IV: Tulip
Celebrating the life and whimsy of Tiny Tim.
Good morning. Today is quartidi, the 4th of Germinal, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate la tulipe, a flower that created the first stock market crash.
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Full disclosure: my day job is in finance. (Boo. Boring. Hiss.) I know. But I love tulips because of tulip mania, a phenomenon that keeps my head on straight while spending all day listening to supposed smart people try to smart their way to riches. Tulips were introduced to northwestern Europe from Asia Minor a little over 400 years ago. They were perfectly adapted to an otherwise dreary climate, and people adored the springtime color. The ability to create rare and unique hybrids seemingly at random also lent them an air of collectible preciousness. The problem was, you could only see them in the spring, and you could only buy them the rest of the year when they were dormant. So instead of buying a flower, people bought the rights to the bulb in the future when it could be dug up. These rights – what we now call futures contracts – were what took off in a sales frenzy. Once people realized you could make infinite money in profit buying the contract from someone cash-strapped and selling it to someone rich, the race to find the richest sucker was on. That's how a single flower could cost as much as a house, at least until 1637, when everyone had their prized flower, it grew, and they realized they'd spent a fortune to ... look at a flower. The market collapsed, many people lost sickening amounts of money, and that's why I hope you didn't buy NFTs.
Performers who play with gender are fun. This undeniable truth has been around for centuries, from Shakespearean plays making the bawdy most of their all-male casts in comedies that otherwise come across as a bit staid to the current vogue for elaborate drag performances.
This play with gender has some fundamental amusement beneath it, such that even a performer who isn't technically in drag but assuming a few select cross-gender characteristics will achieve a boost from the uncanny effect. Yep, it's tulip day so we have to talk about Tiny Tim.
