Autopope! - Wurk

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Oct. 20th, 2005

05:26 pm - Wurk

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Slept in then hit the ground running, much to my surprise. Got the accounts sorted and off my desk, blasted through the editor's queries to THE JENNIFER MORGUE in record time, about to whack on the afterword ("The Golden Age of Spying") and do an edit pass over "Pimpf", the spin-off novelette in the same universe. If I get this all done by tomorrow evening I'll have clawed back a whole week of down-time.

Now, a question for the peanut gallery.

In the Bond canon, Ernst Stavro Blofeld is the founder and leader of SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

But.

I'm working on the thesis that Blofeld is a woefully misunderstood entrepreneurial capitalist who, born a couple of decades ahead of his time, has been dismally persecuted by a vicious conspiracy of socialist bureaucrats working to sabotage his multinational enterprise because of its perceived threat to the values of [old] Labour government in the early 1960s. Indeed, as this proto-James Goldsmith figure points out, that lying rat-bastard Fleming even back-formed a bogus acronym for his organization SPECTRE -- one that doesn't work, for SPECTRE is only meaningful as an acronym in French (or German, maybe). ("And what's with the concrete rocket bases on jungle islands, you ask? Isn't that incriminating? Well, if it's good enough for Arianespace, it's good enough for me!")

So I need a new expansion of SPECTRE. Preferably in French or German, preferably meaning something approximately like "Social Provident Ethical Capital Technology Reinvestment Experts" -- or something equally vague but benign-sounding.

Any takers?

Current Mood: active
Current Music: Hyperreal (orbit remix) - The Shamen
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Comments:

[User Picture]
From:[info]txanne
Date:October 20th, 2005 04:53 pm (UTC)

On m'a sonné?

(Link)
Société Professionelle et Ethique du Capital Technologique Réinvesti par les Experts.

"Professional and Ethical Society of Technological Capital Reinvested by Experts."

Not quite what you asked for, but a literal translation of what you had would be "Experts en Réinvestissement de Capital Technologique Ethique Provident Social," which is not at all the thing.
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[User Picture]
From:[info]txanne
Date:October 20th, 2005 04:54 pm (UTC)

Re: On m'a sonné?

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But ERCTEPS would be great if you ever do a "Mirror, Mirror" story.
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From:[info]autopope
Date:October 20th, 2005 06:03 pm (UTC)

Re: On m'a sonné?

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Thanks! I'm going with that.
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From:[info]txanne
Date:October 20th, 2005 06:34 pm (UTC)

Re: On m'a sonné?

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*beam* Years of study, toil, and heartbreak, and they finally pay off!
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From:[info]orangemike
Date:October 20th, 2005 05:56 pm (UTC)
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I'm working on the thesis that Blofeld is a woefully misunderstood entrepreneurial capitalist who, born a couple of decades ahead of his time, has been dismally persecuted by a vicious conspiracy of socialist bureaucrats working to sabotage his multinational enterprise because of its perceived threat to the values of [old] Labour government in the early 1960s.

Revisionist!

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From:[info]autopope
Date:October 20th, 2005 06:00 pm (UTC)
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"Listen, this Bond guy, he's some kind of commie assassin, isn't he? I mean, look at the evidence. He works for the state -- a socialist state at that. He went to university and worked with those guys Philby and Burgess, that MacLean guy -- commie spies to a man. He goes after entrepreneurs who are a threat to the interests of this socialist government, and he rubs them out. No due process of law here, no respect for property rights, no courts, no lawyers: just this 'License to Kill' enemies of the state, who mostly happen to be businessmen working on start-up projects that threaten to overturn state monopolies. He's a goddamn commissar, I tell you. You know why the Russians hate him? It's because he's got them beat at their own racket."
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From:[info]hattifattener
Date:October 20th, 2005 06:36 pm (UTC)
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Mmm, disruptive technologies.
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From:[info]stevenagy
Date:October 20th, 2005 07:02 pm (UTC)
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And his humanitarian side shows its true colors when he cures those dear girls of their childhood fears in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Bond and company misunderstood his proposal as a blackmail attempt when Blofeld wasn't really going to release anthrax or other diseases. He was just explaining how someone could brainwash people and get them to act as terrorists and shouldn't the government pay him for his research efforts and his assistance. ;-)
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From:[info]joecrow
Date:October 21st, 2005 04:33 am (UTC)
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What, you mean that's not how we were supposed to read that? Dang, I've been looking at this all wrong...
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From:[info]fractaltime
Date:October 21st, 2005 01:22 pm (UTC)

E for ethics

(Link)
Society for the
Promotion of an
ECological and
Transhumanist
Revolutionary
Ethics

Acronyms can be made any haphazard way you want, you know.
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From:[info]stevenagy
Date:October 21st, 2005 06:11 pm (UTC)

Re: E for ethics

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And it might make you wonder if Fleming had a touch of dyslexia. (Though the French roots for SPECTRE's spelling is the likeliest explanation.)

Too bad he predates the 700 Club. That would make for an amusing coincidence. ;-)
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From:[info]autopope
Date:October 22nd, 2005 07:50 pm (UTC)

Re: E for ethics

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That's interesting; the one villain I don't think Bond has ever gone after is a barking-mad fundamentalist TV minister with an international network behind him dedicated to installing a theocracy by force.

(Chris Brookmyre did it in "Not the End of the World", but Bond ...? No, Fleming died in '64 and the likes of Pat Robertson didn't really get going until cable came along, did they?)

Memo to self: next Laundry book, make Bob's adversary be a preacher-man.
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From:[info]fractaltime
Date:October 24th, 2005 05:09 am (UTC)

The SPCA model

(Link)
Society for the
Prevention of
Cruelty to
Trans-
Rational
Entities

SPCTRE - like with any good acronym, the E will come sliding in by itself to make it pronouncable.

(Now, this is the kind of thing that happens when you have kids waking you up at 2:30 in the night, and you run out of sheep to count ... )
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