F. Scott Fitzgerald: "The rich are not like us." Ernest Hemingway: "Yes, they have more money."

E-Verse Radio is back from its month-long hiatus. Since the "Circus" episode, Ernie has found himself in the middle of his own three-ring circus.

He bought a house, got married to Lynn, and went on a honeymoon in Greece. Here is a fun wedding video Paul put together:

http://everseradio.com/the-e-verse-nuptuals/

And here are some amateur wedding pics: http://everseradio.com/some-more-wedding-pics/

In other news, E-Verse pens are here. So are cool stickers. Want some? They're free. Just e-mail me at everse @ everseradio.com (or reply to this e-mail) and I'll drop one in the mail for you, free of charge. We even pay the postage! Watch the contessa push the free swag on E-Verse subscribers:

Tipple
Arthur Hugh Clough

We sit at our tables and tipple champagne;
Ere one bottle goes, comes another again;
The waiters they skip and they scuttle about,
And the landlord attend.htmls us so civilly out.
So pleaseant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

"Money is like a sixth sense -- and you can't make use of the other five without it." - William Somerset Maugham

Top Five Currencies, ranked by Coolest Names:

5. Dong (Vietnam)
4. Birr (Ethiopia)
3. Sucre (Ecuador; means "sugar" Gimme some sugar, baby!)
2. Colon (Costa Rica; El Salvador)--and you thought something costing an arm and a leg was bad!
1. Ngultrum (Bhutan)

"Money is a kind of poetry." - Wallace Stevens

E-Verse Radio Unbelievable But Real Film Titles of the Week:

Beer Money (2001)
Cash and Marry (1930)
Where's the Money, Noreen? (1995)
Blue Money (1972) Sucker Money (1933)
Hot Skin, Cold Cash (1965)
Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death (1990)
I Rob Banks for the Money (2005)
Uneasy Money (1921)
Cache Cash (1994)

"Money doesn't talk, it swears." - Bob Dylan

Watch this episode at: www.eversevideo.com

"A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money." - W.C. Fields

E-Verse Radio Invaluable Facts of the Week, courtesy of www.ex.ac.uk:

All sorts of things have been used as money at different times in different places. The alphabetical list below, taken from page 27 of A History of Money by Glyn Davies, includes but a minute proportion of the enormous variety of primitive moneys, and none of the modern forms. Amber, beads, cowries, drums, eggs, feathers, gongs, hoes, ivory, jade, kettles, leather, mats, nails, oxen, pigs, quartz, rice, salt, thimbles, umiacs, vodka, wampum, yarns, and zappozats (decorated axes). It is almost impossible to define money in terms of its physical form or properties.

Money did not have a single origin but developed independently in many different parts of the world.

Many factors contributed to its development and if evidence of what anthropologists have learned about primitive money is anything to go by economic factors were not the most important.

Money performs a variety of functions and the functions performed by the earliest types were probably fairly restricted initially and would NOT necessarily have been the same in all societies.

Money is fungible: there is a tendency for older forms to take on new roles and for new forms to be developed which take on old roles, e.g. (this is my example) on English banknotes such as the 5 pound notes it says "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds" and below that it carries the signature of the chief cashier of the Bank of England. This is a reminder that originally banknotes were regarded in Britain, and in many other countries, as a substitute for money and only later did they come to be accepted as the real thing.

Many societies had laws requiring compensation in some form for crimes of violence, instead of the Old Testament approach of "an eye for an eye". The author notes that the word to "pay" is derived from the Latin "pacare" meaning originally to pacify, appease, or make peace with - through the appropriate unit of value customarily acceptable to both sides. A similarly widespread custom was payment for brides in order to compensate the head of the family for the loss of a daughter's services. Rulers have since very ancient times imposed taxes on or exacted tribute from their subjects. Religious obligations might also entail payment of tribute or sacrifices of some kind. Thus in many societies there was a requirement for a means of payment for blood-money, bride-money, tax or tribute and this gave a great impetus to the spread of money.

The invention of banking preceded that of coinage. Banking originated in Ancient Mesopotamia where the royal palaces and temples provided secure places for the safe-keeping of grain and other commodities. Receipts came to be used for transfers not only to the original depositors but also to third parties. Eventually private houses in Mesopotamia also got involved in these banking operations and laws regulating them were included in the code of Hammurabi.

Precious metals, in weighed quantities, were a common form of money in ancient times. The transition to quantities that could be counted rather than weighed came gradually. On page 29 of A History of Money Glyn Davies points out that the words "spend", "expenditure", and "pound" (as in the main British monetary unit) all come from the Latin "expendere" meaning "to weigh". On page 74 the author points out that the basic unit of weight in the Greek speaking world was the "drachma" or "handful" of grain, but the precise weight taken to represent this varied considerably, for example from less than 3 grams in Corinth to more than 6 grams in Aegina. Throughout much of the ancient world the basic unit of money was the stater, meaning literally "balancer" or "weigher". The talent is a monetary unit with which we are familiar with from the Parable of the Talents in the Bible. The talent was also a Greek unit of weight, about 60 pounds.

One of the reasons for the rapid spread of the use of coins was their convenience. In situations where coins were generally acceptable at their nominal value there was no need to weigh them and in everyday transactions where relatively small numbers were involved counting was quicker and far more convenient than weighing. By the Middle Ages monarchs were able to use this convenience as a source of profit.

In China the issue of paper money became common from about AD 960 onwards but there had been occasional issues long before that. A motive for one such early issue, in the reign of Emperor Hien Tsung 806-821, was a shortage of copper for making coins. A drain of currency from China, partly to buy off potential invaders from the north, led to greater reliance on paper money with the result that by 1020 the quantity issued was excessive, causing inflation. In subsequent centuries there were several episodes of hyperinflation and after about 1455, after well over 500 years of using paper money, China abandoned it.


Top Five Money Songs:
5. "Money" by Pink Floyd
4. "It's Money That Matters" by Randy Newman
3. "Money Changes Everything" by Cindy Lauper
2. "Money's Too Tight (To Mention)" by Simply Red
1. "Money Talks" by AC/DC

Runners up: "Money, Money Money" by ABBA, M-O-N-E-Y by Lyle Lovett, "For The Love Of Money" by The O'Jays, "Take The Money and Run" by the Steve Miller Band, "What Do You Do For Money Honey" by AC/DC, "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits, "Money Honey" by The Drifters

[I know there are many I've missed. Let's get them in. Please hit reply and give us your favorite money songs. - E]

Listen to this episode at: www.everseradio.com/audio

E-Verse News You Can Use from the Un-E-Versity of Life:

"Nostalgia is part of the appeal of Jack Kerouac's On the Road today, but it was also part of its appeal in 1957. It's not about the 1950s, but the 1940s":

The word "friend" on social networking sites is a debasement. Having as many MySpace "friends" as possible is about status, not friendship:

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain was a joke -- quite a good one the first time round, corny by the mid-20th century, and downright stupid today:

Does it take women longer on average to be served in coffee shops? The answer in Boston, it seems, is yes. But why?

"Writers don't make up myths, they take them over and recast them, says Marina Warner. Even Homer told stories his audience already knew":

"My life will soon be over," Jean Sibelius groaned in 1924. How odd that in the end he outlived James Dean:

Is There Still Room For A "Great American Novel"?

National Book Award Winners:

"The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments." - Mad Magazine

Fleming's Follies:

David Blaine - Magic Money
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Kl9tdu7qRA

Monty Python: The Money Programme
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GlS8O257Gi0

Cabaret: "Money"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q

Better off Dead: I want my $2
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FlulYwZ9oPw

And one Folly from Ernie, major copyright infringement, but come get me, Seth MacFarlane: (Probably removed)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dh6kUNqGYk

I usually hate things like this, but I want to share this one. Watch this bird dance. It's actually pretty funny:

"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." - James Goldsmith

E-Verse tip of the week:

Bravado vs. Bravery: distant relations, but very different characters. Bravado involves a lot of sound and fury, often signifying nothing. It is usually just showing off, boastfulness. Bravery involves real courage. Bravado is pejorative and bravery one of the strongest compliments one may bestow on a person.

Top Five Money Expressions:
5. "Money talks."
4. "Time is money."
3. "Money makes the world go 'round."
2. "A penny saved is a penny earned."
1. "She's so money!"

E-Verse Radio collective noun of the week:

Bloated plutocracy of billionaires.
[No offense to all the billionaires who read E-Verse. - E]

"Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort." - Helen Gurley Brown

Hilbertian Sonnet of the Week:

Enemies and Co.
Ernest Hilbert
After Cyril Connolly

So many, the enemies of promise.
They're everywhere. Larkin imagined a toad,
Squatting on the back, weighing us down, called work.
You're smothered half to death by false kindness.
The temp job stinks. They increased your workload.
Lunch talk is dry and spiteful. You grip your fork.
They're on full-paid cerebral vacation
And couldn't care less about your efforts
To improve the novel or refine verse.
Your folks urged law school-you'll need a pension.
What if your prospects plunge from worse to worst?
There's much more hope in pharms and e-commerce. We're all in it. It's how writers' lives go.
Forget the rest: you'll be your own worst foe.

"We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs." - Gloria Steinem

Reports from the E-Verse Universe

An E-Verser writes in on the circus episode:
"Far down on the list of circus movies you might have included The Greatest Show on Earth, from 1952. Here's a collection of encomia lifted from Wikipedia: The Greatest Show on Earth has often been cited by film historians and movie buffs as one of DeMille's lesser motion pictures. Many critics and film fans consider this film among the worst to have ever won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The American film magazine Premiere placed the movie on its list of the 10 worst Oscar winners and the British film magazine Empire rated it #3 on their list of the 10 worst Oscar winners. Erik Lundegaard of MSNBC stated that '[The Greatest Show on Earth] was a dull, bloated romance.' Taking it one step further film historian Jonathan Lapper called it "One of the worst Best Picture recipients ever . . . bloated, overlong and mind-numbingly boring.' He adds, 'It almost (almost) makes Cimarron and The Broadway Melody look good by comparison.' I was 11 when I saw it. I found it thrilling."

Another:

"I would nominate Fellini's I Clowns (Italian title) as one of the very, very best circus films ever. Probably the best."

Another:

"I am sad that I Wonder When You'll Miss Me by Amanda Davis and Son of the Circus by John Irving didn't make this list in some way. And what about Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog?"

Next episode: Rock and Roll! Send in lists, poems, quotes, anything you like. Hey, E-Verse Universe, are you ready to rock? I said . . . are you ready to rock???!!!

E-Verse Radio makes no money whatsoever. It is a labor of love for E-Versers everywhere. It is a regular weekly column of literary, publishing, and arts information and opinion that has gone out since 1999. It is brought to you by ERNEST HILBERT and currently enjoys over 1,500 readers. If you wish to submit lists or other comments, please use the same capitalization, punctuation, and grammar you would for anything else intended for publication. Please send top five lists, bad movie titles, limericks, facts, comments, and new readers along whenever you like; simply click reply and I'll get back to you.