"If we are going to end up being exotics of our own lives (as we all are), we may as well cultivate radical exoticism" - Baudrillard.
By some considerable distance, the most tedious blog posts are the ones where we promote the various Services which enable our Trading Team to keep our collective heads above the choppy financial waters of 2008. As recession bites and deepens towards the oncoming Depression (The Sequel), it is a constant imperative to remould the business model innovatively in real time. New sector and sub-sectoral infrastructures offer new opportunities as we attempt to portfolio our business operations in a suitably correlative manner.
Recent developments have persuaded us, as an organisation, that we MUST maintain our highly creative work/life balances. Our career options are plentiful, we are fortunate in this fact at least, but work only works if we maintain our respective equilibria of inputs. The short-termism of workaholics is self-defeating as the lifestyle is simply not sustainable. In the juggling of an array of plates, the Clarice Cliff ones are the ones that one needs to be focusing upon. In order to create as exotic and unique a structure as possible within Dietrological, we are both expanding and contracting our range of business projects and services for the season 2008/09. Because we can feel your waves of anticipation, we will move on to describe these changes without further ado.
DIETROLOGICAL - Our Football Information Provision Service will continue as previous until the summer and then we are making significant changes to the structure of this area of our business operation. We are forming a separate trading entity with our Dietrological Platinum client to target the Asian betting markets on a more liquid level. This is a completely proprietary project. All other Dietrological clients will receive information on the current basis. There is one available slot for the Dietrological Gold/Silver Service (100% winners since Chinese New Year window, 90% on the season) and two available slots for the Dietrological Bronze Service (only 8% losers since Chinese New Year break, 80% winners on the season).
HOLISTIC SABERMETRICS - We are in the developmental (beta) phase of a new implementation of our Unified Trading Model (UTM) - the project aims to improve the efficiency of the player transfer market. The transfer market is a young market and the degree of inefficiency in the marketplace is startling. Good. This means profit. Player evaluation is currently a rather haphazard affair which fails to take into account the "real" parameters which should be the foundation of a true price. By including such major impacts as institutional corruption, betting market machinations/ activities and other laterally thought configurative parameters and sub-models, Holistic Sabermetrics will transform the marketplace. We intend to provide this Service both to individual agents and to the clubs themselves. Holistic Sabermetrics will be launched in time for the summer transfer windows across Europe and a promotional campaign is even now being pipelined.
FOOTBALL IS FIXED - Radical Direct Action will become increasingly Vital. A Practical Observation on Critical Theory. Improving, not inadvertently but with a creative reciprocal usage of disinformation, the performativity of the corruption template. A provocative QED. Applying Baudrillard to the Global Betting Markets. Libertarian Socialism from the perspective of a Market Analyst. Exotic. No advertisements or other marketing processes of consumerism. Guerrilla Graffiti with Some Big Words. Contrarian and Counter-Intuitive. DeFragging The Cartel. Multi-libellous output. No more twittering. The grammar will continue to be poor if, at least, reliably poor and the sentence structures will snake ever onwards in an obfuscatory and obscurantist manner to disguise meaning and intent to all readers apart from myself. There will continue to be no marketing, no promotion, no hyping, no scamming - our expansion relies on word-of-mouth. Anonymous Guest Blog Posts from Anonymous Guest Blog Posters. Strictly isolationist and increasingly impersonal. Deleuze: "What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy? ... if I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my own inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write... Arguments from ones own privileged experiences are bad and reactionary arguments". Not quite as nihilist (nor paranoid!) as Deleuze but you catch the drift? The Illusion demands a Perfect Crime but no such Crime exists - Traces are left. Forensic Analysis and Psychology allows a Reconstruction of the Template of the Hyperreality representing this Crime. This is News, but not the sort of "news" found in the mainstream media. Football Is Fixed will combine some News, some isolationism and some analysis together with some narrative about how we made money on the markets last year.
TRADE HYPERREALITIES - Progressing further in our creative branding in a Post-Modern and Cynical Realist era, our Consultancy Projects will now be collectively rebranded and accounted for as Trade Hyperrealities. As the market infrastructures provide widespread examples of inappropriately constructed market formats, our Trading Team are able to combine multidisciplinarily to address some micro-niches that quantum in-and-out of existence in the warped world of shareholder capitalism. Once we are aware of a distinct and robust model structure, we approach a few carefully selected potential clients for collaboration in expanding the project to its full capacity. Currently gliding along the conveyor belt of reactionary contrarianism is the following project, provisionally entitled "Wenger" in commemoration of the Arsenal manager turning down our offer of a Consultancy last season. "Wenger" would have improved Arsenal's position in the Premiership hyperreality by a minimum of 5 points this season - he should have listened to us. What is "Wenger"? - Modelling the Negative Impact of the Global Betting Markets on Certain Clubs. How to be both proactive and reactive in addressing the corruption on a structural and an individual basis. The creative use of the (dis)information with respect to market dynamics and the psychological assessment of key outcome determinants eg referees. Incorporating an analysis of externalised corruption into the strategy eg with regard to Performance Enhancing Substances by opponents. Brand it. Flog it.
The Projects are Fourfold - Dietrological, Football Is Fixed, Holistic Sabermetrics and Trade Hyperrealities - the Trading Team continues as Four in a Cell. We are Open Source, suitably Time-Lagged away from the News. Straight from the fridge...
Just as there are hundreds of billions of dollars in the shadow banking system, there are tens of billions of dollars in the shadow football betting markets.
Just as Hank Paulson wishes to exterminate the regulatory bodies that hinder unfettered fascism in the marketplace, there are those in football actively undermining the integrity of the game both internally and on a more externalised level by by-passing or devaluing the rules and regulations.
Which is more illusory?
The top tier of the G14(18) provides three of the Champions League Semi-Finalists. This is still a powerful grouping of clubs.
OR, the G14(18) has been disbanded.
The FA Cup Final features the Moscow/Tel Aviv Blues - a team backed by an arms dealer, a team whose manager and former owner are on bail regarding various financial shenanigans including, in the latter case, money laundering - and Cardiff City Chapter 11 under the autocracy of Robber Ridsdale.
OR, its great to see 'Arry and Jammo at the Food Mall in the final of the world's greatest competition.
They are selling you an Illusion. The Illusion will either become Real as the Reality Deficit becomes the New Reality or the Illusion will become Perfectly Hyperreal as Total Simulation becomes the New "Reality".
We are living in Serious Times and our peculiar fate of fortune in matters of timing are something we must use to maximum effect.
Baudrillard: "Just because a tile falls off a roof, there is not necessarily someone underneath it at the right moment, that would be too good to be true".
It is too good to be true.
It is true.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
