The Entrepreneur - New Cocktail

The world is a gigantic con. Love makes the world go around, but it's a con game. Inspiration rides along on hormonal infusion, or the illusion of hope. We're lured into situation after situation, liaison after liaison, even if or when we know in our bones that it's a tease to deceive, that the pay-off is a grand scheme of dissimulation. Life itself is a con. Death comes to every man, but we play along until the end, since we think we have little choice.

Sex is a con, designed to make us reproduce. Capitalism is a con, a system designed to permit the exploitation of opportunities based on greed, need or mutual sacrifice. Cooperation and sharing--just more of the same. Someone wants something; can they get it by manipulating circumstances? or by convincing others to facilitate their scheme? Can we sell ourselves, or anything else, without pulling the wool over somebody's eyes?

Entrepreneurs are people who promote something for a desired situation--usually a selfish end. They want something from you, something you might be ready to give up. They make businesses, usually with other people's money. Market capitalism is based on the idea of entrepreneurship, that is, the ability to make or sell something new or more attractive. They may exploit an existing market, or create a new one--by using the capital of other people. There's a risk, and where there's risk, there's always the bluff, and the cheat, and the con-game.

Wall Street is the biggest, and most well-developed, con-game on earth. It exists to funnel excess wealth int0 the combine of risk.

In the spirit of entrepreneurship and risk, here is a seductive cocktail to be drunk over negotiations or the conning of a client. One fellow has something the other wants, or thinks he wants; or maybe the other one doesn't even know that he wants it, yet. He'll have to be conned into it. Over there at that other table, an older man is trying to con a pretty young thing into the sack. He's been around the block a time or two, he's charming, and knows all the rules backwards and forward. But she has a card to play, too. And she knows how to up the ante, how to flirt with the con. The game is as old as the stones at the bottom of the Pyramids.

But sometimes it's not the pay-off that really counts; it's how you play the game. Just playing along can be at least mildly diverting, while we're waiting for nirvana, or armageddon.

The mixture, as always, is by proportion. We wouldn't want anyone to think that we're trying to get you to lower your guard, would we?

3 parts gin

1 part yellow Chartreuse

1 part Pear liqueur

1/2 part melon liqueur

2 1/2 parts cocktail grapefruit

--served up, with--perhaps--a small wedge of watermelon. The melon liqueur mates miraculously well with the Chartreuse, which is what makes this one work so well. Good with a power lunch, or even when you're feeling completely powerless. Strength, love, larceny--all in the eye of the beholder.