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| ''TRIAGO'': There! That! Didst thou see ’t? <br>
| | {{image|Fontish weaponry|png|[[Winthrop Grumman]] and [[A. J. N. Calder]] in the Royal Contrarian Society’s performance of {{dsh}}, 1926.}} |
| The card-sharp’s fumbling misdirect? <br>
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| That tell-tale grin or worldly wink that <br>
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| Cracks heav’n apart and for a twinkling<br>
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| Throws rude light upon perfidious conjury! <br>
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| Spy the dark-clad stage boy! How he flies<br>
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| Yet bolts a trice too late to beat the curtain’s rise.<br>
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| :''Enter HERCULIO, eating an apple.''
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| ''HERCULIO'': How now, sweet [[Triago]]. What sorrow? <br>
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| ''TRIAGO'': A browful, sir. In foreign paper, densely ink’d. <br>
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| ''HERCULIO'': Pray tell. (''Aside'') I would pray there were a choice <br>
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| Had I any hope of answer.<br>
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| ''TRIAGO'': ’Tis the tell, [[Herculio]]. ’Tis a slip. I see the wires. <br>
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| O, Trickery! O, Falsity! Mark the fingers<br>
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| Cross’d behind thy back!<br>
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| Has this been but a prank, [[Herculio]]? <br>
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| My wretched decadal privation, just some ''jape''?<br>
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| ''HERCULIO'': All well meant, good [[Triago]]. Be not sour.<br>
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| These are not grapes. <br>
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| ''TRIAGO'': Indeed not sir: rather, scrapes.<br>
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| And scars and knocks — the job lot doggedly sustained.<br>
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| ''HERCULIO'': Some more than others. The odd one feigned. <br>
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| But come, Sir Tig: what holds you there? <br>
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| ''TRIAGO'' (''waving paper''): A tract from a brother clerk in America. <br>
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| ''HERCULIO'': Cripes abroad. Grim tidings?<br>
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| ''TRIAGO'': Forsooth: it wears the colours of a fight. <br>
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| A wordscape stain’d with tightly kernèd face <br>
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| And girded round with fontish weaponry. <br>
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| ''HERCULIO'' (''snatching the document''): Verily, convenantry this dark <br>
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| Speaks of [[Litigation|litiginous]] untrust. <br>
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| Wherefore such cruel [[indemnities]]? <br>
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| Wherefore so dry a want of fun? <br>
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| A merchant wrapp’d with better sense <br>
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| Wouldst just as soon injunct th’orbiting sun.<br>
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| What is this pact, [[Triago]]? Who demands <br>
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| Such fearsome consequence? <br>
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| ''TRIAGO'': An entente of secrecy, no more. <br>
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| ''HERCULIO'': Behold, my deceitful ears mislead! <br>
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| Say it again, my friend: secrecy didst thou say? <br>
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| ''TRIAGO'': I did, my Lord, I did. A trifling confi. An N.D.A. <br>
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| :—{{buchstein}}, {{dsh}}}}
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| Once in a long while<ref>Once every three or four days, about.</ref> over the sort of long, inglorious career most people have in the finance industry, you see a giveaway. A tell: a knowing look, a sly wink, fingers crossed behind the back, a stray wire, a black-clad stage-hand scampering away a moment too late to beat the rising curtain — just enough to wonder: is this whole thing, secretly, a gigantic ''have''? Are we stooges? Have we all been fitted up, Truman Burbank-style, in some epochal, multi-decade-long [[Game For A Laugh]]? Is the creator playing with us for his sport, like flies to wanton boys? | | Once in a long while<ref>Once every three or four days, about.</ref> you see a giveaway. A tell: a knowing look, a sly wink, fingers crossed behind the back, a stray wire, a stage-hand scampering away a moment too late to beat the rising curtain — just enough to wonder: is this whole thing, secretly, a gigantic ''have''? Are we stooges? Have we all been fitted up, Truman Burbank-style, in some epochal, multi-decade-long [[Game For A Laugh]]? Is the benign creator playing with us, for sport, like flies to wanton boys? |
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| I had one of those moments today. It arrived in the shape of an eight-page, tightly-kerned, ten-point Times New Roman slab-style Americanised tract: The kind of writing that suffocates you: it admits of no breathing — there is no punctuation nor artful use of white space to break the wordscape up girded-about with the weaponry of litigious mistrust — Indemnities, the mutual contemplation of equitable injunctions, covenants to destroy utterly and salt the barren earth
| | One of those moments arrived recently, in the shape of an eight-page, tightly-kerned, ten-point slab-style American tract: The kind of writing that suffocates you: it permits no breath, there being no punctuation nor artful use of space to break up the diatribe: girded-about with the weaponry of mistrust — indemnities, the mutual contemplation of equitable injunctions, covenants to destroy information utterly and salt the barren Earth. |
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| | It was a confidentiality agreement — the saucier parts of financial servery have not yet made their peace with [[OneNDA]], so this does still happen, tiresome though it is — but what gave the game away was not the weaponry and ordnance with which it was armed, but its purpose: not a client list, sensitive KYC material, a sample trade portfolio or trade secrets, but for a ''newsletter''. |
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| | When subscribers to a news periodical sign up on conditions of secrecy, we have reached a pretty pass. |
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| ===The JC’s ever-so-occasional newsletter=== | | ===The JC’s ever-so-occasional newsletter=== |
| We gave up on doing our own desk-top published Newsletter, which took months and use now sub-stack, which also takes months. It's here: https://jollycontrarian.substack.com/ | | We gave up on doing our own desk-top published Newsletter, which took months and use now sub-stack, which also takes months. It’s here: https://jollycontrarian.substack.com/. |
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| | There are no conditions of secrecy. If you sign up as paid subscriber, you get the premium JC for free into the bargain. Sweet, huh? |
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| {{sa}} | | {{sa}} |
| *[[Game For A Laugh]] | | *[[Game For A Laugh]] |
| | *[[Something for the weekend, sir?]] |
| {{ref}} | | {{ref}} |