The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

I've just realized that you don't have to KILL someone to create a Horcrux

Just keep repeating the same Big Lie
Over and over until they believe it.
Long enough and loud enough until it seeps into their ears,
Makes its way to their heart
and from there to every single pore of skin, every single cell.
Until it resides in every strand of their  DNA.

Then they are yours forever.

That’s when their bone becomes your bone.
Upon this rock you will build your empire.

Their flesh becomes your flesh.
Willingly given to serve the worthy cause of your self aggrandisement.

Their blood becomes your blood.
Just there for the taking.
Their life force becomes your ever replenishing source of supply
Nourishing your narcissist's soul and giving you such special energy

And the poor suckers never suspect a thing.
Because they don’t believe that magic is real.



But sometimes shit happens.

Your tasty reliable supply of Soylent Green
Somehow  transforms itself into cloves of  garlic.
And poisons you.
Slowly but surely


Your end.

Some history geek DJ played this on the radio this morning




I wonder what sort of monstrosity will be named in honour of Mary Trump

It is kind of creepy that this anniversary turns up the day after the explosions in Beirut. That was about 2.5 thousand tons of ammonium nitrate and could be heard in Cyprus some several hundred miles away. The Hiroshima bomb was 13 kiloton which is pipsqueak stuff by today's standards

It is astonishing to think that such flammable material could be left in a warehouse for 6 years or so. Didn't these people ever do chemistry at school. It literally was a ticking time bomb

There have been many bushfires in Australia triggered by people welding on fire ban days because somehow welding doesn't quite count as fire in most folks minds but this is a whole new level of craziness

It was probably already prohibitively expensive to get any sort of insurance in Beirut if even possible at all. So all the people killed or injured or who have their houses destroyed will be left to pick up the pieces.

A lot of people may also suffer severe hearing loss or brain damage from the shock wave. And the force of this explosion is positively pea sized compared to some of the stuff that can be unleashed from the infamous Football.

Strange times indeed

20th April used to be a dodgy day in Germany. Now the evil has spread across the pond and it has become a self perpetuating day of doom and gloom in the USA

It is the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing. If that gutter snipe were around today, he would be a red hat wearing trumPET
In those days 250 people murdered by a terrorist was a very big deal. Now it's something to brag about at White House press briefings and an excuse to demand praise for doing such a GREAT job

Followed a few years later by another bunch of narcissistic nihilists at the Columbine High School

Then there was the Boston Marathon bombing from a few years back and God knows what's in store in the next few days that could possibly be worse than what's already going on with the virus

Because trump has well and truly unleashed the nazi genie out of its bottle and his supporters no longer make any attempts to hide where their loyalties lie.

As King donald becomes increasingly unhinged by the reporters' attempts to hold him accountable for his astonishing malevolent incompetence and there may be court rulings any day now concerning the release of the unredacted Mueller report (it is a year old now. Seems like centuries ago) it appears ever more likely he is going to have a YUUUGE Downfall moment. A Berlin bunker scene. But with NUKES

I am sure Stephen Miller will take the opportunity to remind him about the real inspiration for the MAGA 'movement'

Meanwhile, the election campaigning has just gotten a whole lot nastier.
Including this gem




I am still waiting for the Dems to use this one

Only the toothbrush moustache is missing

Of course Izzie just had to send Don the Con a congratulatory tweet for his big day

Here's 50 candles for your YUUUGE inauguration anniversary chocolate cake Enjoy!

It is hard to believe that it is exactly 25 years to the day when I left the green goodness of Germany to come to the wide brown sunburnt land of Oz.
So much has happened since and I never ever imagined in my wildest dreams that an Ossie could ever become Chanceller of a united Germany since they were definitely regarded as second class citizens while I lived there.
Especially memorable was the reply from one of them when asked why so many of East Germans were going to the Wild West rather than staying in their own country.
She said that she spent the first 40 years of her life in the poor house of Europe and she was damned if she was going to spend the next 40 renovating it.

( The Satanic City and other places )

This week has seen several anniversaries. Some are significant only for the serpent and some for the wider world

It is just over a year now since the Las Vegas Loser unleashed his reign of terror on the unsuspecting people partying at a country music concert. It is interesting to see how this anniversary is observed but scariest of all is keeping fingers crossed that the Devil’s TrumPet does not pay too much attention lest he put both his hooves and those tiny hands in that petty potty little mouth of his. Maybe he has been kept so busy bitching about Dr Christine Ford that the anniversary will pass unnoticed on his calendar

Maybe he is saving his powder for December and the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school massacre.

But back in Izzieland, other days and dates have been drifting into mind

( Old news. Old grievances )

A day late but still better than never

The anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers bank which officially launched the global financial crisis of 2008 has produced a veritable smorgasbord of goblin porn

Some excellent 101 guides to the goblin drama of the decade brought to you by the Oz ABC

A Beginner's Guide to Gloom and Doom

The Lehman Legacy



"Collateralized XXXXXX obligations", "Equity” and “mezzanine” tranches and the trashing of the Dodd Frank legislation. Haven’t we heard this story somewhere before?

Nightmare on Wall Street

Been so many anniversaries the last few weeks that it is almost impossible to keep up with them all.
It has been one never ending party
The 500th anniversary of the Reformation, The 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution - that ended up a bit of a damp squib.
Then of course there was the first anniversary of a certain election from last year.
Forgotten in all this drama because there are no big fat 0s on the end is the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But 28 years is a very big deal indeed. Well it certainly is to this serpent. The inner calendar Nazi noticed a while ago that the western Gregorian calendar generally operates on cycles of 28 years (except those pesky non leap years in 1900, 2100 etc sort of trash the pattern) so that while it is sometimes 6 years, sometimes 5 and sometimes 11 years between dates and days corresponding, after 28 years they will always match. I am convinced that when they match, it is much easier to remember things that happened.

I was living in Germany back in 1989 and even had holidays at the time. Always had a soft spot for Halloween. Trouble was brewing and strange things were happening and when the first brick of the Wall came down, was sitting watching lots of it on TV but was too broke to be able to go over and join in the giant party. I think there was 6 hour traffic jams at the time because half the country wanted to join in
It was a Thursday, just like this year of course. The following year they had the official party on 3rd October. No idea if it was coincidence or some one in the Stasi with a sick and twisted sense of humour, but the original 911 (9th of November) had been long ago claimed by one Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. He had some beer brawl putsch in Munich on 9 November 1923 and of course the infamous Kristalnacht on the same day in 1938.
So it was just a bit too sensitive and too tasteless to proclaim the date as a national holiday after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Apparently the Berlin of these days bears no resemblance at all to the Berlin of 1989. The Dead Zone of Potsdamer Platz and the mysterious unmarked Fuhrer bunker in the area have no doubt long ago been turned into high rise towers and office blocks
I last visited the Satanic City in 1992. God knows when I will slink back there again

When last month's squiggling frenzy ended, got to thinking that December marks not just the end of Nanowrimo but the beginning of a month with a lot of awful anniversaries. One of them long before my time was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. That got a big look in this year due to the 75th anniversary. It turns out to share the date with the murder of John Lennon way back in 1980.


Of course all of that is ancient history but recently is also a festival of misery. There was the Sandy Hook school massacre back in December 2012. It is frightening to think that even the senseless deaths of so many school children did not trigger a change of heart in the government and public of the USA and certainly not the NRA. Australia had it's own creepy crawly gun man who took hostages at the Lindt cafe in Sydney back in 2014 and hitched his egotistical power trips to the ISIS bandwagon.
Then yet another pair of ISIS wannabees mowed down a bunch of people at a Christmas party last year in San Bernadino California.

And now there is barely time to remember the dead when a whole bunch of new atrocities fill the airwaves and the television screens.
Even when not having a television, it is almost impossible to escape them.

Putin must have studied his Master Stalin well. For he was reputed to have said that one death is a tragedy but a millions deaths are merely statistics.

The scale of the destruction in Syria and Allepo in particular is just too enormous for the normal person to comprehend. But watching a man giving a speech at an art gallery who is shot in the back in cold blood while his killer does a victory dance that would not be out of place in Saturday Night Fever - it was just plain creepy. Even if Andrei Karlov was a minion of Putin and personally responsible for bombing Alleppo back to the stone age which he most likely wasn't, it is still a ghastly way to die.

But the creepiest so far - it sort of reminded me of what the Americans call 9/11. Now that the jihadists find it so much harder to hijack planes they are getting desperate and resorting to hijacking trucks to use as weapons.

The attack was uncannily similar to the one in Nice which has now of course forever tainted Bastille Day for the French.

And now the miserable puritanical Islamic fundamentalists have trashed the wonderful Weihnachtsmarkt. No one does Christmas quite like the Germans. I still get nostalgic for the four years I spent Christmas there even while now being a card carrying member of the Grinch Club. Maybe that is why I signed up. The Oz attempts at doing Christmas are just so sad and pathetic in comparison and pretending that it is winter in the middle of summer just emphasizes the awfulness.

It must have been awful for the Polish truck driver Lukasz Urban who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and for his boss who was following the progress of the truck almost in real time and his wife who was getting no replies to her phone calls.

Now Germany will have to copy France and Belgium with extra security measures.

Then there's 21st December which as well as being the solstice is also the anniversary of the Lockerbie terrorist bombing. That seems like centuries ago except of course for the relatives for whom it will always be like yesterday.

Past or present. All paths lead to doom and gloom in December. Here's hoping that the future will not get tainted too. But since fumble fingered potty mouthed petty and vindictive Tyrant Trump and his Schnurrbart minions will soon get his paws on the nuclear codes, the odds are not exactly in our favour.

The serpent had such grand plans for the day. There were so many options to choose from. There was the party in Hyde Park famous for its Cthulhu trees or the monthly morning meeting of the local Nanowrimo mob who like to squiggle during the other 11 months of the year followed by a visit to my favourite lunatic asylum which is now an arts centre or yet another Fringe festival show or just slinking or lurking around their gorgeous venues and there are just so so many to choose from.
For the less ambitious there was the local shopping centre's Chinese New Year celebrations.

But all of these were laid low by the evil geeks in the Bureau of Meteorology and their grand plans to impress the new boss above with a stinking sizzling whole week of 40+.
Presently it is the pleasant dry kind of heat that just sizzles you to a crisp rather than makes you murderous while you melt in a stinking sticky pool of sweat but with the thermometer expected to stay above 25 all week then a whole bunch of sleepless nights are on the agenda for those folks without air conditioning.

As long as the icky sticky humidity stays away, the heat wave will be just about bearable for a pot bellied python such as Izzie but it is the weeds that are the worry. Been so so proud of the achievement of planting 15 trees since May and managing to keep all except one alive and well all through December and January. But even watering both mornings and evenings over the next week will not be sufficient to guarantee their survival. Once the air temperature goes over 35c most plants get stressed out and go into survival mode and a whole week at 40 is going to be way too much for some of them.

It was just such a heat wave in February of 2012 that was the final straw for a big fat macadamia tree that had been happily living in the Lair for some 10 years or so and had been producing nuts for 3 of those years. I had a proper funeral for the poor thing and used its remains as the basis for a new nut tree patch and vowed to never again let a tree die on my watch.

While lurking in the garden this evening with a glass or two of red and some cheese and crackers, I realized that it was exactly 25 years since a certain significant serpent anniversary. If I had remembered earlier in the day i would have more likely made the effort to slink down to the local shops to buy some brie and a bottle of inky black Wynns Cabernet to celebrate "Dark Mark Day" which to the outside world looked rather like a failed suicide attempt but in a strange way marked the first stirrings of the inner serpent after many years of being neglected and ignored in favour of the fickle gods of reason and logic.

But maybe it is a good thing to spend less time in the past and more in the here and now even if it is a sizzling stinking 40 something.