An eBook That Won't Let You down

A DIGITAL KUMQUAT (Smashwords Edition eBook)

I have to tell you, that most of the time I simply do things for my own satisfaction. I had no idea, really, that quite so many eReaders are being bought and used by people around the world as independent statistics appear to show. There are, apparently, upwards of 13 million eReaders actively downloading material in the USA alone. I wish I could buy some shares into any company that actually shows revenues from such outstanding product sales!

Okay so I wrote an eBook. The reason I started to write one originally was because of a discussion I was having with a brother-in-law in the London-based big box office movie industry. (He's known for one really big film that I do like a lot. It's a romantic sort of ensemble piece. You'll know it. Sort of Christmas-y... I won't say what it is. But I will say that one of the characters in it he based on his younger brother, who took off firstly to Spain and then to Australia, and was a bit of a gormless twit, really. ...Married my big sister.)

Actually it took him bloody years and years to finally produce – he'd had the script since at least the Seventies!

Anyway, rather than detail for him, point-by-point, the incredibly huge literary references that someone like Kubrick (yes, I know, my favourite these days) uses in his films, I decided to go over the top and write something completely modern and up-to-the-minute – a story, something fictional - as if the theoretical reader was as well-versed in the references as any literary criminal genius.... Basically to kick his brains in about what he just plain didn't know so that he would stop arguing with me.

Half way down the track I realized well hell, anyone can just look up all the big words and obscure names on Google, and by the time they'd read the whole book they'd be pretty well educated in the highest of high-brow senses of the term!!

Trust me. If you sent me a dollar for every word and every name you thought you'd heard of and yet still had to look up you'd be looking at a good few thousand dollars by the time you got to the end. Don't bet on yourself here, my friend, you're really not yet as across it all as I am. YET. But I have hopes for you. And don't forget, I had advantages – big money family background, big European aristocrats. I certainly haven't turned out to be a world political leader, that's for sure. But I know stuff. Stuff you will have to look up, and that's whether you're a Nobel winner or not. I'm ahead of you; trust me.

Now look, there's a few other things I should say – I'm not so stupid as to think people will read anything dead dull and boring though.

On another website right now I think I'm getting into trouble saying that my mother wrote “A Clockwork Orange.” But... I'm thinking of asking my friend who lives in Switzerland to register on this blogspot here – her grandfather was the lawyer who sued Burgess on my mother's behalf and forced him to remove all references to her either in that book, or any attribution to her outside of it. There are many people who know what happened. Wikipedia does not. Or at least it skirts around the issue a little.

My book, is called “A Digital Kumquat” subtitled, “Exotic Hyper-Sexual Psychodynamics For Bored Rich People, and revealing for the first time publicly, The Samarkandian Wonderfruit Sex Confection.”

It's published, or channelled or whatever you call it, through the excellent Smashwords. Some of it can be downloaded for free and the whole thing is $4.99

It's on Smashwords' Premium Catalogue for “Adult Books,” and is available for download in virtually all eReader and PDF formats.

Happy Reading to all 13 million of you out there!

Calvin J. Bear

Christmas Pantomime

Education For The Elite.

“The elite...” That means you. Compared to the entire population of the world, those who stop by here are few; those who stay are rare. Relatively speaking, you are the few and the rare.

Pantomime is a form of drama that goes back to very ancient times. It is a Greek word, and means “to play all roles.”

La Cenerentola – or, Cinderella, is an opera by Rossini, and is more or less a high class version of a pantomime. As you know, some of the characters in a pantomime, are played by actors of a gender different from that of the role in which they are being represented in the performance. Status and position are usually also reversed at times during the performance, and the ending is usually highly implausible or unlikely.

Pantomimes are performed for children, but are meant to be understood by adults too because they operate on many levels of meaning and employ words and phrases which are not supposed to be comprehensible to younger people.

The good character enters the stage from the left as you watch, and the bad character enters from the right.

Clever adult pantomime is beyond the reach of common people, common religious or moral understandings, and common intellect or mentality.

...If you come here regularly and stay sufficiently to read these articles, you will realize that you need a password to enjoy all the benefits that there are here. Here, it does not matter whether you have degrees or a reputation proving that you are or know anything, it does not matter that you think writers here have pretensions or not, it does not matter that you wield power in other spheres. For here, promises cannot be broken. (I hope you recognize where that paraphrasing originates from.)

Okay, so tell me – if someone wasn't aware that “The Story of the Nightingale” is from Aesop's Fables rendered into English in a version by Hans Christian Anderson, how will it be possible for that person to understand the character of “Nick Nightingale” in Stanley Kubrick's “Eyes Wide Shut,” for instance? The pretensions of today's noisy ignorant, is absolutely staggering. And the education standards at the higher levels, have slipped beyond recall.

But rejoice! You have found this oasis right here! And I promise you interpretations that can place even “the facts” in a light which only real intellect may see anything under. In other words, neither children nor idiots will get it. And that will protect you. The benefit? Truth will set you free, and money will help you enjoy that freedom. Now there's an unlikely ending for yer.

Calvin J. Bear

The Great Roman Designer Of The Universe

Guess what? There have been a couple of big surges recently in the readership numbers of this blog. I think some people who were flying through maybe on account of the pics of girls actually STAYED!!

...Or maybe it was those who were Googling 'tax dodging and money laundering.'

I can't be sure what it is that most people really would like to see or read, since no one comments publicly here – and so, until anyone suggests anything I shall keep on my merry way roaming in any direction at all, I guess. There are quite a number of regular readers now – I get to see that via the site statistics. Maybe y'all want to see me burn a guitar on-stage or somethin'. Play the keypad with my teeth.

Okay I'll tell you what I'm really personally interested in myself: design. As a side-effect of working for a Sydney-based merchant bank in the hi-tech Eighties, for quite some time I had to gain the skills of a production manager in order to realise value out of patents and industrial know-how. I hired an ex-AMG (yes, that AMG) manager from Melchers Singapore – a German guy. Brilliant, really, he was. He never understood Australia but he was a decent production manager. An-y-w-a-y... turns out there are a hell of a lot of Masons (members of Masonic Lodges) in Singapore. I tell you that for no really deep reason other than to connect to the next bit of this tale...

Another friend of mine who sits on Youtube checking out every single Satanic conspiracy exposé and voicing outrage at all the obvious conspiracies that run the world, admitted the other day that he really loves watching all that accult stuff – he's really interested in it and is attracted to everything on the subject. He's big into the 'Masons are Satanic/Luciferian' and all that.

Here's where the Freemasons have it wrong: okay you have this 'Great Architect Of The Universe,' but personally I'm more interested in all the little designers of the Universe.

Design does, what all the pretenders only purport to being able to do.

Design whacks those lyin' Pakistanis with Predators. (Pic on right is from 'Deal of the Century' featuring arms dealing over Predator Drones...)

And by the way, while I'm beating up on the Muslims, why is there no reference at all in the Koran to Cleopatra and the Pyramids? 

...And there are A LOT of Muslims into Freemasonry, as you of course know.

Architects follow, designers lead.

Is there a 'Great Designer of the Universe?' Well, it's a matter of personal inclination but I'm inclined to the view that there is a characteristic greatness to the work of some designers.

Architecture is a function, and lucky if that... Design – real design, is a jaw-dropping miracle everyday.

Don't you agree?

Calvin J. Bear

Old Money-Style Entertainment

Agh! No more serious stuff!!

A friend of mine said to me just yesterday - “hey why are all the salespeople (well, actually they were all 'men,' salesmen...) so unethusiastic right now. They seemed to be all 'no' people this week.”

Thinking of my other friend Dr. Pillai from L.A., I opined, “well, the mind is naturally negative. And they have all just fallen back into their default condition.”

“Look I want the million-dollar experience.” He wailed. “If I spend money I want the feeling!”

“You want the feeling?” I said. “If you can trust me, just go to the Verte Green Cafe in the Collonade in Subiaco, and get yourself a syphon infra-red beam coffee made with Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee beans. It'll cost you about $4.50. And it will be the million-dollar experience. The Chinese guy there will blow your mind with the way he makes it and serves it and gets you to sniff the grind and asks for your opinion before he turns on the red glowing light. The RED GLOWING LIGHT...! It's all about the RED GLOWING LIGHT. And asking for your opinion.

I was going to stick up a pic of colourful marzipan here and complain about Robert Parker talking about tasting 'marzipan' in a red wine; the hell he would know marzipan if he fell over it on a dark night in an alleyway in Liechtenstein. Which is where you will experience real marzipan, as it happens. Not that tired, bitter, hard, horrible and largely fake 'confection' passed off everywhere as 'marzipan.' So which 'marzipan' is Parker talking about here? The one that is less than twenty minutes old and hasn't chemically deteriorated yet, and is still warm and soft and not bitter at all, and more or less is only made in a half a dozen obscure places still, around the world anymore? Or some other thing that he, and just about everyone else around – including me for a good long while – thought or thinks is marzipan?

Look, we live in a world of sheer and utter nonsense (and that includes what Parker does) pushed onto a largely yielding and gullible audience and it's all gone too far and that is why service and the feeling is not being located by my friend at the expensive luxury automotive showrooms.

The implied expectation about freedom and choice that is believed to come along with a million dollars is all well and good – and we'd all like to be in that difficult position of actually having a million dollars to spend on any old thing – but the almost endless mire of bad salespeople and illiterate professionals and ignorant 'experts' that also comes along is a serious bane to the modern wealthy elite.

So instead of uploading something largely inaccessible – namely, a picture of real marzipan – and therefore the source of possible disappointment to those who desire the million-dollar experience right away... ...here is a pic of Georges Guétary doing his 'Stairway To Paradise' at The Moulin Rouge. You can easily see the video clip on youtube.

And also, another pic of Kir Royale, that estimable invention of the Canon Felix Kir. If you can't find a cheap Cassis liquor, then get some cardomom seeds, fennel seeds, dried Juniper berries, dried blueberries and boil them all up in a little Demerara sugar water, add a bit of Ribena cordial – and tip a little of that whole concoction into a decent cheap white wine. Zut Alors! You 'av ze best Kir you 'av evairrr 'ad. Leave out whatever you can't readily locate if you like, it'll still work, more or less.

And here's what real girls do for your steps to Paradise...

Old Money women? Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose, I guess. And that's the way it should be too!

Best,

Calvin J. Bear

Creating Growth

The fundamental underlying problem with euro debt in the European countries which require support from the ECB right now, is the insufficiency of tax receipts in those countries domestically.

It should not be believed that these problematic countries deliberately 'borrowed too much.' What happened, was that the trajectory of (expected) tax receipts was not manifested in practice. And there was a good reason for that:

Over the last thirty years, capital-expensive physical infrastructure and physical delivery collateral for so many things has been wiped away and replaced by far cheaper micro computers and the internet, including wireless internet. The tax from sales and economic transactions to do with all of that infrastructure has dropped right off. The system that has replaced that past-era economic activity is much less expensive, and employs far fewer people.

But the output, i.e., the actual SUPPLY of production and industrial output going through these new channels and systems, has as much vertical net economic value as previously (because people are still being fed and clothed and housed, that is, there is no SUPPLY shortage).

Governments become more risk-averse the less their tax receipts are - due to public and political pressure of running increased deficits when revenue drops - and they tend to then try and rely upon encouraging banks and financial markets through cheap money to financial institutions, to force markets and industry to create transactions that will supplant what was lost in the economy. But what was lost was a horizontal layer pertaining to parts of the economy not directly concerning what has a direct incentive value to banks. And banks are not interested in supporting such a layer because of any wider long-term indirect economic benefit, and nor are they motivated to replacing it similarly because of any long-term economic vision.

And all that happens then is the banks take the money cheaply offered by central banks, and sit on it. And then you have potential for a Depression with a wide disparity between the incomes of bank directors, and everyone else in the economy. And then you certainly get 'Occupy Wall Street!'

What governments have failed to conceive is the connection between the basic transaction drivers in the immediate past-era economy, and the basic transactions drivers in the present economy, and the negative consequences of their easy money policy to banks on these fundamental economy drivers.

The fundamental economy drivers are not 'supply and demand of banks capital and/or their money' - but supply and demand of actual things!

Take one clear example - licensed music is no longer economically supportable within the commercial music industry through the manufacture and sales of CD's. Shops close, warehouses are empty, any associated advertising and marketing, photographics, design and publicity - all fall off in economic activity, including in employing people. But the actual market is still there and is no longer (commercially) exploited as it once was. Tax revenues drop. You can stick as much cheap money as you like into banks that used to fund everything Disney once promoted - Britney, Justin, Christina, you name them - but they won't actually spend any of it, and they will sit on it proudly fantasizing that some crew in Silicon Valley somewhere with dirty Walmart T-shirts have finally cracked how to sell music online and reap zillions whilst spending no money at all on shop leases, inventory, warehouses, trucking, and employees. You have created, i.e., a highly recessionary effect.

Whereas, the remaining real fact is that the musician and the listener still want to have a transaction.

Unfortunately, governments are not generally intellectually-aware enough to accept that the fiscal policy offset needs to go to both the musician and the listener - not the bank at all, nor the sunset industry participants. There is no real benefit in compensating the banks and no possible benefit in assisting a dying industry segment.

The only genuine benefit will come if you return the economic cost of progressing channel efficiency to either or both sides of the actual supply/demand dynamic - namely, the maker and the end-user. That is, if you intend to maintain the level of taxation receipts that you were counting on based on past economic activity.

Massive tax rebates need to be extended to producers of music (in this example) and also to the buyers. How do you accomplish that latter element? For example, you might offer kids who actually purchase music online one free physical premium CD sent in the mail for each fifty songs they download at say 10 cents a song. That would be feasible.

You would certainly grant massive tax rebates to the artists and their producers - that would unlock the cash out of the banks' and other 'money sitters' with the effect of velocity circulation increase in the actual domestic economy and the concomitant increases in taxation revenues.

Increased taxation revenues equals better ability to meet sovereign debt repayments.

And this process must be transferred across a huge range of examples of manufacturing and production where there is a clear delivery and infrastructure immediate economic multiplier deficit due to the new computerized-era effects.

Banks and financial instrument exchanges and allied professionals all grab the headlines at any opportunity and clamour for the attention of politicians and the media constantly; but they are irrelevant to the exercise of creating economic growth. They are an after-effect of growth. Unbridled, they become the parasites that deliver Depressions.

Calvin J. Bear