Mercedes Musk Lollies

“Don’t dial up the Mercedes S-Class FunfKommaSecks’ aromatherapy to ‘musk stick lollies,’ please Köbie!”

That’s my 8 year old level three Autistic kid’s name...

He’s named after an ancestor of mine – someone from Scotland. ‘Köbie’ is the Swiss contraction of the name in honour of the golden days of secret Swiss bank accounts.

New S-Class, has mood lighting and aromatherapy.
The 'Guard' version just been leased by the Oz government for
the G20 meeting featuring Uncle Vanya

Anyway look there are no ‘musk stick lolly’ options on the factory original aromatherapy electronics in the latest Mercedes S-Class but I assure you that would never stop a driven Autistic kid.

It’s quite fascinating don’t you find, especially those of us here who are engaged in any kind of business – when you are going into some deal or other, there is this whole seriousness and gravity and intent and cautiousness; and then afterwards if it is very successful there is a total diametric change towards levity and even outright silliness.

All the same, some deals require strict confidentiality a long ways past even when they have been formally concluded. And that is the position I find myself in at present.

Oh yes I have done something pretty good – or ba-a-a-a-d, if you want to be colloquial about it. And maybe ‘bad’ is the correct accurate description anyway.

Seriously, isn't this beautiful?
...And rare.

There are so few really exciting ventures going on in today’s world of business – Alibaba is plain stupid and relies on a business model that everyone is chasing concerning extending social media networks and pretending they are all necessarily going to turn into money some day.

I pointed out here a while back that even the world’s leading private investment fund returned 12-ish percent last year on several billions. Well 12 per cent is not interesting to me! 500 per cent might be and even then it’s going to have to be to do with something that I am fundamentally interested in.

In a world in which the Fed has manipulated the evolved, the tried and true benchmarks of risk, 12 per cent against the government risk free rate is sick. It is dangerous to indulge in these specious ‘good’ return numbers when everyone of experience in risk assessment knows that risk benchmarking has been mischievously tampered with by an authority which accounts to no one for its errors, mistakes, and sheer selfish dissembling.



Up the top of that tall building again...
Money never sleeps, Bud. But you have
to have a good idea otherwise it does sleep!

In such a world, people who really have some business model that is truly profitable and exciting and safe, have to be concerned with great earnestness, about not allowing too many copycats into the picture.

Alibaba - and the Forty Thieves... Al-adin they already shot in some compound in Pakistan. Take me to the story teller, not to the story. To the fable-maker, not the fable.

The Still Of Southern Winter

Sometimes don’t you feel as though you want some real quiet? You know, that perfectly still early morning, where the thick mists make no sound as they hang and gather in the rolling pastures, along the tree line, down in the vales...

A seriously good modern wine

Make no mistake, when people like LVMH buy a winery like the South Western Australian Cape Mentelle Wines, the place is already a highly developed, modern, technically advanced piece of the civilized world. Sure it’s a very beautiful place – the winery itself – and pretty peaceful too. And let me tell you the wines and the food they prepare down there are staggeringly wonderful!

But there is also something to be said for sheer, absolute wilderness – those places where no one goes.

Such places still exist here in Western Australia. And once you get here, if you ever do get here, it takes only a few minutes after you step out of your car before you realise that this place is pristine: kookaburras will come right up to you and look you over to see what the hell this new visitor is all about, and so will the kangaroos. They aren’t afraid of humans because no humans come here.

It’s about to be Spring here in Australia and the mad crowds of the Melbourne Thoroughbred Racing Carnival are going to turn up on that first Tuesday in November for the world’s best two-mile race.

Not saying where this actually is!

Lost in all the buzz will be the years and days gone by, when whalers worked the Southern-most coasts. Now, there are still whales but no whalers. And very few people. In some places there are no people at all. Western Australia is a million square miles. And most of it empty. And some of it is just too far away even for the most ardent tourist and wanderer to go just to get some silence. But my god, what silence. Actually I can hear the condensation of the fog or the mist burble and hiss when it hits the outside camp fire in the cold early morning...

Nisteling

It has been quite a deliberate decision on my part to steer as clear away as possible from any reference to the ‘world at war’ business that has been going on, on all of our television screens of late.

Yeah I have been in one of these -
they are hugely FAST!

For one thing, from a psychological perspective – and don’t forget, I have had some training in a classical school of psychology under the late Paul Ritter, the polymath who was one of the people who laid the foundation stones at the original World Trade Centre sites many many years ago now – so, well, from that perspective of psychology, the talking heads on our screens are exhibiting limited dimensionality in their ‘delivery...’

One of the most important ideas I have come across in recent times is something ‘invented’ I suppose, you might say, by another Australian – Robert J. Burrowes. He calls his idea ‘nisteling,’ which is a way of ‘deep listening’ to people when they speak or deliver a portrayal of their personality, whether in entertainment or in a political message or just generally, any communication that involves and includes their physical person. As you will certainly know, another nearby resident over here – Kate Bush – after many years, returned to the stage in an acclaimed concert in England. And of course, she is another of ‘we’ interested bystanders in psychology, in her case she has been a long-time proponent of Reichian ideas on physiological expression of the human psyche.

Another great mathematician and philosopher, A. K. Dewdney, the person who cast doubt on the technical reality of mobile phone calls from planes involved in the 9/11 affair, was another with much to say about dimensionality and how people use it and how it also ‘shapes’ the ways in which we act and move.

Pietro Frua's Monteverdi -
a 'sharp' design 

With true shape and geometry, you are still able to humanise the outcomes even when you employ very sharp lines and edges. One need only reflect on the work of the greatest Italian designers of recent times to see the subtlety that sharpness may display.

By contrast, current expressions of geopolitics are crude and blunt – and polyphonic. Well perhaps not polyphonic even though there may be some effort being exerted to make it so; it’s more cacophonic.

BNY Mellon was one of the first banks to ‘discover’ the impact of internet and computerised communications and data storing and analysis systems. They started a subsidiary variously called Eagle this-and-that back in the early 90’s – Eagle Star, I believe was an iteration which was quite famous and successful. Now, they are probably the leading financial technology providers who use ‘the Cloud.’ Personally I don’t have much problem with the Cloud at all, it’s another way Boston Intelligence establishments of the US government can have some control over the world – and they do it all quite efficiently. God, without these kinds of logistical understandings, the cheeseburger is going to be quite inaccessible to poor people like myself. I am fascinated that investment funds associated with Mellon are still able to return 12% when everything has been cut-back so much in order to procure what looks like the old school Harvard Business Method calculation annual growth figure.

The only difficulty in my mind, with the nominal results, is in the human delivery of the message. Neil Woodford, the leading light of these ‘investment funds’ sounds like he is talking about a wine brand. Sounds like he is a tee-totalling accountant talking about a wine... Sounds great, just doesn’t sound right to a wine drinker though. What do I know? He’s supposed to be in charge of billions. People give him billions apparently, to ‘look after’ and to invest. Which I suppose, is a great vote of confidence for the LSE where he got most of his academic credentials.

A girl sad because her iCloud
selfie account wasn't hacked.

Which leads me to a last fascinating point for today - can you learn to make a million bucks from ‘zilch’ base at an academic institution? Well... It seems that if you are as bright as Neil Woodford, you can certainly achieve an annual return of over 10% if people give you several billions to play with.

That however, is probably not, what you or I are intending to achieve. We, being on the poor end of the social and economic scales, are after much more absurdly ambitious percentages!

But then that’s what makes Woodford look and sound like a boring twat – he’s not overjoyed by the results he has achieved. But then again, that’s the difference between Pietro Frua and some faceless committee who designs Ford cars in the US to day. Frua’s children all made it to high security museums in Switzerland where people who appreciate them still make pilgrimage. The IRS has not understood enough to thieve the ownership plate numbers from compromised design collection managers – and they never will and they do not even care.

The subtle sharpness of great design is ever comprehended only by the few and the rare. To their great joy.

Real Life

What is real life?

Well, I do spend a lot of time with my nose sunk inside of ‘luxury lifestyle’ magazines – Courchevel, Cote d’Azur, that kind of thing - whether in airports or in a recliner chair at home. Have you noticed how the photographs all have this quality about them within the image, where there is absolutely nothing extraneous in the picture; nothing just plain lying around, the detritus of actual living?

And what about extraneous people? Do you have any of those? I have absolutely none.

I used to have many. But now I haven’t any at all. Not even you. You are of a superior intelligence, I fancy. And are rightfully ‘in the picture.’

For not many will go where I would lead... Only the very clever or the secretly well-favoured by good fortune.

 

 

There are rides and then there are rides:

Would you like to ride in this?
I wonder what gets to ride in here...

 

 

Real Positive Propaganda

Coca Cola is a great company and a great brand. Not only that, but at the top levels are very very bright people. Cultured people. Intelligent people.

You haven’t heard that a lot about Coke, eh?

But here – watch this:

This is positive propaganda that is not only incredibly revolutionary, but extremely Left-Wing too. And it comes courtesy of Coke. Now if you are not a terribly musical type it might take you one or two goes at the first 3 minutes of this to ‘get’ the thing, but really, it’s not too dissimilar to a ‘cowboy song,’ a kind of pop jazz version of an old school cowboy song. If you want to know what the words are, go down to the bottom of the video and check the ‘subtitles/CC’ box and you will get a translation show up as subtitles.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=u3F7kcLrGvA#t=3

 

'Daanah Pah Daanah' - song from Coke Studio Pakistan