You’re right in that what are called big words, are frequently not
big words in the syllable department, they are mainly just unfamiliar words.
There is always a danger for those of us who read a lot where we read this word
that we really like, and we would like to work it into our conversation, but we
have no idea how to pronounce it. Generally we can get away with it because our
friends have not heard the word before, but every now and then some learned guy
comes along and corrects us and we look like fools, not just because we
pronounced the word wrong, but because we were pretentious enough to use it. We
are hoisted by our own petards. I think I looked up what a petard means once,
but I have long forgotten what it was, but I know that it exists, and that one
can be lifted by one. I wonder about the part with ‘my’ petard. Is it the sort
of thing that a person owns? Is it the sort of thing that you could carry
around and maybe put into the umbrella stand, and when asked what is that odd
thing one could reply, “My petard,” and since nobody knows what a petard is they
couldn’t challenge you, and maybe they would think it was pretty cool and they
would start carrying around their own petards, but of course they wouldn’t be
real petards, just whatever it was you called one and then, but I
digress.
Swearing is an odd thing. I think I picked it up just hanging
around Talmans and smoking cigs and trying to look tough and cool. I remember
at one point early in college I got a phone call from a girl early in the
morning when I was still hungover and I told this story about what happened over
the weekend and it was fucking this and fucking that and then when I realized
what I had been saying, to a girl, I was totally embarrassed and
apologized profusely.
But when I became a hippie we swore all the time. It was something
everybody did to show how free and open we were and not bound by the shibboleths
of the establishment (I am going to look up petards and shibboleths right
after I post this). But I had to remember to curb this when I was in politer
society. Every now and then something would slip out, but this happened less
and less as hippiedom died out and I merged back into regular society. Anymore
it’s almost like a beeper effect where when I am about to say fuck some voice
intercedes and asks if I really want to say this and maybe I do and maybe I
don’t.
I think the whole concern is overdone. There are only like six or
seven words and there are only so many ways you can arrange them, and it all
sounds the same. Every now and then some so-called reporter may claim some
female rock start swears to make a longshoreman blush, but it’s not like you can
go any deeper than saying fuck a lot, there is not that much to
it.
I have the same impression as you about the hedge funds, sort of a
hedge on a hedge, with probably a bit of folderol folded in, a little sleight of
the hand where the fast-talking money man is asking you which shell do you think
the money you invested is under, and oops, it turns out it is this other shell,
and your money is gone, or possibly it is in the shell shifter’s pocket.
I have heard commodities explained to me, and to some extent it
makes sense but then it seems to take a quick twisty turn and loses me. I guess
the main thing I think of is that this money that the winners take away in their
pockets where does it come from? I turn my Bohunk fish eye on it and I think it
has to come from the growers and the eaters. And these hedge fund things they
are just commodities squared, or cubed, or more likely in one of those eleventh
dimensions that those string theorist guys talk about so
knowingly.
And now they have these computer analog thingies where they can
make like a trillion trades a second and nobody knows what is going on. Every
now and then there is some computer glitch and the board is off for an hour or
two and what happens, nothing. The birds still sing, outside my window the cars
continue their endless drive over the lake shore drive bridge, in the north
country Beagles nods off waiting for a dear in his cozy blind.
The hell with them all, let’s close them all down. But then we
would have to give them a hearing, and as they spoke and spoke my eyes would
glaze over and I would soon be in slumberland. One thing these hedgers have
done is taken potentially the most interesting subject in the world, money, and
made it boring. We are all in their thrall.
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