The Oracle of McDelphi

Yesss. It's that time of year again when everyone is talking about sport. Now normally Izzie HATES the stuff with a passion - having never quite forgotten the humiliation of being the sporting equivalent of a blind epileptic hippo in a pink tutu - always the very very last to ever be chosen even for noncompetitive class teams in school.
But the Games are soon to be upon us and Iz confesses that the main thing that interests her is the opening and closing ceremonies and particularly the politics. The politics is the ONLY thing that makes sports remotely interesting for the ickle Iz. However Iz did hear rumours about the opening ceremonies concerning centaurs firing arrows and stuff. Maybe just maybe they have got that fountain and the stadium does really look rather er...interestingly enormous. Well - it's still only Thursday evening so maybe there is time to get up those three hoops on each end of the pitch. Yessss - centaurs on broomsticks playing Quidditch and using dearest Dolores as the Quaffle is a sporting spectacle that would interest even the likes of ickle Iz.

But looks like while our Dearest Dolores might not manage to get herself onto the field after all, she has been certainly most busy in the boardrooms. Izzie's snoops and spies have provided her with some extremely tasty little tidbits about some outrageoussss activities soon to be occuring in Athens.
Is there no end to this insidiousnesssss? So looks like the Iz won't be allowed to bring those green eco shoes and her "Weasley is our King" badges to the games after all.

Iz was going to indulge in an extra long rant concerning nerdy chemists and performance enhancing substances and the depths of pathetic hypocrisy to which certain nations have descended to in the pursuit of gold.
As far as Izzie is concerned, if you are going to get all high and mighty about other folks using drugs, then you'd want to be damned squeaky clean yourself in that area instead of bending the rules and looking the other way and making pathetic excuses when it comes out that your own cycling team amongst others have spent more time peddling than pedalling.

Let the buggers use all the drugs they want and kill themselves in the process in the elusive search for glory and sponsorship McDollars instead of this pathetic 'let's pretend' ritual.
The drug spotters will always be way behind the users and as far as the Iz is concerned - those slinky swimsuits and jet propelled shoes made by poor house elves slaving in sweatshops are just as performance enhancing as some silly pills.

At least then, some tax funds might be left over for paying for useful education such as medicine, plumbing, agriculture and environmental issues instead of training a bunch of athletes in the subtle art of not getting caught at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS - Also known as Australians Injecting Substances) who then go on to make squillions in sponsorships and are not expected to repay a single silver sickle for the cost of this luxury intensive training unlike other folks who are actually learning something useful for the benefit of all of society such as nursing, medicine or art who are expected to pay for their education.
Of course - the person who undertakes third level education benefits the most and it is only fair that they should pay some of the costs but if exceptions do apply they should be for nursing and teaching and not some pathetic institute founded solely for the purpose of acquiring gold medals at a Games played on a totally uneven playing field.

But now back to another interesting snippet about the original Oracle. Izzie's list of places to visit at least once has just gotten a bit longer.
The Original of the SpeciesAnd yessss - there is a serpentine connection.
Of Pythons and Prophecies

Snoozing, snooping and shopping

Another lazy Izzie day - once again in bed past one in the morning and pressing the snoooze button once too often . But Izzie's excuse was firstly that she set the alarm for 3 in the morning to hear the repeat of the interview with Peter Singer that she could not hear at the original broadcast time of 4pm due to the minor inconvenience of work and secondly we got to get up early four times in the next five mornings. So why not. And it's fun lying curled up all snug in bed listening to the wind and pelting rain.

So finally crawled out of the sack at midday. The original plan for lounging about at home and doing some serious study got put on hold by Izzie's watch going on the blink just after 11pm yesterday evening.
So Iz had to go to the city after all. First stop was the Priceline discount store where Iz got her DADA supplies which consisted of 10 bars of assorted Lindt chocolate - mainly the 70 and 85% variety. How could Iz resist the special price of $$1.99 when they are normally $$2.99?

Then there was the business concerning a certain book. A nationwide promotion finishes on Sunday. Five books have been chosen and nearly all book shops are participating as it is sponsored by the Government (Doing something useful with Izzie's hard earned tax dollars for a change) If you buy ANY other book you can also get one of these five for the princely sum of five silver sickles.
So of course the most desirable result is to get the cheapest book possible that you really want. Iz would love to have bought "Death Sentence" a most intriguing little book with a black parrot on the cover all about the nasty creeping all pervasiveness of the evil 'managerialspeak' of which Iz quoted a typical sample just a few days ago. But this little number is still in hardback and the price just cannot be justified. So Iz then went lurking in the classics section which is unfortunately full of nasty cheap tiny print versions of even nastier books such as anything by Charles Dickens or Jane Austen.
Iz then did spy some Dante on an adjoining shelf. Two different versions of "Inferno" - one translated by Dorothy L Sayers and another by one John Ciardi. In spite of the little blurb in the Izzie journal - Iz does not actually speak a word of Italian (Well about four or five fairly rude ones plus the ability to make very good guesses at texts using a bit of Latin derived English and a lot of imagination)

So Iz wants to know if any serpentine associate or lurker out there can recommend a particularly good translation for future reference.
Decided to think about it overnight before returning tomorrow but in the end it was irrelevant as they had sold tonnes of the special five promotional books and had none of the one that the Iz wanted.
So next stop was the department store which was far more likely to have lots of the five but a much smaller range of books to choose from. They even had the new Potter paperback for only $$13.95 (instead of the usual $$19.95) which Iz would have bought as a present for some one if she only knew who. Most serious Potter fans were not able to wait this long for their fix ) Instead - was most delighted to discover Stephen King's "The Green Mile" - the full length version on a cheapie stand for only $$4.95 which meant that Iz ended up spending way way less than she expected to get her greedy paws on the spooky and very scary but sadly true "Blacktown" by Shane Weaver. They replayed an interview with him on the radio last Thursday and mentioned the book promotion. It was one of the most memorable interviews that the Iz has ever heard.
Another book shop had a very very tempting book by one Bethany McLean - a 'Fortune' reporter who back in April 2001 asked the rather interesting question as to how exactly Enron made their money.
Enron will come up once again in Izzies adventures tonight in the Cornelius Fudge School of Ethics.
A truly pathetic condescending and patronising pair of wankers these morons have proved themselves to be. Especially entertaining were the 'guess who' quotes about corporate responsibility. Silly buggers don't have course materials online so Izzie will have to google it and then you folks can have fun guessing too.

But that story will have to wait for another day if Iz does not want to miss a lift from the Knight Bus with its new driver Argus Filch.