaha in South Canada about the renovation of the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial, which was awarded to mates of Donnie Dorko on a no-bid contract with no scrutiny or oversight, and which we will discover 5 years later was 250% over-priced.
ANYWAY AGAIN Donold insisted that it be painted blue, not the original unpainted grey of the constituent stone and concrete. Because - because - O I missed that bit when Donnie Dorko gained experience and qualifications in architectural design. Art!
The blue colouration absorbed sunlight and raised the water temperature to one sufficiently high to cause a mass of algae to bloom there.
Ooops.
Finally -
Going out with a Biercism.
"Politeness, n: Apologizing to a man for standing in the way, when he sends a bullet through you that he intended for someone else."
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