The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

Well the serpent has finally slinked out of Camp Nano and avoided being a feast for hordes of feral zombies. But there’s no time for the crash at the end of the finishing line. There’s a tax mid term exam due in tomorrow. The nice goblins let us do this one as an open book exam at home. Did the worst of it last Monday and Tuesday and spent the last two evenings just writing it out all nice and legible and making pdf files for the teacher to pick up and snatch in class.
I so so hate windoze. Took ages working out where the hell the main documents folder is kept. Guess that having the Big Mac has gotten this serpent all spoiled and lazy.

And being such a glutton for punishment, got a Coursera maths exam due in by Sunday evening. Will either have to find some way of uploading hand written files, do a crash course in math text mark up software or use one of those hunt and peck online keyboards. It too is one of the user friendly exams where you do not have to complete it all in one sitting. It came out yesterday so we have just under one week
Could of course always chicken out but have decided that it is better to try and fail miserably than not to bother at all and die wondering. Apparently many of the folks who did do the exam last time said that doing peer assessments of the final exams was where the penny finally dropped and they had their light bulb moments

It is actually quite amusing just how much you can get done by slowly plodding along. There’s something about a deadline that seems to unleash magical powers if you dare to take it seriously.

( Irrational Exuberance )

Izzie is a bit of a tarot junkie. Not for fortune telling but for all the pretty pictures and particularly for story telling. This mystical serpent just loves the feast of images and symbols. There is also a method to this madness, a pattern behind the kaleidoscope of images as well as the inevitable iconoclastic streak.

A certain serpent associate treats the cards as Gospel from on high and any use of the cards not involving candles, incense, a darkened room and the appropriate amount of respect while in the presence of the Almighty is regarded as blasphemy most foul. She thinks it is appalling that Izzie uses these holy relics for tawdry purposes such as the telling of tall tales

She regularly goes for readings and swears by the uncanny accuracy of the cards. This curious serpent decided it might be time for a try too. Being rather well acquainted with the Devil’s picture book means that they do not have the mystery and magical powers that most muggles attribute to them. But they are much prettier and more potent than a bunch of slushy Rorschach blobs. A sort of Muggle Mirror of Erised one could say. Ten people can look at the same card and each will see something completely different but usually relevant to their own individual issues

So reserved this first visit for the auspicious day of Friday 13th. There were three of them to choose from this year. Chose the middle one where there were no immediate dramas on the horizon.
While the reading was reasonably accurate there was no outstanding issues. The reader who goes by the name of Rosie did pick up on work dramas looming on the horizon. She did say that a lack of major cards was a good sign. Things are sailing along smoothly on a reasonably even keel.
Was satisfied that Rosie knew her stuff. She did not do the Sybil Trelawney or Gypsy Rose thing. No gimmicks just a dowdy old lady reading the cards.

( Sybil Says )

The Tower does not appear in any of the 88 cards drawn for this year’s nanowrimo adventure. Maybe there should be a chance for a guest appearance. Chapter 16 might be the perfect place to put it. It would make a wonderful location for an extraordinary general meeting of the Megatherion board of directors. Lock them all in there and nuke it to smithereens. After all, the only good goblin is a dead one.

Lately the serpent has not been squiggling much in Cyberia. Even mundane Muggle real life is not scoring too many emerald ink words in the spiral notebooks. Should be toning up those writing muscles for the November marathon but there’s just so many other distractions

Finally gotten over the Queen of Toads and her reign of terror. It’s not that nothing is happening just that other things are much more important. Completely useless stuff like Coursera’s online classes in cryptography and mathematical thinking. Useless in the sense that they have no practical value but they serve as a wonderful antidote to the toadish toxin that have for too long infested the green cells.

Unlike so many folks these days who spend hours at their desks both on the job and off, Izzie’s computer access is limited to between two and three hours in the evenings on weekdays. Daylight is too precious to be spent hunched over a creaking keyboard unless it is raining or sizzling outside.
Still playing catch up with downloading and watching the various video lectures for the two courses. But we cannot neglect squiggling completely. The old head will explode without the odd peek in the Pensieve. The sad and pathetic 6,600 and something words for September do not do justice to the vast quantities of faeces that are hitting the fan.

Discovered recently that one serious key to unleashing creativity is to do a mind dump of stuff put on the long finger. Used the looming start of the new month to tie up a few loose ends on the last weekend of September. There were letters and emails to be sent and a one off trick that will provide a guaranteed supply of bus travel at a big fat 25% discount. It felt so amazing to clear the decks and of course the knowledge that all procrastinators have that the time spent ruminating and considering getting around to doing something vastly exceeds the actual time and effort expended on doing the deed.

Decided that this was also the week to finally do a print out of all the assignments for the mathematical thinking course. It has the intriguing short title ‘maththink’ which in itself alone is reason to sign up. It is a fun and seriously double plus good course

The assignments themselves are not assessed but are the main part of the course. There’s some seriously delicious little morsels tossed in there. But the Izzie does not have a printer so this called for a visit to a city netcafe. Decided that there would be no peeking until finding a decent cafe. Izzie is one seriously sick serpent who actually looks forward to doing her homework. But then again one could expect that from most students enrolled at Hogwarts.
Izzie thinks that the lecturer Keith Devlin would approve a tiny tweek to Dumbledore
“Ah. Mathematics. A magic beyond all we do here”

So far the course is concentrating on basic logic. Never did get past the obvious ‘and’ and ‘or’ before so it getting both tricky and interesting. Been introduced to all sorts of tools to enable clear and logical thinking. Intuition can be fine but it is nice to be able to follow and check the accuracy of intuition with some rational and repeatable procedures. How else can you separate the real heirloom seeds from the Monsanto mutants?

It’s the strange loops that the serpent is really looking forward to. The very first week gave a hint that they would be playing a starring role at some later stage.
Decided to spend the day on the wild side of the city on the northern side of the old horseshoe bridge. The museum was one item on the agenda due to the presence of the Spiegel tent in its gardens and being one of the locations in the Awesome art festival for bright young (at heart) things
Turns out it does not start until tomorrow but that did not stop the serpent soaking up the magical atmosphere of the old cabinets with sea shell, corals, star fish and enormous stuffed elephants, bison and Tasmanian tigers

Noticed that the cafe is now open again. It had been closed for renovations on the last visit and now has a shabby retro chic look with formica tables and hideous orange and brown sofas.
But with a name like “The Muse Cafe” written in Geekish Greek style letters, how could Izzie possibly resist. Yesss. Outside in the sunshine near the gorgeous old wood and glass Spiegeltent and the old red brick walls of the museum with the odd owl sculpture hiding on the roof, it was the perfect nano cafe. Spent a good ninety minutes there. There were a handful of customers most of whom were sitting amongst all the kitsch inside. The mad rush is most likely in the morning and lunch time.

Did two rounds of index cards for the upcoming November adventure. There’s only twelve cards to be completed at this stage. Still not got a story line but something should evolve out of the 270 something story suggestions. Each card is linked to the chapter theme and the card before and after it so some of those story seeds should produce useful fruits.
Also took a peek at the five assignments and started on some of them. When the muses come to visit you got to grab and snatch what they offer because who knows when they will next arrive. Of course Izzie is not taking chances and intends to abduct and kidnap a couple.

One of Izzie's real life creative indulgences is membership of a public speaking group which meets in the city at the ungodly hour of 7am on Fridays
We do things like answering questions without notice, meeting procedure and plain old speeches. Excellent training for wannabee politicians

Izzie got rostered on to do a speech last week on the unlikely and seemingly impossible topic of "Specialization is for Insects"
There were two of us doing four minute speeches on this topic and we both got the usual two weeks notice. But at 6.30 on the bus, was still totally and absolutely uninspired. So there was only one thing left to do - to consult the cards

Pulled three out of the pack and placed them in a row. Linking the three to form a story is the best possible outcome but just a source of ideas would be perfectly acceptable
So the Dark Grimoire fell open on the following pages

2 of Pentacles
Justice
5 of Swords

So the first speaker talked about mosquitoes as being flying syringes and not much else and other than their vampiric tendencies, then talked about the architectural marvels of bee hives and artistic merit of spider webs (spiders are not technically insects but who cares?)
Humans also have artistic and architectural talents but can do much other besides. We can specialize but don't have to get stuck in a rut

Izzie had a somewhat more twisted tale only tangential to the title

For centuries, humans have been perfectly horrid to poor little critters - zapping them with fly swats, Mortein, DDT, overworking poor bees and insulting them with nasty noxious toxic gm crops, sticking pins in butterflies and being generally obnoxious
But now it's payback time. Insects want their revenge on nasty stinking pesky humans and The treacherous serpent Izzie as their human representative in negotiations will outline their plan of attack unless we mend our wicked ways
This was sort of in the manner of a rather controversial assignment recently set by a secondary school teacher
Izzie's plan for biological and chemical warfare included strikes by bees and overtime for mosquitoes and bubonic plague infested fleas and maggot laying flies everywhere

Both speeches went down very well. The critic loved the serpent's sick sense of humour and noticed the link to that big beat up about the terrorism teacher in the paper that week. The fact that the talk was not quite on topic other than staring insects as the main protagonist did not seem to bother him at all.

After the meeting, it turned out that the other speaker had also not prepared properly and had relied on last minute inspiration. What makes it so amusing, none of the audience had any idea and Izzie would have sworn she spent ages getting the mozzie sound effects just right and arranging ideas into a logical and interesting sequence

This place is a good training ground for abandoning the usual boring cautiousness and learning how to improvise and wing it and most importantly at all - the art of learning to create a mask and hide behind it and to test it in a safe place before letting it loose where it counts
Bluffing and bamboozling with BS is a talent that the serpent does not have and desperately needs to develop rather than hiding in the corner totally convinced of our utter incompetence

Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed

Izzie has been so absent from Cyberia lately. Simply slinking and lurking rather than squiggling. This state of affairs has not been helped by the fact that the Portkey to Cyberia does work but the connection is terribly slow and that the ancient Precioussss is playing sneaky games. Bad enough spitting the dummy and freezing when getting to 12gb of a 14gb backup and refusing to even acknowledge the existence of the podkin let alone allowing Izzie to update it with new gloomy music and baby backups.
But it's now chewed up Chatzilla and one of its two usb ports which just makes pottering online more of a hassle and less of a wonderful escape from mundane muggleness

But there's also been other temptations. Been a culture vulture feasting on museums and art galleries in July and returned to an older addiction - library books

While at the library in early July came across a notice for a scrapbooking class to be held there on Thursday 16th. It was two hours long and only 10 silver sickles. So why not try it thinks Izzie. It is time to start dipping our toes into the creative world
Actually, from looking at books about scrapbooking and lurking around craft and paper shops, it seems like the hobby from hell for Izzie. A feast of sentimental and sloppy slush and kitsch full of photos of pathetically happy families for a creature who despises and detests kids and is noted for the total absence of photos of herself or any dreary Dursleyish relatives. They are not in our wallet or on the mantel piece or in photo albums or online or anywhere at all.

The class lasted a good bit longer than two hours and there was only 3 scrappers and one teacher! All materials were provided and Izzie knew from slinks in supplies stores that the kits certainly would have cost at least the 10 silver sickles for the course. There were buttons, braid, die cuts, fluffy flowers, pretty printed papers and card
It was so strange getting the paws on scissors, paper, rulers and rubber stamps after so many years absence. Nothing like getting the paws wet to get the taste for more
The serpent has not gotten all sad and slushy but after getting the puke button pushed more than once by the sadness that is scrapbooking, got the notion of adding an evil twist and using it for our own nefarious purposes

Izzie's real obsession is tarot cards and learning how to do decorated journals or altered books and some of the scrappy skills are just the things needed
Was especially impressed with the many effects that can be created with rubber and acrylic stamps.
But apart from the slush, it struck Izzie that scrapping is infested with the same disease that plagues quilting and just about any leisure time activity these days. What began as a resourceful way of using up scraps of fabric or finding inventive uses for old magazines, buttons, ticket stubs and bits and bobs ends up becoming a huge industry where all these things can be got ready made and at a much higher price than the original materials ever could have cost.
There's craft stores that specialize in nothing but pretty coloured squares of fabric for quilt making and the ridiculous prices that the scrap stores charge for buttons, bits of leaves and pretty cutouts that could be gotten from any old magazine is just truly astonishing

No way is Izzie ever going to pay a fortune of forty silver sickles for a glorified photo album, archival quality or not. The inner scrooge slinked into an op shop and found an old but empty and possibly hand made album with brown paper and pretty lacy interleaved white sheets separating the pages. That was the tell tale sign that the thing was designed for putting photos in
This cost the princely sum of two silver sickles and will eventually be adorned with some of the contents of a very large bag of leather scraps - some big enough to cover it along with various coloured metal chocolate wrappers and blobs of splodgy spidery ink
Izzie's only concession to newness is a sticker book acquired in the remainder bin of the local Coles supermarket. None other than the sticker book for the latest Potter movie which is now so very last month and therefore ancient. Would have loved some of those Ministry logos and decrees from the last sticker book which unfortunately never did get sold off cheaply
Such a pity that the cauldron sticker is no bigger than the size of a golf ball as it would have been just the perfect thing to pop on the cover
Yessss. Izzie has found the perfect antidote to the lovie dovie icky sickly sweetness and light of the scrapbooking set.
If the serpent cannot snatch or steal a copy of Advanced Potions Making, then the only thing to do is make our own.
It will be a fun way to practise and to learn tricks and tips for use in the other grand project which looks like it will end up being moved onto the next 101 things in 1001 days list