If It Wasn't So...

I wouldn't say it.

So, yup. Bitcoin is something that took off - a lot.

I mean what's the point of someone like me continuously having to say things like 'told ya so?' ...I don't want to do that. It's very frustrating, not about having to say this kind of thing (because I don't have to), but to see the same inane critiques of something new, anything, really, by people with the same mindsets you will find among aggressive-toned, and actually aggressive, but otherwise fairly ordinary individuals. 

Bitcoin was always going to 'take off.' It had the numerical coverage in 'a' market and it possesses innovation that permits a certain 'ease of use,' and it has a function in the digital product marketplace for sure. It improves on 'standard' money forms and formats for the kind of new marketplace which exists, obtaining for a new type of product category. Bitcoin is a thing; it's a thing. 

Let's sell our Bitcoins and go First Class,
on 'Oud Airways.' 

So it's time to get over it and move on and not become fixated if at some point there are temporary and relative price retracements.

But you see, one of the things that is an issue, is that there is so much opinion out there, so much noise, in fact, that it becomes ever more difficult to 'see' anything clearly these days.

For me a current example of the sort of widespread nonsense and meaningless describing of things people don't really know about, but insist on claiming to be experts on, is oud. 

Oud is this wood thing that they use in the Middle East as a kind of household scent or fumigation. It's absolutely disgusting and yet clever people have been marketing it to the point that you cannot go to any fragrance counter anywhere in the world today and not find some of it, and at atrocious sums of asking money.

Okay some people might like it - I don't like it. It doesn't smell pleasant at all!

Why didn't 'oud' trade take off in England?
You know, back when Sir Richard Burton was translating
that salacious 1000 Nights And 1 Night (correct title). 

But the point I would argue is that you will find absolute gibberish and utter rubbish spoken about the subject, all over the internet and everywhere - television, in literature, in Wikipedia; everywhere.

What the bloody hell are they talking about?! You will interminably hear these descriptions: barnyard, skanky, earthy/woody (if you're lucky, they'll include that) - and then worst of all 'incense-y.' It's not incense-y. Some people do include it in incense sticks yes, but then incense sticks are in the first place not 'incense!!!' People are just taking, hiving off, words and names and applying them wherever they like.

And then another one - fecal. Jesus H. Muhammad!

We used to have this saying in Malaysia, about the dumb people - 'lagi bunghi lagi baik.' Means, the 'louder' the better, as in, the more blaring, the noisier, the more over-powering...

Yes, oud hangs around as an odor and you can almost never get rid of it, so, if you think paying stupid money is justified because of longevity, then sure, oud. Oud = Hillary Clinton! Must do.

See the thing is - and let me be direct here, even if there will be members of the dumb ordinary public who will hate me for saying this kind of thing: there's people, regardless of how much money they have, just plain simply do not know, and never will know because they don't come from the class that teaches them.

I have not seen anyone anywhere on-line - and I defy someone to show me - 'experts' telling you straight what this thing is indeed like, but not truly like. Oud is a fake thing, in a way, in that it is near to something significant, but it is not that particular thing.

But oud is extraordinarily expensive. Don't waste your money.

Here is the real deal, and why:

Even Wikipedia is all over the place about it - on the one hand it says 'attacked by a beetle,' and in the same paragraph says 'inoculated with the fungus.' Fungus? What fungus? 

LOL

There's fungus involved. Yep. That's part of it.

How about we shift over to truffles...

Ha-hah!

No one ever mentions that now do they, when it comes to oud!

Some aloeswoods (oud) some, not all, are a source of more or less penicillin, and it is used, and has been used, for centuries to render a cure to various diseases from infection. That is why aloeswood is important in ancient cultures. 

People who have never been raised around really big money society have no idea about truffles, and they make up stuff. Truffles are only very vaguely odorific in their natural state. People talk a lot of rubbish about truffles. The only time you will really become aware of the scent of truffles is after you have eaten the things. And it helps if you have ingested some alcohol into your body as well.

A depiction of the Arabic chemist 'Al Kindi' - Muslims
love to make much of this guy, except they killed him when he was
an old man! They don't put that in too many current compendiums. 

Truffles - why they are of interest to these olden days clever clever and rich people, is that they are like MSG once inside the human body. And yet, they tend to enhance only two things - the male chemistry in the male, and the female chemistry in the female. Fact. Take it from me. Like oud, truffle increases in power over time - unlike oud, truffle increases in intensity inside the human organism. Oud increases in intensity in the air, after contact with the skin. Truffles more or less smell like mushroom, like fungus, and a little bit antiseptic - oud smells just plain sickly awful albeit it does have a certain toxic, penicillin-like sense about it. Think old fashioned plasticine (therefore aliphatic acids), and possibly poisonous mushroom, and almond. Oud is really strong, truffle is not that strong. Truffle is a LOT MORE subtle.

There are secrets about how to use truffles to their fullest value. I have talked about it before, maybe a long time ago now though.  

Oud doesn't enhance anything in particular - it just stays, cloyingly, around. It is sickly, vaguely antiseptic at best, albeit alongside this unpleasant maybe cyanose, sort of vaguely almondy-poisonous odor with hints of something literally not too good. It isn't uplifting and it certainly isn't anything at all like incense. For incense you want to be thinking Omumbiri Myrrh, and of course, Frankincense. 

But - bu-u-u-u-ut - there are all these marketing places that will take your money off you and try to convince you oud is this wonderful amazing, blah blah blah, thing. It isn't. Forget it.

What you are smelling is the chemistry of ascomycota, a fungus which previously we all knew from the red colorant 'cochineal.' Except with oud it is related to a resin produced by the tree, as a defense against either the bugs that can infest it, or the fungus which can get into it. It's a kind of a gas reaction that is taking place that causes you to smell something, and for that smell to seem to grow and grow and also to hang around. Even cochineal is quite pleasant in a way, and especially compared to oud, which is not pleasant because of its strong hint of something poisonous about it.

Ah gawd almighty. What the idiot world thinks and does and behaves like... I dunno. SMH (Shake My Head).

Oud is certainly not an aphrodisiac. That's for sure.