Strange Creatures

A strange wave of wistfulness and a sad sort of happiness overcame Iz today as I sat in the courtyard of the Garden of arcane delights and listened to a wonderful discussion on the radio with Michael Leunig.

Izzie is on a mission to introduce his sheer genius to the rest of her friendses around the world, where-ever they may be and has already corrupted at least five people.

Other issues of the day include the practical application of the accounting theory concerning executive compensation, incentives and rewards for performance. Since you cannot be snooping around all the time to see that they actually do the work - second best thing is basing renumeration on results. So therefore, you can pay your employees, managers etc a fixed salary regardless of work done or make part of their payment a bonus based on performance - net income, share price or whatever. .

How shall I begin to explain? Every Friday evening the Izzie starts work on the weekly auditing assignments that are randomly collected throughout the semester and are worth a total of three lots of 5 marks each.
The same situation also applies to the accounting concepts and issues unit where the 3 randomly collected assignments are worth 20% between them. I've been good the last two weeks and had them finished by Wednesday (Friday is collection day) rather than the usual 1am on a Friday morning or even worse - 10.55 am on Friday. The class starts at 11am.

So the question is, since the third assignment has been collected yesterday for auditing and today for the other unit, apart from being a sad studious Granger Mudblood who wants to get 112% in every subject, what reason is there for Iz to do those nasty auditing questionses when she could be typing silly snippets over in Secret Diary Land?

The Church of Serpentology

Ickle Iz recently mentioned volunteering to do a speech and was looking for inspirations and suggestions from her evil serpentine associates.

Well, today was the day and it was rather amusing indeed. Firstly of course, the ickle Iz was wearing that green hat with shoes to match. Then there were the accessories - the greenstone pendant from Middle Earth with 3 silver spirals in the centre and the serpent ring. Iz even had her "Order of the Green Spiral" pin on her black jacket but never even got around to mentioning it.
Many moons ago would write out stuff and learn it off but now I've gotten into the habit of improvising. So there is no cut and paste evidence of the Izzie evilness - just what I can recall from memory.

The purpose of the exercise was to come up with a crazy story and make it sound utterly convincing.
Iz introduced herself and then added that the topics of politics, sex and religion are usually not discussed among boring and polite people. But since Iz does not belong to that category, such rules can be disregarded.
Iz has always kept her religious preferences to herself as is proper in a secular society but has decided at last to reveal that she is a member of the Church of Serpentology. Not to be confused in any way with the trailer trash at the bottom of Ron L Hubbard's broom cupboard. Noooo. Serpentology has a long and noble history dating back to the very origins of human history. Back to the Garden of Eden in fact. You see long before the unfortunate incident with the apple, Eve had relations with the serpent and produced many descendents of whom Iz is but one.
Our means of recognising each other is the silver serpent ring. But since anyone can wear a ring and claim to be a descendant of the Great Serpent, the true heirs are known to each other by the strange squiggles they bear on their left fore arms!

Then there is the issue of dietary restrictions. Most serpentologists appear in public to be vegetarians. This is not out of love for furry fluffy animals but rather the belief that only the freshest meat possible is acceptable to any self respecting serpent. We kill what we eat and we eat what we kill. Of course when fresh blood is not available us serpents obtain our energy requirements by sucking the happiness out of the unsuspecting souls around us.
Then there was the business of the full moon meetings at the local cemetery and various other rituals.
Our other main mission of course is to gather funds for the lawsuit of the century -suing the hell out of those nasty thieving Scientologists for stealing our name and stuff.

Iz has her little serpents well trained. Every time I go up to speak a bunch of them do the Izzie hisssssss. They even clapped when I finished. Was rather surprised myself at how well it went since I made up so much of it as I went along.
The poor critic didn't know what the hell to make of it. "You must be the wierdest person that I have ever ever seen". He was not quite sure if I was for real or not.
That sure did amuse the ickle Iz.
Iz did not win the competition but was quite delighted to get the stirrer's spoon and the frameable phrase of the day. (One member of the audience has the honour of listening out for interesting expressions and unusual ways with words and mentions their various little tidbits near the end of the meeting)
The winner had a wonderful speech about the origin of the expression "Like a bull in a China shop" It was far more in the tradition of a typical tall story and definitely deserved to win. Last year she did a story about the Monster mosquitoes from Minnesota. That was also really cool.

It's quite strange actually. It was not that long ago that the ickle Iz was like a timid little mouse who would hide in the corner and was too terrified of talking to even answer a telephone. In fact, lots of folks probably thought that I was autistic. Maybe I was. But one day I decided that enough was enough. No more mousiness for meee. It took years to finally pluck up enough courage to find a group and then join one. Not chickening out when rostered on to make my first speech was one of the hardest things I'd ever done. Some people join such clubs and keep putting it off for years and years. But Iz had been there and done that and the time for procrastinating was finally over.
But that was the first step in unveiling the serpent within and I haven't looked back since. Now they complain that the Iz just won't stop hissing! (Izzies' musings on her old mumbling days)

Yesss. It's so true. The secret to success in so many things is to fake it till you make it.

A Birthday of Sorts

Ickle Iz slinks in for a drink. Not exactly a birthday but Iz wants to drink a toast to a treacherous rat that today celebrates 30 years in politics. 30 years of being a nasty petty mugglef&*%$ing vindictive brown nosed smirking lap dog.
Who could it be - but the one and only prime miniature of the fifty first state of the USA and GWB's personal poodle- Mr "Man of Steel" John Winston Howard!

*Izzie is busy dusting off her passport application for Middle Earth - just in case we have to endure another 3 years of this mudblood filth. *
For those folks not unfortunate enough to be acquainted with this essence of obnoxioussssness - just imagine Cornelius Fudge with an extra large patronising smug smirk of satisfaction on his face as he tears up yet another principle of wizarding law.

Now which vintage of Chateau Cardboard shall it be? Iz will add a pavement pizza or two.
Now all we need is the obligatory baked delights from the Barbvee!