The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

The serpent is not a card carrying member of twitter but has lately taken to doing a bit of stalking over there. I can sniff out the stink of snake oil from miles away and have recently found the absolute mother lode. So many tasty morsels



Mr Porkie wants to talk about the TRUTH.

This serpent was so so tempted to sign up. That was until seeing the small print.
By subscribing with your mobile number you are agreeing to receive recurring automated SMS/MMS messages from Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. Message and data rates may apply. Text "STOP" to opt-out.
Looks suspiciously like one of those dodgy 'premium' SMS services offering horoscopes or stock market tips. Once again Mr Porkie is making money out of suckers

He is so completely and utterly shameless. You cannot even call him a hypocrite or a liar because he actually appears to believe his own BS. Maybe that's why many people find him so convincing.
Especially amusing is how he is so good at seeing all his worst traits in others and calling THEM out for it with a monster megaphone. Self awareness on steroids? Most definitely not.


Out of control

Then there's that other trait - aside from the utter petty vindictiveness - the complete inability to accept responsibility for ANYTHING that goes badly for him. It's the victim mentality on steroids.
He has been slandering the current president with the birther allegations for a good 5 years, suddenly decides it could be a disaster for his chances during the debates, dumps the constant carping and suddenly everyone is supposed to forgive and forget and play together nicely in the sand pit but then Hillary digs up some dirt courtesy of one Alicia Machado and there he is brooding and stewing before unleashing a venomous tirade on twitter encouraging his fans to watch her (non-existent)sex tapes.

Insulting the hell out of Mexicans and then proclaiming that some judge should not be involved in a case concerning him because she is of Hispanic ancestry and will be biased against him. Of course it is ALL HER FAULT.

Wriggling his way out of military service and then insulting John McCain, the Khans and countless other veterans and their families for being 'weaklings' or shafting business subcontractors and then actually GLOATING about it in the presidential debates.

Show us your TAX

While the right wingers and libertarians think it is a badge of honour to pay as little tax as possible, it is completely inconsistent and illogical to then turn around and complain about the shabby state of the airports, roads and other infrastructure and to announce grand plans to increase the size of the military and extra funds for childcare and teachers amongst other items.

But then again, in Mr Porkie's universe - logic and consistency are completely alien concepts.


Maybe juiciest of all - the Dark Art of Deals with the Devil
Lipstick on a pig

“It’s implicit in a lot of what people write, but it’s never explicit—or, at least, I haven’t seen it. And that is that it’s impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then . . . ”

In Mr Porkie's world the rules are very simple
Heads I win. Tails you lose.

And there are a lot of turkeys out there intending to vote for Christmas.

But it's an ill wind that blows no good. A character like Donald "Mr Porkie" Trump is temptation beyond endurance. He is so suitable for snaffling as the star for a November novel first draft. And that's even before he becomes President of the USA. Plus doing the so called research is just so much fun. Hillary could also get drafted but I'm getting bored of recycling Dolores Umbridge in various incarnations. Of course if the Queen of Swords turns up again in the shuffle, then she will be in. The Donald of course will be the Joker. Or maybe the Devil.

Gathering dust amongst the piles of books in the Lair are some amusing tomes snaffled from a second hand book sale (a Christian seminary no less - the same folks who still think that the Potter books are EVIL incarnate) The "Art of the Deal" by Tony Schwartz and You Know Who and also "God wants you to be rich" by Robert Kiyosaki and He Who Must Not Be Named.
It's time to get them out of their box and unleash the Beast within.

PS More boorish behaviour from the Disgusting Donald.

Izzie's been so busy in the Muggle world that the magical domains of Cyberia have been seriously neglected. So much so that I had 3 days left on a Vodafone recharge and 8GB of a 10GB allowance unused. Once midnight of the 28 day expiry period arrives, all those juicy unused gigabytes just turn into pumpkin puree. So that was just the temptation needed to update to the latest Big Mac operating system.

Then there's online course homework. Presently only doing one course but it is so interesting that I actually want to watch all the videos rather than just game the system with the weekly quizzes.

Monday 2nd May saw a new addition to the evening agenda taking the serpent away from the world of online lurking.
Last year the vague wishful thinking that it would be nice to join the Bookbinders Guild was converted into reality and of course it would be a good idea to take advantage of this opportunity to sign up for one of their book binding courses. I had done such a course way back in 2011 but figured that it's time for a refresher. This mob are far more fun. Not just that their course is cheaper and there are only half as many participants but they also provide all the materials and tools and the course is at a serpent friendly time and location. No need to be up at 7am in rush hour traffic in order to be at the other side of the city by 9.30am.

Then there's also the announcement last Sunday of a Federal election for Saturday 2nd July. We all knew it was coming for ages but now it is official.

Last but not least is the latest goblin gossip. A giant bowl of very tasty Leak soup.

Panama Papers

More Goblin Porn

This is going to be Schadenfreude on steroids.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

After one week of following Cardinal Pell's Pity Party, I did not think such a sniveling self righteous and buck passing heartless performance could be trumped. He's so completely clueless and out of touch with reality that he thought pleading a heart condition to avoid appearing live at the Royal Commission would get him off the hook. But then the victims of his incompetence or willful ignorance came to visit him in spite of their infinitely worse health problems.

Then along came Super Tuesday and even down here in distant Oz, we were subjected to the endless rantings and ravings of yet another puffed up pompous git.

Donald Trump is no joke. He's not some idiot clown but a sick and twisted megamaniacal egotistical evil goblin. He's also a heartless winker.





Not content with trashing the landscape, digging up trees, destroying water supplies so some locals are left for weeks without running water, The Trump even does dirty deals with the local councils so that he can compulsorily acquire the properties of pesky locals because he doesn't like them or how they ruin his views.

David and Goliath

What is even more frightening are his armies of minions who troll the youtube channels justifying every act of depravity in the name of FREEDOM and LIBERTY and sticking 2 fingers up to the so called establishment. If they can believe that such a one percenter wanker is not part of the establishment then they can believe anything.

It is so scary that Trump's delusions of grandeur are so close to becoming reality.

John Oliver was spot on when he says to mark the date of Friday 20th January 2017 in our calendars because that is the day in the future that all the geeks with time machines will want to go back to in order to fix up the coming chaos when the bull in the china shop swears the oath of allegiance.

The planet is just not big enough for North Korea's creepy Kim and Donald Trump to strut together at the top of the world stage. One of them will surely press the red button.

It's Dead Zone deja vu all over again.

Happy Grinchmas

Ayn Rand makes Cthulhu look cute, cuddly and positively humanitarian.


I know which of the pair I would rather spend Christmas with

The Witching Hour for the Goblins of Oz fast approaches. At the stroke of midnight a bright shiny new Financial Year begins. Just the perfect excuse for a certain serpent to dust off the cobwebs and make a squeaky clean new start.

It is the ideal time to do a Scrooge makeover. This involves an unusual but very useful ritual observed for many many moons now. The habit of recording every single cent spent encourages mindfulness with money. But there are other side effects. The easiest way to do this is to replay the day's activities at the end of the day and write down all transactions in the order they occur.
As well as remembering the day's events it means that months or even years later I can look at the list for a given day and remember it in remarkable detail.
It also means never being sucked in by all those scary so called financial advisors telling folks that they'll need tons of loot in retirement and then offering some dodgy get rich scheme to get there.

Since squiggling in the Scrooge book is an almost daily ritual, it is also the obvious place for putting appointments, interesting events, names and addresses and a whole bunch of assorted notes.

Had tried many times to use another diary devoted to all this other stuff but it always falls by the wayside.
The local cheapskate shop had a stash of 2014/2015 diaries last week. Some of them were A5 size with one day to a page. One week for two pages is simply not enough space. When some of the daily diaries were mistakenly marked with the $3 price tag reserved for the weekly version, it was a temptation too great to resist. There's a section of each page devoted to appointments and even a to do list at the top for each day with space for ten things and nice little ticky boxes for each one.

So today was a most auspicious occasion for the big switch. Just to get into the spirit of things, even devoted the first blank pages to listing a bunch of "New Year's Resolutions" all devoted to goblin business.

Also been busy setting up a new Scrivener file for July Camp Nano and playing around with Evernote. Very happy to find that it is possible to write notes and save as you go offline. It solves the problem of not being able to copy and paste using the tablet. It's even possible to take pictures and store them as notes or to draw scrawling scribbles. It would be wonderful if the software could actually decipher serpent squiggles since one finger typing is such a pain.
Since there seems to be not an advert to be seen, still trying to work out how Evernote manages to make money. Here's guessing some folks sign up for the premium service. Not sure what extras they get since the basic version seems to have lots of useful fun stuff.

Maybe they have secret sponsors at the CIA and NSA.

In any case it is still a never ending source of amazement all the useful free stuff that is out there these days. MOOCs, books and apps are just the tip of the online iceberg. So many toys. So little time.

It’s that time of the year again when both the state and federal governments put the final touches to their plotting and planning and preparations for the ritual of the dreaded annual Budget.
Of course the purse is always empty due to the appalling incompetence of the previous administration and drastic measures will have to be taken. There’s always talk of sacrifice, belt tightening and the usual predictable nonsense.

The Federal government has finally noticed that the big fat baby boomer bulge has now started moving to the retirement phase. So they are running around like headless chooks telling us that the sky is falling down. It didn’t seem to bother them back in 2003 to 2007 when they made massive tax cuts to the top end of the tax brackets and brought in a $5,000 baby bonus as if the good times were going to go on forever. Not once did they tweek the ridiculous 30% marginal rate on any dollar earned over $22,500 as if they believed that no one actually earned so little money. Of course the lower down the tax band that you change the rates the more it costs because everyone gets it. The Liberals under Howard did finally notice the ‘working poor’ and throw them a few crumbs in 2006 but by then it was far too late and they finally found themselves in the dustbin of history.
( More Goblin Gossip )

It’s hard to believe that it is exactly 5 years since the collapse of the Lehmann Brothers bank which ushered in the end of the financial world as we know it. Well sort of. A couple of minnows like Bernie Madoff got tossed on the frying pan while the sharks, giant squid and other big fishy goblins just continued with business as usual

In the interests of nostalgia, had every intention of visiting Kings Park, Hale House and the old astronomy tower on the hill like back in September 2008. Monday 15th September was a full moon that year and Kings Park was the perfect place for watching it while glued to the radio listening to the unfolding goblin drama over on Wall Street.

But Hale House has been converted to a new role as an Imperial residence for the State Premier. So its status as a serpent sacred site has been trashed as it is no longer accessible to the general public.

The other two locations are still as beautiful as ever but not when storms are brewing and it is pouring rain like it has been for much of today and most of the month so far. That makes two seriously wet Septembers in a row
These days you can plant seeds and they will drown rather than die of thirst which had been the usual fate at this time of year

So resorted to plan B - a visit to the zoo. That’s where the annual zoo pass comes in handy. At that stage it was not yet raining but it was well on the way. But that was actually an advantage. When you want to visit the nocturnal house, the less lurkers the better. As the posters outside proclaim “The quieter you are, the more you see”

( Creatures of the Night )

Izzie has been pigging out on what is possibly a last online seed buying binge.

As of Monday 1st July courtesy of the state government, there are now new fees for home gardeners who buy seeds from overseas or even interstate
Not one or two dollars per order but a ridiculous $56. It's supposedly for the quarantine mob to keep out all the evil nasties so often found in all those ghastly heirloom and organically grown seeds.

They got this little trick in under the radar. The permaculture people and other tree hugging greenies had started a media campaign and were getting good coverage when suddenly a certain drama in Canberra wiped the story right off the map. Ever so convenient for our little Emperor sitting in his ivory tower on the hill

The government made no effort at all to inform anyone about these new charges. In fact they went out of their way to keep them most secret indeed. And this in the very same week that they let Monsanto increase its share in Intergrain which used to be a government owned grain research organization.
Letting The AgriBeast in was just about the first thing the present state government did when it first got into office back in September 2008. Despite the warnings from organic growers, greenies and others that this would risk Western Australia losing its clean and green food producing reputation. Here we are with the natural advantage of distance from most pests and diseases and these goblins go and throw it all away for less than 30 pieces of silver. But they are still happy to use the excuse of quarantine to slug home gardeners with these outrageous charges

It’s not that difficult to show up this big fat new carbon tax as the revenue grabbing scam that it really is. Garden Guru Trevor Cochrane has blown some serious holes in the sad and pathetic concern for protection of our precious biosecurity.

The serpent’s supplier of choice is for the moment absorbing the cost. But here is guessing such good will towards their customers in the wild west will not last longer than a month or two.
And the 8 packets of free seeds that Diggers members get per year will soon be a thing of the past over here in the wild west.

Izzie doesn't want to buy the dodgy seeds in the big barns and supermarkets. Even most of those come from the United Kingdom. Not to mention one is never quite sure of the parent companies and there are less and less of those these days

If the goblins really think they will make a killing on these new fees, then they are in for a big big surprise. Never ever piss off the greenies.
The folks who don’t get all sneaky (and there’s huge fines for seed ‘smuggling’ to discourage them) will find other ways to get even

If there ever was a time to get organizing local seed saving exchanges, this is it.

Today was the big day for the long dormant inner goblin. A big fat 3 hour taxation exam. Needing to get a minimum of 80% to get a job with the goblins. And even with 80% it’s not guaranteed. Guess they need an out clause to avoid employing fat frumpy freaks like Izzie. Unless you are a complete geek who can do a tax return perfectly in five minutes they only need people for the peak tax season which runs from early July to the end of October

Was supposed to spend the afternoon pottering about in the garden and sorting out stuff inside the Lair. Ended up doing bugger all. Just sort of crashed and transformed into a brain dead zombie.
All those good intentions didn’t get very far. It’s not like there’s any shortage of stuff to be done. Now that the list of 50 things to be finished in 2 years officially started about two weeks ago there’s no excuse not to be getting on with a whole pile of things. It’s just finding some sneaky tricks to get motivated to do any of it.
Got no Coursera classes on at the moment and there’s no longer any need to spend two hours several times a week slaving over a hot abacus doing depreciation and capital gains work sheets although it might be a good idea to keep going with the serpent tax return. Wondering if those worthless goblins will remember to send out the annual pay certificate. For the last 17 years used to pick them up at work from the pay clerk. Those days are obviously over.
Wondering what company name will be on the certificate at the end of the next financial year.

Izzie hasn’t been doing much slinking in Cyberia of late. Been lots of distractions these days. The biggest two were due to the temptations of Coursera. (a kind of online candy store for compulsive learners)

The final exam for the Introduction to Mathematical Thinking Course was due on the first weekend of May and the rest of the week was spent doing peer assessment stuff. It seems crazy to spend hours and hours per week doing crazy maths stuff when there was no incentive other than simply learning new stuff and giving the old grey cells a bit of a workout. But that is a tale for another day.
Then the wickedly wonderful and totally irrational Dan Ariely’s course also had its final exam two weeks later. But this time you had to get more than 85% to even get a certificate! Turns out there was a method to this madness. It’s hard to believe that you can have so much fun and learn lots of interesting and useful stuff at the same time.

Even letting the students take the weekly quizzes up to 15 times before the deadline had an ulterior motive. Each time the questions were different so you couldn’t completely game the score. And every attempt meant thinking about the material and learning it almost by osmosis.
Got 88.4 which has been the Izzie’s best score so far for any course. Lots of folks missed out by less than two percent and some as low as 0.2 which would be most painful indeed. It’s almost like things were set up that way to get the biggest rise out of the lab rats especially after the topics on loss aversion and regret with the example of missing a plane by 2 minutes making you feel much worse than missing it by 2 hours. Some sadists even did studies on silver medalists at the Olympics. While the bronze medal winners were grinning the silvers were almost always miserable. For them second place really meant they were the first losers

All those lectures about tweeking people’s decisions in the direction you want by fiddling with defaults, setting arbitrary anchor points and decoy options should come in useful when putting on the evil overlord Designer of Dystopia hat.

It’s been strange since then to have no assignments, problem sets or quizzes due. Been making the most of the spare time to catch up on the goblin stuff. Today was the weekly 3 hour taxation class. It’s now official that the final exam is on Thursday 6th June - a truly evil date. And unlike the others this course was not free and is a serpent passport to a real job.

There’s been such a feast of decadence in the last weeks and not even mentioned the juiciest morsels. Weeks ago went on a random walk in Cyberia following the trail of the Snowflake Guy. In an attempt to stay away from the temptation of the Amazonian jungle and adopting a new policy of minimalism figured that the first stop would be some online library catalogues in search of his Dummies guide to writing.

Old fashioned Izzie likes to have a proper paper and ink tome as it is so portable and it somehow seems easier to remember stuff in books than when it is written on a computer screen. So while it was possible to borrow an ebook incarnation decided to go for the old fashioned version instead. But the one hard copy was out on loan so would have to wait for it to be returned. The Izzie is good at delayed gratification and the reservation notice arrived on Monday saying that the precious was available and ready to be picked up. Already taken a sneak peek or two and it looks most addictive and interesting indeed

Such perfect timing. Tomorrow the serpent will be slinking down to Eden Vale. Will be staying in a spooky old hotel. Managed to snaffle one of the two cheapie rooms which just happen to be overlooking the old balcony. It's not quite the Hilbert Hotel but here's hoping it will provide infinite inspiration anyway
It’s the perfect place to go searching for story seeds. So a box of Zombies and Randy Ingermanson’s “Writing Fiction for Dummies” should provide plenty of ideas. It’s also the perfect excuse for another fix of doom, gloom and dystopian drama. It’s a whole year since devouring the delicious “Hunger Games” and it’s time for a second helping.

After all those times passing the nanowrimo 50,000 word finish line but never actually completing a story, it is time to change all that. It’s just another manifestation of that bad hoarding habit

Aside from the local library it’s pretty much an internet dead zone down there. Well at least it is for some one who does not have a smart phone or a bright shiny tablet. Will eventually indulge in such a decadent toy but not quite yet. Not least because the choice is so overwhelming. Less than 6 months after buying an eenie weenie baby netbook the first ipad got launched. It was a much more elegant and user friendly device than the netbook. Could not justify buying such a toy then and evern less so lately and now some four years later there are some tablets on the market much less than half the price of the ipad. If there’s one of these gadgets that can convert serpent squiggles into legible text then it would be very difficult to resist

Must slink off to the snooze basket. Got to be up early to catch the train down south.