The Kiss of Death
13/08/2004 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaFor the last four years or so, Izzie has been a member of a public speaking group. What began as a way of overcoming the overwhelming Izzie timidity and total terror of socializing with human creatures has now become the major social event in the Izzie weekly calendar and chance to mingle with wierd and wonderful folks who are more inclined to light candles than to curse the darkness. And what particularly delights the Iz, they are all as unDursleyish as it is possible to be.
There - not only does the Iz indulge in her snaky ways but is actively encouraged to do so. Got them all so well trained these days that every time the Iz gets up to speak, her faithful minions announce her presence with evil hissssssssing.
Every week we have a set procedure for the meeting and all the bits get farmed out to the various members. We have things like the Word of the Day - where some one chooses a word, explains its meaning and gives examples of its correct usage and usually provides a big sheet of paper with it written down so that we can all see it. We are then encouraged to use it throughout the meeting - appropriately of course.
Other things we do are speeches, demonstrations and poetry readings which only occur occasionally.
Every week we do have proper club business with reports from the various office bearers and where all decisions are legally binding on the club.
Then there is what we call 'General Business' where we practise meeting procedure and carry on like a bunch of politicians with seconding motions and moving amendments to amendments and being as obstreperous as possible. It is the job of the chairperson to maintain order and to make sure stuff actually gets done.
Being in the chair is the job from hell and that too is rotated so everyone gets a turn.
Two weeks ago Iz got given her speech topic for today "I get the point" which was really a rather awful title and the Iz, even at 7am this morning was still rather uninspired. Not like a couple of weeks back when folks were practising for a speaking competition with topic titles like "My unseen playmate", "Search and Destroy" and even "The Kiss of Death" Iz has never ever entered a competition yet - that is way way too out of the Izzie comfort zone but boy that last title was most tempting indeed.
Izzie did do rather well in the end and resorted to a somewhat sanitized version of her adventures with dementors and evil nasty bosses and the theme being that sometimes the harder you try to attain something, the more elusive it becomes, but when you are least expecting it that you get the results you were trying so hard for.
But last week Iz was rostered on to propose a motion. Iz was feeling particularly evil and proposed "That Club 8 sign a Free Speech Agreement with the Federal Government"
Iz was so so looking forward to amendments upon amendments - especially any involving quotas on local speech content but folks were feeling strangely unargumentative and not a single amendment was proposed. Izzie of course, as the proposer of the original motion was not permitted to add any of her own amendments.
But needless to say, our fearless leaders have spent the last two weeks or so doing that and bickering like a bunch of baby boys in kindergarten all fighting over who gets to be the teacher's pet. Simply pathetic.
And now the deed has finally been done. The Treacherous Rat and his accomplice in the so called opposition party have now got the Senate to approve and sign off on the Marauder's Map and sold our souls for a sack of 33 silver sickles.
The Deputy Sheriff is still worried that his boss might be upset by the pissy little amendments and has been whinpering and whining all week about it.
So once King George and his merry men give it the final sign of approval - it will come into law in January next year and we will then be the fifty first state in all but name.
Iz will have to spend the next few months practising her favorite phrase "I told you so" as she will be needing it rather a lot once the true implications of the fine print in this Faustian Deal become evident.
We'll have Halliburton tendering for everything out there which they haven't got already and all sorts of nasty GM junk will be finding its way into our supermarkets. Quarantine laws will be out the window and we'll have to pay copyright for another 20 years on a whole bunch of things that were out of copyright now. *Iz scurries off to download her copy of "Mein Kampf"* And of course - ANYTHING that this country can produce more efficiently than Uncle Sam such as beef, sugar and dairy products is either exempted or subjected to such a ridiculously long time period for tariffs to be removed that it's as good as worthless. So much for free trade. What really peeves Izzie - they already got 95% of our television and movies market but it still is not enough! Is there any end to this outrageous rapaciousness? Try showing British or Oz films over there and they get classified as 'foreign' to be shown mainly (if not only) in lefty art house cinemas and preferably with subtitles.
They screwed the Canadians and Mexicans so why should things be any different here?
As far as the Izzie is concerned - when you are doing 'deals' with the United States Government - there is only one thing to remember - apart from the fact that ants should not enter into agreements with elephants
"We have about 60% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." (Policy Planning Study 23 for the US Government, February 24, 1948.)
(A quotation from a now declassified policy paper written in the 1940s, attributed to then Defence advisor George Kennan which Izzie read years and years ago and after much fruitless searching, only recently found again on the Internet with the assistance of certain snoops and spies)
But Iz can have her own ickle bit of revenge on Friday. Club 8 is having the great lifejacket debate. Iz was most delighted to volunteer for this one. Three people are in a boat but there is only one life jacket. Each has to present their case why they are more worthy of being saved than the other two scoundrels with them. Last week we were told that the 3 buggers in the boat were Bush, Blair and Howard. Izzie demands that we add Adolf Hitler as a fourth so at least that way we have a bit of a choice;)
Well - turns out - our resident Minnesotan mosquito gets to be Blair, the Pommie bean counter gets to be George Bush and poor old Ozzie Izzie gets to be little Johnnie Howard.
So Iz is going to have to stand there po faced, smug and smirking and doing her damnest to be utterly and insufferably boring. Anything else would not be a fair representation of the Prime Miniature.
This is going to be so so much fun - especially after the last weeks bitching about that Fraudulent Trade Agreement where Scully and Mulder got mentioned (The Spirit of Sybil was certainly there although her name was not spoken) and also some silly detective show CSI.
There - not only does the Iz indulge in her snaky ways but is actively encouraged to do so. Got them all so well trained these days that every time the Iz gets up to speak, her faithful minions announce her presence with evil hissssssssing.
Every week we have a set procedure for the meeting and all the bits get farmed out to the various members. We have things like the Word of the Day - where some one chooses a word, explains its meaning and gives examples of its correct usage and usually provides a big sheet of paper with it written down so that we can all see it. We are then encouraged to use it throughout the meeting - appropriately of course.
Other things we do are speeches, demonstrations and poetry readings which only occur occasionally.
Every week we do have proper club business with reports from the various office bearers and where all decisions are legally binding on the club.
Then there is what we call 'General Business' where we practise meeting procedure and carry on like a bunch of politicians with seconding motions and moving amendments to amendments and being as obstreperous as possible. It is the job of the chairperson to maintain order and to make sure stuff actually gets done.
Being in the chair is the job from hell and that too is rotated so everyone gets a turn.
Two weeks ago Iz got given her speech topic for today "I get the point" which was really a rather awful title and the Iz, even at 7am this morning was still rather uninspired. Not like a couple of weeks back when folks were practising for a speaking competition with topic titles like "My unseen playmate", "Search and Destroy" and even "The Kiss of Death" Iz has never ever entered a competition yet - that is way way too out of the Izzie comfort zone but boy that last title was most tempting indeed.
Izzie did do rather well in the end and resorted to a somewhat sanitized version of her adventures with dementors and evil nasty bosses and the theme being that sometimes the harder you try to attain something, the more elusive it becomes, but when you are least expecting it that you get the results you were trying so hard for.
But last week Iz was rostered on to propose a motion. Iz was feeling particularly evil and proposed "That Club 8 sign a Free Speech Agreement with the Federal Government"
Iz was so so looking forward to amendments upon amendments - especially any involving quotas on local speech content but folks were feeling strangely unargumentative and not a single amendment was proposed. Izzie of course, as the proposer of the original motion was not permitted to add any of her own amendments.
But needless to say, our fearless leaders have spent the last two weeks or so doing that and bickering like a bunch of baby boys in kindergarten all fighting over who gets to be the teacher's pet. Simply pathetic.
And now the deed has finally been done. The Treacherous Rat and his accomplice in the so called opposition party have now got the Senate to approve and sign off on the Marauder's Map and sold our souls for a sack of 33 silver sickles.
The Deputy Sheriff is still worried that his boss might be upset by the pissy little amendments and has been whinpering and whining all week about it.
So once King George and his merry men give it the final sign of approval - it will come into law in January next year and we will then be the fifty first state in all but name.
Iz will have to spend the next few months practising her favorite phrase "I told you so" as she will be needing it rather a lot once the true implications of the fine print in this Faustian Deal become evident.
We'll have Halliburton tendering for everything out there which they haven't got already and all sorts of nasty GM junk will be finding its way into our supermarkets. Quarantine laws will be out the window and we'll have to pay copyright for another 20 years on a whole bunch of things that were out of copyright now. *Iz scurries off to download her copy of "Mein Kampf"* And of course - ANYTHING that this country can produce more efficiently than Uncle Sam such as beef, sugar and dairy products is either exempted or subjected to such a ridiculously long time period for tariffs to be removed that it's as good as worthless. So much for free trade. What really peeves Izzie - they already got 95% of our television and movies market but it still is not enough! Is there any end to this outrageous rapaciousness? Try showing British or Oz films over there and they get classified as 'foreign' to be shown mainly (if not only) in lefty art house cinemas and preferably with subtitles.
They screwed the Canadians and Mexicans so why should things be any different here?
As far as the Izzie is concerned - when you are doing 'deals' with the United States Government - there is only one thing to remember - apart from the fact that ants should not enter into agreements with elephants
"We have about 60% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." (Policy Planning Study 23 for the US Government, February 24, 1948.)
(A quotation from a now declassified policy paper written in the 1940s, attributed to then Defence advisor George Kennan which Izzie read years and years ago and after much fruitless searching, only recently found again on the Internet with the assistance of certain snoops and spies)
But Iz can have her own ickle bit of revenge on Friday. Club 8 is having the great lifejacket debate. Iz was most delighted to volunteer for this one. Three people are in a boat but there is only one life jacket. Each has to present their case why they are more worthy of being saved than the other two scoundrels with them. Last week we were told that the 3 buggers in the boat were Bush, Blair and Howard. Izzie demands that we add Adolf Hitler as a fourth so at least that way we have a bit of a choice;)
Well - turns out - our resident Minnesotan mosquito gets to be Blair, the Pommie bean counter gets to be George Bush and poor old Ozzie Izzie gets to be little Johnnie Howard.
So Iz is going to have to stand there po faced, smug and smirking and doing her damnest to be utterly and insufferably boring. Anything else would not be a fair representation of the Prime Miniature.
This is going to be so so much fun - especially after the last weeks bitching about that Fraudulent Trade Agreement where Scully and Mulder got mentioned (The Spirit of Sybil was certainly there although her name was not spoken) and also some silly detective show CSI.
