This post and the setup of which it is a part, including but not limited to Wealth Bondage, and Dr. Chadwallah, is dedicated to my own Tutor,
Martin Price, in the hopes he would have laughed, despite himself. Your service was today. I missed it but wrote this as my homage. I mention you, as a leading Scholar who trained me so well, so people will know that this is a serious work of Augustan Scholarship, not some
Tale of Tub. We had our times with critical theory, to be sure. I hope you find here a suitably well considered riposte, a little late for us both, hunh? From Success to Significance followed by the old heave ho
. May you rest in peace and may the spirit of your work never die.
Serio ludere. - pbc.
The notes below are provided for the benefit of the reader by Dr. Amrit Chadwallah, Adjunct in Charge of Hidden Meaning in Wealth Bondage, with special attention to Gifthub. He is responding at the request of Top Management to many readers who have asked for a clarification of the Relations Between the Parties involved. The answers as laid out in this Internet Communication are intended to accurately represent the views of Dr. Chadwallah at the time they were written. They may not represent his current opinions, nor those The Current Author Function or his Employer, Gift Hub, a division of Wealth Bondage dedicated to serving ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) with wealth planning, philanthropic planning, family values counseling, money laundering, reputation management services, religious instruction, values clarification, and dynastic political leadership training. For those seeking univocal answers to life's larger questions, Wealth Bondage always recommends that you consult your Employee Administration Professional assigned to your division. If you need to see a Priest, Swami, Rabbi, Zen Monk, or Values Free Values Consultant, a Mentor for your child, a Serving Professional with special knowledge of the Buddha, or a Trusted Advisor specializing in Rapport Building through Neurolinguistic Programming, or a Life Coach, one will be provided at market rates, from a list of Preferred Providers, maintained in Personnel. For further Caveats and Disclaimers, read our Legal Notice. Your presence on Gifthub constitutes your agreement with The Terms and Conditions of The Wealth Bondage Master Contract. Check here if you would like to litigate. __ YES! Please Sue me, now. _ NO! Please sue me later!
Q. What is What is Wealth Bondage?
A. Ah, the eternal question! Wealth Bondage is a
work of art in the Augustan Tradition, harking back to Menippean Satire
and Rabelaisian Carnival as discussed by Bakhtin,
writing under Stalin. Wealth Bondage is a series of parables, as
discussed by St. Mark, writing under Caesar. Wealth Bondage is a "play
without footlights," a performance in which the audience is among the
cast. WB is a Text riven by aporia (undecidable elements) whose meaning is endlessly differed,
displaced and deferred. Wealth Bondage is a trace, a spoor, a vapor
trail, a symptom more than a sign, a portent, an omen, an index of
cultural decline. Wealth Bondage could be called the space between Texts, or even between letters! Wealth Bondage is an anagram, a riddle, a jest. Wealth Bondage is both a coin and the currency system. Wealth Bondage is the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mack, and the financial regulatory apparatus, as well as the firms that support same. Wealth Bondage is rated AAA by Moodys, and Duff and Phelps.
Q. What is the source of Wealth Bondage?
A. Wealth Bondage comes from the holy ghost, or the muses and graces. Wealth Bondage flows from the heights of MT Helicon.Wealth Bondage is based on The Feast of Fools, also known as the Feast of Asses, celebrated throughout the Dark Ages, during the Feast of the Circumcision. To this day, the ass's ear make us laugh in the spirit of The Great God Pan. And as Hippocrates, said, the tears streaming down his cheeks, "Laughter is the best medicine." You may as well laugh about what you can't fix.
Q. I still can't see where you are coming from. Can you provide me with some context for Wealth Bondage?
A. Wealth Bondage is a dialogic Text which through разноречие (roughly translated as heteroglossia, but there is really no equivalent in English) explodes
its own narrative conventions, breaking the frame of its own mock serious discourse.
Or, Wealth Bondage is a system of signs not referring to so-called
"external reality," but instead standing between us and the unreal
blackness of eternity like a scrim or Simulacrum, or a whole procession or precession of Simulcra across the screen of the darkened mind or arcanum. Wealth Bondage is pure discourse. Wealth Bondage is art for its own sake. Wealth Bondage is revival of the art of lying, as of canting, musico-metaphysically considered. Wealth Bondage is the Eternal Return of the Same, per Nietzsche who was driven insane by it. Wealth Bondage is The Author Function, burning at the stake, as Artaud said, and gesturing through the flames! Wealth Bondage makes it new, makes it strange, it defamiliarizes us with everyday reality so we see it clearly at last. Wealth Bondage is the sound of one hand clapping. Wealth Bondage is not a Text but an Inter-Text, the absent ground of all groundedness. Wealth Bondage is both the Text Itself always already displaced by the Scene of Interpretation with which it competes for the reader's attention. Wealth Bondage is not "the truth," Wealth Bondage is the realization there is no truth outside of Wealth Bondage as we know it, subject to our human limitations. Wealth Bondage is thrown, or rather it is throwness in its essential Being. Thrown where? A dumpster, obviously, along with the English Canon. Wealth Bondage is the Tailor Retailored in an infinite regress, an unknown country from whose bourn is no return.
Q. That sounds like chuckle-headed philosophy, but isn't Wealth Bondage supposed to be a great work of literature?
A. Yes, Wealth Bondage is is an immortal work of the moral imagination, in the spirit of Jean Genet's Whore House, The Balcony, or the den of doxies and thieves in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. Wealth Bondage also merits comparison to Swift's satire of the Irish Parliament in which he likens them to inmates of an insane asylum.
Q. What is Wealth Bondage for?
A. To ask what wealth bondage is for, demeans it and suggest to me that the
person who asked that utilitarian question is a cultural cretin. Wealth Bondage exists for
its own sake. To treat it as a means to any further end begs the question
once again of what could be "outside of Wealth Bondage" to which it
might aim or point? Wealth Bondage is autotelic and autocatalytic. It
like the idle adolescent lost in his own imaginings requiring nothing outside itself to
achieve ecstatic completion, over and over. Wealth Bondage is Prolific. Wealth Bondage is Devouring. Wealth Bondage is the Alpha and the Omega.
Q. What is in it for me, though?
A. Wealth Bondage is a mirror held up to nature, as Horace said. Art is the mirror in which the reader see his or her own face. So, Wealth Bondage teaches you to know yourself, which the ideal of all moral philosophy, as it is of of art from around 2,000 BC to Baudelaire, in the nineteenth century, in Paris. Even today, in the absence of truth or moral consensus, Wealth Bondage is good for you, at least in small doses. Wealth Bondage is strong medicine wrapped in honey, so that the patient, in this case you, will swallow it down. Wealth Bondage is designed to delight and instruct. Wealth Bondage is the disease. But like a homeopathic remedy, Wealth Bondage is also the cure. Wealth Bondage is a gift, a potion, a dose, as of medicine or the clap, or medicine for the clap, which historically was treated with arsenic. A little Wealth Bondage goes a long way. Ask your Doctor if Wealth Bondage is right for you.(If you have pus or bloody discharge accompanied by inflamation of the urethra, please consult your immediate superior.)
Q. So what does it cure, then?
A. Wealth Bondage cures corruption, whether of the individual body, soul, or society. Wealth Bondage in certain cases has cured the blind, the halt, the lame. Wealth Bondage has been proven to cure depression and anomie. Wealth Bondage is a social disease. Wealth Bondage is a spiritual cure. The Bible says that Wealth Bondage can raise the dead, but few cases are confirmed.
Q. Cut the crap; what is Wealth Bondage really?
A. Wealth Bondage is really pervasive, the horizon within which postmodern
life, in every aspect, appears to us as a Market, and as such Free.
Wealth Bondage is the basis of all domestic and foreign policy. Wealth
Bondage is a well kept secret. Wealth Bondage is hidden in plain sight.
Wealth Bondage is a Bordello for persons of Wealth. Wealth Bondage is
what lobbyists call "Congress." Wealth Bondage is a morality play.
Wealth Bondage is reality as we know it: A play of shadows on the wall of a cave. Wealth Bondage works
closely with the Administration. Wealth Bondage is the neoliberal
consensus, where politicians of all parties meet in amity, toasting the way things are and always will be. Wealth Bondage remains committed to a bright future for our children. Wealth Bondage is a Family of Affinity. Wealth Bondage is a Dumpster, or a padded cell. Wealth Bondage is at War with Terror. Wealth Bondage is pretty
scary itself. Wealth Bondage is socially constructed. Wealth Bondage has never been stronger. Wealth Bondage does not condone torture, nor does Wealth Bondage engage in torture, other than consensually or nonconsensually with those deemed Enemies of Wealth Bondage, or with our Private Clients at agreed on rates. Wealth Bondage may engage in surgery without anesthetic in the proven Roman manner to improve the looks, habits, or morals of those involved. Salt in the wounds is provided free of charge to qualified customers. Wealth Bondage is a state of perpetual War. Wealth Bondage is a state
of Emergency, during which time your civil liberties may be suspended for the preservation of Wealth Bondage itself. Wealth Bondage is an ecological disaster. Wealth Bondage meets in special session, even as we speak. Wealth Bondage is
Classified, provided strictly on a need to know basis, subject to a signed confidentiality agreement. Wealth Bondage is in crisis. Wealth Bondage is well managed by a team of MBAs for the benefit of our shareholder, Candidia Cruikshanks. Wealth Bondage can be saved, but only if you are willing to make personal sacrifices, or make them in any case, willingly or not. Wealth Bondage is counting on your personal support during this very difficult time for our country.
Q. I have a hard time interpreting this. Can you interpret your interpretation, please?
A. All interpretations of Wealth Bondage are themselves inside Wealth
Bondage and as such are provisional. There is no "outside" of
Wealth Bondage. Wealth Bondage cannot be "trued up" to anything outside itself, for there is no veridical axis true or false, good or bad, against which it can be measured. Wealth Bondage cannot be rectified or recuperated. Wealth Bondage is a semiotic disaster. All interpretations of Wealth Bondage are equally valid, for those who make them. None are binding on the Management of Wealth Bondage. Wealth Bondage is the boundless play of the Signifier in love with itself. As for myself, as a Hermeneutics Professional, skilled in
the detection of Hidden Meanings, I would say Wealth Bondage is proof
positive that Freedom is indeed on the March. Never has the Signifier felt more free of restraint than in Wealth Bondage. Wealth Bondage is jouissance without even touching.
Q. Who owns Wealth Bondage, for Chrissakes?
Wealth Bondage is a public good owned as a sacred public trust by our Nation's Steward, Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage, she who rules us all. Wealth Bondage is held in Street Name by an account in Switzerland. Anyway, Wealth Bondage at the most literal level is a corporate entity
owned by Candidia Cruikshanks. It is also by extension, the Scene Rooms inside Wealth Bondage, including the padded cell in which our Current Author Function is now held as a Prisoner of Conscience. Wealth Bondage is also, the Dumpster out behind Wealth Bondage in which the Wealth
Bondage employees congregate, at the curb separating Wealth Bondage from
the Public Square, to discuss matters of moment to the General Public,
to drink Thunderbird in a spirit of congeniality and high spirits, and
to contribute our collective two cents worth for the good of humankind. Grab a
mask and join us, if you wish. Yes, we are
under surveillance, aren't we all? But the NSA guys, from the blacked
out van, are over by the flaming barrel, jamming a cappella with the
Happy Tutor. They are just people too, as drunk as we are. Welcome one
and all!
Q. OK, I sort of get it, but what is the connection with Gifthub? I thought this was supposed to be a serious site about Philanthropy?
A. Yes, Gifthub is a nonprofit subsidiary of Wealth Bondage. The purpose of Gifthub is to Save Capitalism. You are right about that. So far it is working. Capitalism is growing, despite its recent setbacks.The prognosis is good. The earth may perish, but Capitalism is as a concept irrefutable. Empirically, without Capitalism we could not have Philanthropy to save it.
Q. What or who is the Author Function that I see referenced under each post?
A. The Author Function is an honorary position of Gifthub, established under a Genius Grant, and awarded to a Scapegoat chosen at random from the condemned on death row. The job description is classified, but in general The Author Function is charged with posting ideas to advance Capitalism by means of Philanthropy in the context of human flourishing and in accordance with the triple bottom line of Wealth Bondage: Profits, Planets, People. Failing that, the Author Function is periodically executed, by burning at the crossroads, in the Ancient Tradition Celebrated by our Athenian Ancestors, to purge the sick society and to cure the plague. This was called catharthis, as discussed in Aristotle's Poetics, and involved either ritualistically killing off a loser, often an undocumented alien, a madman, or a physically challenged person, or the king. Generally it was a loser. Some thing never change. The borders of the body, mind, and polity, the line between the real and unreal, between the serious and comic, between the sick and the healthy, between Fool and Knave, must be protected. Someone is to blame.Through the ritual murder of the scapegoat we come together as a people. We, as Christians, not unlike Cannibals, meet every Sunday to drink his blood in commemoration of our great crime. At the founding of Wealth Bondage is - yes! - the scapegoat. Some worship a cross, others a shrunken head. It all comes to the same thing, a target market for Wealth Bondage.
Q. Who is The Author Function?
A. Why are you asking?
Q. Just Curious, who is he or she? How can I get in touch?
Yes, as you suspect, the person holding the Author Function Position is at any given time a real person, whether living or dead. Prior to the Author Function's rebirth, due to windfall profits, following the Bailout, and the staffing increases that followed, Wealth Bondage was published posthumously by various hands. Please consult the most recent Wealth Bondage organizational chart for
the current incumbent. As of the date of this Text, the position is held
by Phil Cubeta, now out on extended medical leave. If he is sacrificed, or when he is sacrificed in the line of duty, to save Capitalism, another Author Function will be chosen by lot from among the condemned. Phil is being held incommunicado, but you can email him care of Wealth Bondage, Chill Room #4.
Q. How is Phil doing?
A. Phil is responding well to his treatments, or at least as well as can be expected. We expect him back soon. He would be hard to replace. He is being fed well through a nose tube.
Q. Now wait a minute, if he is in the madhouse who is posting this stuff?
A. In Phil's absence the entire Wealth Bondage team is taking turns posting what you call stuff in his name, or under his title, or actually above his byline with his picture. I provide editorial services to insure the authenticity of Phil's Personal Voice and its continuity across time and over incumbents as they come and go. The Branded die or go mad, but the Brand remains. That is the power of Wealth Bondage, which will outlive us all.
Q. How can I get involved in Wealth Bondage?
A. Child! Child as you art! How to get involved in Wealth Bondage? Try birth.
Q. How do I get out of Wealth Bondage?
A. You have to be born again. To find yourself you must lose yourself. You will be reborn in brokenness and surrender. There is no charge for this service, of breaking you down, though we reserve the right to harvest your organs. We invite you to consider a private consultation before you give informed consent. Please strip down to your undershorts. The Happy Tutor, your Personal Dungeon Master, will escort you through the narrow gate into the hereafter. He is currently serving our other guests. Some are in protracted labor, as you can hear.
Q. Other guests, like a black site, you mean?
A. Like a black site, yes.
Q. You call this Menippean satire? I knew Menippus personally, and believe me you are no Menippus, Dr. Chadwallah, or whoever you are. Why are you jerking me around like this? Who can I talk to get some straight answers? Be transparent with me for once, please.
A. Thank you for holding. Your call will be handled in the order in which it was received. Please hold. Wealth Bondage is experiencing higher than normal call volumes. Please hold. If you would like a subprime loan, please hit 1. If you would like to inquire about debtor prison, please hit 2. For foreclosure, please hit 3. For life insurance, hit 4. To buy or sell derivatives, hit 5. To receive or fund a bailout, hit 6. To make a contribution to Gifthub to Save Capitalism, hit 7. For outpatient surgery, or other outcall services, hit 8. For taxidermy or ventriloquist services, hit 9. To purchase or for instructions on using a Sock Puppet, please spell the last four digits of your social security number using the dial pad of your telephone. For adult diapers and other personal care products, hit 9. To return to the automated Attendant, hit zero. For relief from Wealth Bondage hit your head hard with a hammer. For all other questions, please stay on the line; an Adjunct trained in English as a Second Language (ESL) will be with you shortly.Thank you for waiting. Your continued passivity is important to us. Please hold. (Editor's Request: Repeat in an endless loop, and call it art. Add sitar music if possible.)
Posted by Dr. Amrit Chadwallah as an aid to reflection.(This post has not yet been reviewed by Upper Management; it is posted subject to cancellation or revision.)
Posted later: This FAQ was posted in error. Please disregard. Wealth Bondage does not currently exist.
