Morbidity

It was the first Monday of the week, there being several dotted around just to trip one up. With some trepidation I made my way to the Harley Street "Wellness" Clinic. It caused me no end of panic on my way there; that they had slowly shifted the term from "Medical" to "Wellness"- not simply the absence of illness but a positive state of good health. It seems unfair that they should raise the bar so, but unfortunately I do not make the rules (rest assured, doctors will be first against the wall when the revolution comes).

I was slightly disappointed to find my check-up was to be supervised by a nurse as opposed to a doctor. Somebody had paid good money for this and I felt short-changed. She took me through a series of grueling tests, extracting blood and urine. I was then informed that my body's ability to react to cardiovascular stress would be tested. The nurse claimed this would involve me lying down with a heart rate monitor attached to my navel, followed by zestful stimulation at some random moment. I feared she would pull a Smith & Wesson on me while I was forced to sprint on a treadmill. No firearms were brandished but I did have to jump off the bed in the most alarming fashion.

Simultaneously great swathes of data were being collected by an angry IBM in the corner of the room. This personal information will, no doubt, be passed on to the highest bidder in some dingy underground cock-fighting ring to Nigerians so they can manufacture my biometric details.

When the battery of terrifying and emasculating tests had reached their conclusion I was ushered towards the computer which began spitting out red warning signs. My anti-oxidants were decent enough but I was "high risk" for pretty much everything else.

The nurse told me I would be stumbling into my thirties with diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and possibly cancer. This is surely the moment where they would cross-sell me a weekend at their all-inclusive spa. No spa offers came. Instead some vague exercise routine was scrawled on the back of a "Wellness" pack and I was given a bottle of water, a granola bar and a banana. I was then shoved out into the street, index finger still bleeding from the blood test.

I thoroughly recommend that all Post-Newt readers remain blissfully ignorant and stay away from medicine.

On a cheery note, I hear Dogtooth is roaming around the Pembrokeshire coast with a sack full of billiard balls looking for theists. Good luck, they're fast.

I rather enjoyed this

I stumbled upon this link and decided that it is best of fight fire with fire.

So, here, I will attempt to explain how to create a synthetic asset. Let's say we wish to make a copy of a share in Exxon Mobil- that is a security that mirrors the risk and return of Exxon Mobil shares.

Call the current market price of Exxon stock p.

Create a derivatives contract which includes:
1. The "right to buy" several Exxon shares in three months time at price p
2. The "obligation to buy" several Exxon shares in three months time at price p
The money we will make from selling at step 2 pays for our activities in step 1, the net cost is zero

What we are left with is a security that has cost us nothing but must correlate to the price movements Exxon shares because in three months time it will unavoidably be exchanged for Exxon Stock. In the meantime it is an asset with a market value which can be traded

I am sure this is the most boring entry yet to be published on Post-Newt. However when one considers the Socialist Youth of Scotland, it seems just right.

The Rocky Road to Hotspur Gardens

We had gathered for an evening in the Gunsmith's Arms, Dogtooth, Porter, Silver Dollar Jim, The London Prodigal and myself: the whole grim crew. Beer was drunk and perennial fag stump in Silver Dollar Jim's mouth wrapped us all, along with the other inhabitants of the garden, in a smoke fug so thick that I could hardly make out my hand in front of my face. Inevitably I missed the last train home.
It was long after midnight and I was well south of the river, both literally and metaphorically. Judge of my delight therefore, when I saw a taxi cab making its way down the street toward me, with its light on. I stuck out my hand and flagged down what was almost certainly the last operating cab between Brixton and Hammersmith. I stepped inside, but as I pulled the door shut after me I felt a fleeting presence, and a slight coolness, as though a shadow had run briefly over me on a hot day. Ignoring it, I turned to the taxi driver and said "Hotspur Gardens please. Number 17" - this being my address. The cabbie nodded in assent, and we moved off. I looked out of the window idly, but i was pulled from reverie by a smug, disagreeable voice. "My suggested stategy for this cab is that it should go to Westminster." I looked up and was shocked to see prepubescent machiavellian David Miliband sitting opposite me.
"Piss off, you ankle-biter" I cried out in the ringing tones of the righteously angry "this is my cab." Miliband smiled blandly, and slung his jacket over his shoulder (a difficult maneuver for one seated in a cab). "If this cab were to go toward Westminster it would collect a larger fare for the journey, as well as leaving itself in a more advantageous position to pick up a new fare from there onwards, not to mention being liable to receive a large tip from a certain politcian seated in its passenger area."
"Yes, but it's my cab" I cried in frustration. The smile did not falter on Miliband's lips, though I noticed that he was not quite making eye contact with me, and did not appear to have registered my words. "I'm merely stating a possible direction for this cab to go in" he remarked, directing his words toward the driver rather than me. At this point I lost all patience, and threw him bodily out of the cab.

A wise man once said...

“Cash is King”. At the time of this timeless utterance I was hunched over my desk, gracefully sweating into an old Boden’s catalogue, a piece of Snus tight against my gums and a pipe jutting out of my mouth. I looked up. I drawled in reply,“Yes, you are quite right, cash is king. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Coffee is for closers”, he retorted obviously offended by my altruism. He then proceeded to beat an underperforming salesman with a sock full of pennies. Between the thuds and screams for help and cups of tea I managed to finish my morning reading, halting to occasionally re-pack my pipe.

Lunch was usually delivered by a catamite with a filthy smirk, but news soon arrived that he had failed to return from a board meeting. Alas today I would have to venture out of the office. I entered the automatic lift and impatiently pushed “G”. Two floors down I was accosted by a broker who had just entered. He was muttering the prices of call options into his open bottle of shine. Once he reached the price of a Bear Stearns call with a strike of twenty he looked up, eyes ajar, lips moist with drink and promptly flew into a maniacal rage about moral hazard and the “evil” spectre of Chinese accounting standards. “Cheap money, cheap money” he screamed. Frustrated with his line of reasoning I grabbed him by his collar and slapped him about the face with my now crumpled Boden’s catalogue. My action had the desired effect as he slumped to the floor and began talking to himself again in a slow comforting misery.

Relieved to be out of the lift I re-packed my pipe and made my way to Patriot’s, the best soup kitchen in The City. Upon my arrival I looked with exasperation at the usual forty man pinstripe queue. Three Nigerian hard bodies were ladling out slops of onion gruel into expecting tin bowls. I took a great swell from my pipe and headed towards the back.

In front of me was a beautifully tanned, gaunt Arabian wearing a Muttoner & Plum silk shirt and a Versace tie. He tilted his head as I approached. On seeing my face his eyes lit up with suicidal depression. “Jim! Silver Dollar Jim”, he cried. His curled lips exposing doglike teeth. Realising escape from this corporate warzone was now impossible, I hastily pronounced, “Good Morning Faisel, how does the day greet you?”

He paused for a while, making a point of leering at passing tourists. Then began a ten minute diatribe, “Never better. I’ve spoken to my trainer we feel it is time to change to a fully cardio workout. You see I have been steadily losing weight… I can’t deny the shortages haven’t helped… but you see when the margin call bastards came knocking… Last week I killed a beggar for reading the Wall Street Journal. If I had known he was head of equities at Lehman I would have offered him a lick of my salt cube, but alas, fate has brought his career to a quizzical end. You know he was slated for the board? Did I tell you that Hamilton Capital has moved into paper profit as most of the back office staff have either perished or taken flight?” He bowed his head for a moment. I took the opportunity and sprinted all the way back to the office.

My entrance was, it seemed, well timed. The wise man was breaking in his new five wood at the expense of one of the interns. Unshaken I returned to my desk, re-packed my pipe and opened Boden’s to the accessories section.

A bit of a misunderstanding

The Gunsmith’s Arms was closed this weekend. A brisk, executive notice stapled to the lintel above the door attested to this fact, informing arriving hopefuls that the sudden closure was owing to the shabby, putrid state of some of the more bibulous locals, whom the pub management had taken it upon themselves to refurbish. Strange, odourless smoke seeped out from the unmended cracks in the windows; so Hamilton and I made our way to the Muted Slughorn for an iced grapefruit and warm Scotch. We had been settled for some time when I mentioned I’d spent the afternoon browsing the website of a firm of London actuaries. Hamilton looked exasperated by the confession and I quickly explained that my attention had been held by the ‘site’s life expect-ometer, an engrossing facility that generated an average life expectancy for every UK postcode. I had discovered that at my present address, I could reasonably aspire to 2.3 years longer than the national average, but less than half a kilometre down the road, that expectation dropped by more than 18 months. Naturally, I continued, I had resolved never to leave the house again for fear of becoming suddenly and statistically vulnerable. Hamilton seemed to be on the point of proffering some tiresome counter-argument when I raised my hand and hissed at him to be silent: in the far corner of the bar we could just make out the bare-bottomed, leatherclad form of F1 supremo Max Mosley, weeping into a tumbler of Rannoch Farm malt. 'You sir,' exploded Hamilton from across the room, 'have borne witness, and enjoyed for your own part, one of the finest, most seminal legal resolutions of the decade. Pull yourself together!' On closer and more sympathetic enquiry, it transpired that the saucy litigant, being poorly versed in the language of the bench, had been frenziedly excited by the prospect of 'punitive damages', and sorely disappointed by the reality. By way of compensation I offered to buy him another whisky and knock out several of his front teeth. He accepted gladly and, afterwards, ran off giggling into the dusky evening.

A weak pun

I made that old error, decried in the work of every philosopher in the Western and Eastern cannons: I got myself a job. Today has been my first day. I dressed in my best, and only, suit, polished my shoes and was into the office no less than 20 British minutes early. As I began my to perform the many small and harmless tasks I had been given I felt glowing with health. My mind began to dwell upon the money I was accumulating. What would I do with it? Would I buy a sandwich with lunch, or a pint after the working day was done? Perhaps I should book a holiday, or put in an order for a new BMW 3 series. I began to be concerned. I was only employed for six days, how would I keep up with the payments? I worked harder, eager to earn a long term contract so as I could continue with the spending that I imagined I would become used to. By 11am I was sweating and shaking with stress, as the weight of my responsibilities and financial burdens began to press down on me. I worked harder, but I became even more worried. I felt a tightness in my chest, and a jagging pain in my arm and side. An ambulance was called, and by 12.30 I was lying in a hospital bed.
'Doctor' I moaned pitifully 'am I going to die? I wish I had spent less time at the office!'
'Don't be silly', he reassured me 'you just seem to have come down with a mild case of Affluenza. You are clearly more susceptible than most. I'm putting you on a course of broad spectrum Monbiotics. Take two daily, with a copy of the Guardian and a cup of herbal tea.'
I think perhaps I will take next week off...

Voila

Wikipidlings

Did you know that there is a religion Vietnam which venerates Victor Hugo. There is. Also, did you know that Celtic Punk is going through a second golden age in Serbia. You are in for a treat.

Max Mosley Update:
The London Prodigal and myself were tucking into gin backed stouts with ribena tops and sambuca chasers in the Gunsmith's arms, when he leaned in conspiratorially: "In a couple of hours I'm going to meet my dealer". I expressed surprise, as I have never known TLP to take any form of narcotic other than his beloved liquor. "No you fool" he scoffed "I mean my cigar dealer". It transpired that my drinking companion had been paying a fortune to have Cuban cigars shipped to him by a shadowy cabal of tobacco dealers. It was only tentatively that I ventured the information that Cuban cigars were not illegal in Britain. As might be imagined this cast a pall over the evening, and we sunk into a gloomy silence. I would have been grateful for any distraction, so I was nothing less than delighted when disgraced F1 boss Max Mosley walked into the pub. Pausing only to artfully catch the tip of his finger in the door he strode up to the bar and ordered a small sherry. He drained it straight down, and ground the glass into his face. I sidled up to him, and expressed my sympathy for his recent troubles. He thanked me: "as you say, what I do in private is nobody's business". As he spoke he idly lit cigarettes and stubbed them out on his arm. "I don't force my activities in anybody's face" he said as pushed a toothpick into his left nostril. "And these accusations of Nazism are ridiculous. We masochists are a tolerant people, doesn't the name Oberhessischer Verein für Volksbildung mean anything anymore." Unfortunately at this moment the landlord re-entered the bar, and hearing the brief snatch of German clearly leaped to an unfortunate conclusion. He pulled out a heavy iron tent peg from under his apron and advanced threateningly toward the beleaguered whore botherer. "Get out of my pub, you filthy Nazi pervert" he shouted at Mr Mosley, who beat a sadly undignified retreat, crying out with alternate alarm and delight as the tent peg impacted around his buttocks and thighs.

Siempre es 26

J.K Rowling's boy wizard wasn't the sum total of our conversation in the Gunsmith Arms; in fact much more time was spent discussing Dogtooth's attire. After being kept waiting, Hamilton and I had expected him to eventually turn up in his familiar donnish guise, instead we were confronted by quite a spectacle: in strode Dogtooth with a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to his midriff, with a prominent medallion nestling amongst his chest carpet. Upon being questioned about his appearance; he retorted rather stiffly that his medallion was in fact a family heirloom handed down to him by his Cuban grandfather and that tradition necessitated him to wear it. Unconvinced by his reasoning, our train of thought was nevertheless disrupted by the revelation regarding his eclectic heritage, which we had been hitherto unaware of. Hamilton took the lead, aggressively testing him on his 'Cuban' background, Dogtooth clearly irritated by this turn of events, stood up in the midst of Hamilton's latest verbal offensive, walked to the bar and demanded a Cuba Libre. Giving no explanation he returned to our table with his cocktail and proceeded to drink the entire concoction in one gulp. Once downed he eyed us with a rather manic grin, as if urging us to continue our cross-examination. Figuring that the act he had just performed was some sort of primitive method of affirming his Cuban roots and that provoking him any further might seriously imperil our well-being, I quickly changed the subject of the conversation to something less contentious; never to mention Cuba or medallions again.

Dennis Potter and the Singing Detective

Dogtooth and I were drinking with The London Prodigal in his cosy local The Gunsmiths Arms when I mentioned that I had yet the read the works of J.K. Rowling. Surprise was expressed, and I was quick to state that although I would rather like to read these books that everyone speaks so highly of, I was buggered if I was going to pay good money for them. Dogtooth, an avid fan, offered me the loan of his own Potter library. I have read the first three works, and have these preliminary observations.

1 - Harry Potter faints a lot. I haven't actually counted, but I imagine that he averages about 3.2 faintings per book. He and his chums also seem to spend a lot of their time in the sick bay.
2 - Although steeped in magic, the world of the Potter mythos seems to be largely nonreligious. If I found myself in the position of Harry, I think that I would have asked a lot more questions about the philosophical inferences which can be drawn from a complete explosion of modern scientific assumptions.
3 - The Castle of Hogwarts has a giant squid in its lake.
4 - These books seem to play on a desire present in most children to be an orphan with a lot of money.

Henry James: a retrospective

In 1896, Henry James began work on a new novel, The Transatlantic Political Marriage. The work was abandoned by James the following year, but the MS survived and, along with other of his extant notes and correspondences, was published in a volume of collected miscellany a few years after his death. The Post-Newt has been able to gain access to the unfinished MS, via a complicated network of cellars and subterranean passages, and is proud to give its readers an exclusive glimpse of the period at which, Leavis argues, James was ‘sweeping the cobwebs from the dustiest corners of his craft, hoovering up the discarded chocolate wrappers from the filthiest recesses of his mind.’ The passage below is also an eminent example of James’s famous gradually-closing manhole conceit.

The evening sun crept elegantly over the cobbled promenade. Emerald Castor had, by an artfulness of prevision not entirely unbecoming – were one to venture the least little bit activating the closely knitted brow of received feminine charm – in a lady of her aspect, though not altogether sensible of consequences as yet unremittingly hidden from her perfect scrutiny in all such matters, chosen, as she thought most felicitous at the present time, to screen her polished waxen calves from the albeit gentlemanly assault of the eventide rays by means of an antique printed Japanese parasol which had been left, sometime idle, to languish in an old armoire of her London apartments.
As she sortied the jeweller and stepped out onto the pavement, Jasper Stein, his plain boot-heels negotiating the cobbles underfoot, danced, beaming, into her path. For a dull moment as the evening drifted into silence, each stood motionless; his spats creased mischievously, delighting in a not unwholesome impartiality towards his interlocutress; her feline ankles wrinkled not indelicately as in subtle but rapturous reception of the intensity of her beholder’s gaze.
‘I could not think, Miss Castor,’ came a voice from somewhere locally but somehow loftily displaced, addressing, as it is to be presumed, the small velvet brooch-box displayed not inconspicuously in her left palm, ‘that such ephemera could command your attention long.’
‘Oh would you call it ephemera?’ our heroine wonderfully laughed, her white soles flinching penitently. ‘I had better thought it might outlive both you and I, dear Mr Stein.’
Darkness descended, though voices could still be discerned to ring out above and around; and it was a darkness at once so dreadful and exquisite that one could but know, in the full knowledge such darkness invites, that sight and sound and all appreciable experience would, finally, at last, here at the end of things, be incommunicable in the vast heart of that crushing dark.

Cartones

Inbox update

As the rolling prairie, wild woods and rugged mountains of untamed cyberspace (which stretch out beneath the vast azure complexity of the blogosphere) give way to the safe patchwork fields of social networking sites, you may see a column of smoke rising from the sleepy Hamlet of my email address (far away from the bustling metropolises of Yahoo and Google). It's a quiet place, but recently enlivened by a new missive - a selection of 'books' which Amazon thinks I may want, based on my last purchases. Do I want Top Gear Top Drives? I do not. What about Robbie Coltrane's B road Britain? Or 3 Para, Time Bomb, Cherie Blair's Autobiography, a children's book by Geri Halliwell, or Provided You Don't Kiss Me: 20 Years with Brian Clough? I do not want these things. It's all particularly perplexing, since all I have ever bought off Amazon has been a few volumes of poetry and an old copy of The Golden Bough.

I recently misinterpreted an email. 'What do the spammers of Lagos mean by sending me an e-mail of ornithological subject matter' I wondered to myself. Ignoring the warnings, I opened the message. I turns out that I had greatly misapprehended the word 'swallows'.

This was not in my inbox-

Not by E. E. Cummings

if) Springsomewhat,also-just; come before Fall
(con-joining the addversely-seezonal), So
then the hill,yesithink,it were white (as a) ball
&the tree they,Him,nailed to; encrusted by (snow

Whale Watch

Pilot Whales. They're rats of the sea you know. Not content with taking fish from the mouths of Japanese schoolchildren, these blubbery rascals have been copying their larger cousins and going after innocent squid. For too long we have tried to peacefully co-exist with whale kind. We have no more options. The hunt must begin. I'll be down at the wharves with Starbuck, Stubb and Fedellah.

In other squid news, scientists are defrosting the best specimen of Colossal Squid found so far.

The Newt has been following the Max Mosley scandal with a keen interest, and lately the plot has thickened. MI5, sexual perversion, Nazis, motorsport - can this story get any better?

Dogtooth is very fond of Rossetti. I can't imagine why.

Forecast: hand-cut, oven-roasted, lightly-salted, seal-packaged

Yesterday afternoon I received an angry phone call from the London Prodigal, telling me to book flights to Japan immediately. When I questioned the nature of the trip, he made some very rude remarks ('strumpetous, groin-dwelling bible salesman' was, I think, the Parthian shot) and hung up. At the time I was sitting in a bay windowseat of the Cary Grant, a pub that, ordinarily, only exists on a Thursday, but, in this case, had decided to make an exception. Shortly after this incident, a man touring with the Floridian Children's Disney Show sat down near me, and I spent the remainder of the afternoon telling him never to go to Spain.

Squif

not by Paul Muldoon

After a party which raised the rafters
And under a deluge of last weeks telly
I watched her drink down two pills of blue
Handrolled narcotic jelly.

We talked like two sturdy Tyrolean peasants, digging
Dogwood and Bog Rosmary, and cutting planks of ash
Into the exact shape and size of water-maybe
Which I shared with the dog, along
With a little food from the fridge
And slept like a baby.

Thing's have been rather slow for the last week or so...

Here are some cocktails for you to try:

Hangman's Blood - (Created by Anthony Burgess, this cocktail is much more trouble than it is worth.)
"Into a pint glass, doubles of the following are poured: gin, whisky, rum, port and brandy. A small bottle of stout is added and the whole topped up with Champagne... It tastes very smooth, induces a somewhat metaphysical elation, and rarely leaves a hangover."
Papa Doble - Ernest Hemingway's drink of choice. A Daiquiri with double the rum in it.
Hamilton's Encumbered Finesse - This drink was only mixed once, by me. I turned my back for a moment and it was seized and drunk by a passing spot welder.
1/4 gill antebellum rye whiskey
1/4 gill pastis
1 gill heavy water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda.
The drink is served in a brandy snifter, with an anchovy over the rim and a chaser of carot juice

The prancing phantoms and ghosts of my rude forefathers

Up my, my family tree,
No blue blood, no nobility;
No trace of aristocracy -
Except for Uncle Sebastian
Who once raped a duchess.
My Family Tree - Jake Thackray

Unlike the stalwart Mr Thackray I cannot claim an ancestry untouched by privilege. In fact, I recently discovered that my distant predecessor the Honourable Charles Hamilton was no less a personage than the inventor of the ornamental hermit. Horace Walpole was dismissive of the idea, saying it was foolish to put aside a quarter of one's garden to be melancholy in. Pooh to the workaday doubters of this world! I shall be melancholy in as large a portion of my garden as I see fit.
The whole issue of ornamental hermits has been done to death, but I could not deny you the story of one charming personage, to be found in the pages of Edith Sitwell's English Eccentrics -
an unnamed amateur hermit possessed of twenty hats and twelve suits of clothes, each emblazoned with an allegorical device. Two of the best are the 'patent teapot: to draw out the flavour of the tea best - Union and Goodwill' and the 'Wash-Basin of Reform'. One hat even had four mottoes embroidered around it - 'Bless Feed', 'Good Allowance', 'Well Clothed', and 'All Working Men'. As Ms Sitwell remarks - 'you may imagine the sensation aroused by these aspirations expressed in millinery'. This individual lived in a large allegorical garden, in the middle of which hung an elaborate effigy of the Pope, and cultivated a long white beard. We shall not see his like again.

Another of my ancestors, the famous Anchovey Hamiltonne, preempted the Hermit craze of a later century by living for several months in the grounds of a nearby stately home, accosting visiting noblemen for money and neglecting to shave. He was beaten soundly by a local blacksmith, and ejected from the county. It is a terrible thing to be ahead of one's time.