The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

This is now my 12th time doing Nanowrimo in November
The first time was in 2009 and by coincidence, this year’s days and dates coincide - i.e. In 2009 (and also 2015) the first day of November was a Sunday, which also meant that it is a Black Friday month
The last Black Friday in November was in 2015 and I remember it as if only yesterday because it was the day that a bunch of terrorists attempted to attack a football game in France and managed to kill more than a hundred people in the Bataclan theatre

So aside from those awful anniversaries, what I have noticed over the whole time is that I usually spend the first week in a sluggish snailish state unlike most Nanowrimo squigglers who are full of enthusiasm and bright ideas. They start all bright eyed and bushy tailed and chalk up YUUUGE word counts while I just plod along just managing to reach the daily word count quota of 1,666 words

( The Missing Muse )

Today was a seriously busy day. After 2 days of lurking and slinking at Borgin and Burkes eying up the territory and the Enemy, today was the big day.

I had been drawing up the battle plans because auctions are infamous pits of quicksand for those who do not have their reason and wits about them.

( The Serpent's Strategy )

Nanowrimo is over for yet another year and I reached the magical milestone of 50,000 words but added another 5,555 of my own in order to indulge my obsession with pretty and symmetrical numbers

The story that I intended to write was NOT the one that ended up on the pages. Like too often in the last few years Dursley dramas have hijacked any attempts to write normal stories

But there are no regrets. For this giant formless pile of words did not turn into a proper story with a beginning, middle and end but transformed itself instead into a giant Pensieve.

I joined the dots and found all sorts of sneaky but legal ways to get into trance states. The music of Lisa Gerrard is a particularly potent weapon for this purpose. I listened for the tiniest stirrings of the inner serpent and resorted to all sorts of devious means to bring the shy and retiring creature out of hibernation

And that is how the real magic happened. Just in the nick of time too. For if the inner serpent had not come to the rescue, it would have been a dark and difficult time watching Vile Vernon Dursley grandest plan to date to erase the last living trace of Petunia's legacy from the planet

So I have managed to turn the most bitter and sour of lemons into a very bubbly tasty potion indeed.

Let the Twitter Games begin!

Promises to be the best Reality TV show since that inauguration

Politics really is Hollywood for ugly people

It is wonderful to see a Real Leader in action. We can rely on Dobby Putin to stand up for the rights of enslaved house elves everywhere. What a joy to hear the sound of marching boots in the morning as the freedom loving forces of The Motherland liberate the long suffering oppressed ethnic Russians of the Sudetenland.
But wait there's more. The minority millionaire ethnic Russians of Kensington and Chelsea also need a saviour in their hour of need.

It is truly touching to see the United States (and the grovelling Congo line of suck holes in Britain and Australia) being ever so concerned with the rights of sovereign states and The Rule of Law when it is exactly 11 years to the very day since their invasion of Iraq.

It's like Animal Farm all over again.

Izzie’s been a busy but flustered serpent of late. The stinking sizzling weather is gone and there’s even been lots of rain lately. But in spite of all this good stuff just cannot snap out of this present state of doomy gloomy awfulizing. Been so many dramas with the ant man, dodgy taps and the roof repairs that just seem to be dragging on and on and now we will soon be in the middle of the rainy season. All this shit should have been finished on their first visit in early February

So much gossip and so little squiggled. Been taking a peek in the old Pensieve from many moons ago and could not help but think that way back in 2003 and 2004 with two jobs and three subjects at uni and no computer or internet in the Lair, managed to squiggle far more stuff in Livejournal land than now with all the time in the world and a Big Mac with its very own Portkey to the magical world of Cyberia

Had so much fun back in 2005 putting bets on the new owner of the ‘Fisherman’s Shoes’ Almost as a joke and sign of utter evilness was hoping that a certain Joseph Ratzinger would get the top job. It’s up there with Barack Obama or Henry Kissinger getting the Nobel Peace Prize

This time had the old forked tongue crossed for George Pell for Pope and Tony Abbott for the Lodge (there’s a federal election in Oz this September. It’s already been nicknamed the Yom Kippur election due to the impeccable timing)

Lucky it was only Monopoly money as the silly bugger blew his chances by claiming that the Papal resignation was setting a bad precedent and was ‘just not cricket’
So we end up with some outsider who bears an uncanny resemblance to one Alberto Luciano. If it is more than skin deep he will definitely not last long in that job. Only got a proper peek at the papers today but it was the big story all yesterday.
The minute I heard he was going to take the name Francis was very impressed. Francis of Assisi must be the nearest thing that Christianity has to a Buddha.
Was ever so amused how the only local journalist who saw any significance in this was one Walid Ali - a card carrying Muslim! Turns out that he had thought of a second Francis. Had forgotten about the Xavier fellow. Must go googling Francis Xavier. Always getting him mixed up with Ignatius Loyola.
Here’s hoping that he will resurrect liberation theology and all the left wing stuff that his predecessors wanted dead, buried and cremated.
Bring it back from the dead. Zombie theology is just what the world needs right now. Maybe he will even restore Anthony De Mello to the pantheon of saints where he belongs. His predecessor said such awful things about him and that was how Ratzi first appeared on the Izzie radar

Anthony de Mello was the Peter Cundall of Catholicism

Not that it should matter to this agnostic serpent. The Roman Church has become rather known for all the wrong sort of stuff lately - the stuffy bureaucratic old boys club that considers looking after its own much more important than doing the right thing and the whole obsession with sex, suffering and virgin mothers. But one thing that they do brilliantly is smells and bells. Religion without rituals is just missing a certain something.

And of course it was these lovely folks who brought us the Inquisition which reminds this serpent of a recent request for questions from an online friend

An Inquisition Meme

Izzie doesn’t do many of these lately. There’s way too many other distractions. But now and again a nosy Inquisitor comes along with ways and means of persuading serpents to respond. It was even tempting to answer some of the questions she gave to her other victims

The Dinner party is always an interesting and revealing hypothetical

( Serpent Snippets )

It’s festival time in downtown Dursleyville. It is one of the two times of year when all the weirdos come out of their closets and broom cupboards
But this year has been even weirder than ever. Luckily we have been blessed with reasonably mild weather for February after the week of hell that started with the new moon in January
It is strange to be attending events that you know will form part of very special memories for many years in the future and to know it at the time.
This so called fringe festival is what the official arts festival used to be before the yuppies took over and ruined it for the folks that don’t have gold and iron ore in their pockets
They have an interesting innovation called “Rushtix” where their cute pink caravans sell tickets for upcoming shows at reduced prices. Most half price and some even less.
The main festival used to have limited cheap tickets for four or five shows for that day and this special feature was reason enough to take two weeks holidays to pig out on plays and other assorted dramas

But then the goblins turned this into a labyrinthine ritual involving possessing a copy of the local daily newspaper, ringing the very secret number at exactly 10.13 am and giving the special code word for the show in question. Credit card only of course with assorted booking and transaction fees
This was their letter of the law response to the numerous complaints that they had gotten rid of the last minute cheap tickets and made the festival too unaffordable
So aside from perusing the program and booking early for stuff that looked the most likely to sell out, decided to take a chance on everything else.
Got to see a different show every day this week including this evening and with the exception of the decadent “Gold Digger - the shags to riches story of Australia’s most famous iron ‘ore”, most of them cost between 10 and 20 silver sickles.

Even the venues are gorgeous. The old treasury building is likes something out of a Kafka novel. Went to a show last night simply to get our nose inside the Postal Hall which was the original post office from the colonial days and as such remains the official marker point for distances to everywhere else. They used to call that street corner ‘ground zero’ but that expression has taken on a rather more unfortunate connotation in the last decade

This particular show was in the old post office hall with its most gorgeous arches and ornaments and a very mysterious walk way and corridor near the top leading to all sorts of mysterious doors. The side doors led off to strange cubicles and dusty staircases. It was like some enormous labyrinth and the perfect place for a murder mystery or ghost tours. Pity there were so many staff both before and after the shows making sure the visitors did not get too adventurous in their wanderings off the beaten path
The show turned out to be very good too. Got to love a guy who says

“I am from Belfast. It used to be big in the 80s you know”

“We get to play in crappy venues like this one. This is a condemned building. It could collapse any minute and we’d all get killed”

It was a show about the lives and loves of two circus performers who constantly bicker with each other between episodes of juggling, acrobatics and amorous adventures with members of the audience to the background tune of “Je t’aime”

But been so so busy being a culture vulture in mundane muggle reality that the online life has been sadly sadly neglected. Aside from a quick 20 minute peek on Saturday morning been absent from Cyberia since last Friday. Didn’t even have a proper ‘Dark mark’ party on Tuesday 7th. And the antics of the goblins are getting so outrageous that it is becoming almost impossible to keep up squiggling about them.

But there will be another anniversary next February and the internet will be there next month. The festival will not. The Old Treasury Buildings will once again be returned to the greedy clutches of the goblins who will convert them all into a posh hotel for snots where weirdos, freaks and fringe dwellers will most definitely not be welcome
Some of the people’s posts where the serpent wanted to leave calling cards or say hello are now two weeks old. Will be catching up slowly.
Might even manage to add a review or two of the some 10 shows seen so far