The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

The 3 desperate dinosaurs. Blobfish Bojo looks kind of cute and Brazil's Bolsonaro looks like the fugly love child of General Flynn and Adolf Hitler

Meanwhile, Dodgy Don grows ever more desperate with his distractions. Tomorrow is the start of not one but TWO court cases concerning his dodgy deals and dirty laundry from his private business. He thinks all these diversions will take our minds off his Deutsche Bank deals

Here is hoping the Twitterati will have all the court gossip since unlike the impeachment proceedings, it is unlikely to be live streamed.

Meanwhile, I have been rummaging around in the ABC broom cupboard dusting off some old gems that just get juicier with age
Ahmaud Arbery gets the death penalty by some self styled judges for jogging while black while poor misunderstood General Flynn gets a giant pity party parade and "Get out of jail free" card from the filthy freak that fired him in the first place

Flynn the Treason Weasel

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Not miserable grumpy Grinchmas but the Fringe Festival where inner freaks get unleashed and the inner muse does not go out on family friendly creative dates but puts on the red lights and high heels and gets well and truly LAID.

Friday was one such night. Having decided to take no chances on getting cheap tickets for Steampunk Cabaret that night, I had already paid full price to get one for Saturday leaving the evening completely free for other cheap freaky adventures

( Boys and other Toys )

It’s that time of year again. The freaky Fringe Festival is in full swing. Time for all the weirdos and freaks to come out of their broom cupboards and celebrate their strangeness

Izzie is no exception.
There are 700 shows and four weeks to see them.
It has gotten to the stage that the printed program is now in size 6 font so the serpent has to resort to the website to gawk at stuff
There are lots of cabaret, burlesque, comedy and circus shows but the greatest juggling act is the art of snaffling tickets for shows.
There is the eternal trade off between taking a chance on cheap tickets (officially called Rushtix) for a desired show or missing out completely due to being such a cheapskate

Learned from experience that certain performers don’t do cheap. Sometimes this is a philosophical attitude and sometimes it is due to being around awhile and getting a reputation of being absolutely fabulous
Way back in 2013 there was this quirky mob called Briefs who were a bunch of queer Dole bludgers from Queensland.
They were best described as Drag Queens do steamy circus stuff. Also known as Boylesque
Their first two shows were listed under the cheap tickets and this serpent snaffled the second night for the princely sum of $20. Even if the show was crap, it was worth the price of admission just to get inside a 1920s Spiegeltent all the way from Belgium.
But it was sizzling and sexy and very impressive.

By the third show word had gotten around they were well and truly sold out and since then have never ever needed to sell cheap tickets. Now they can charge $48 per ticket and they run for three weeks with sell out shows
Back in 2016 I went to a show starring Cougar Morrison who can best be described as an androgynous singer who does amazing impersonations of Edith Piaf. Got into that show for a ridiculous $10 and was so impressed that I will now happily pay $20 to $30 for anything with his/her name on it.
There is another mob called Bogan Shakespeare and their tickets sell like hotcakes. So this time did not take any chances and got in early but still miffed on missing out on MacBeth last year because that is by far this serpent’s favourite Shakespeare play
Every year we get some amazing Americans called Sound and Fury who specialise in Shakespeare parodies and the odd Alfred Hitchcock show and they are also always on the Izzie shopping list

So when peeking through the program and coming across Mein Camp the question was - to buy or not to buy?
Whether it is wiser to buy tickets in advance to be sure of getting a show or to take a chance on being a cheapskate and missing out altogether?
The Show had a run time of Saturday 27th January to Thursday 1st February.

Finally decided to wait until Saturday to get cheap tix that day and if not available would then take the plunge and buy at full price for Thursday 1st.
If not for the big fat full moon tomorrow taking a likely cheapskate day off the agenda, would have probably chanced it
So there were no cheap tix on the Saturday. Sunday was not an option due to the constraint of public transport so I figures that it’s better safe than sorry so went ahead and splurged on a full price ticket. So of course Murphy’s Law dictates that it has been half price Sunday, Monday and today.

A bit miffed but it would be much worse to be left wondering if it turned out to be a sell out show and the serpent had been waiting for cheap tix

The rules have changed for the better. It used to be possible to turn up any time after midday at the box office to peruse the list of cheap tix. Then last year they made them online only from 11am which meant that I had to adopt the strategy of paying full price on work days and taking a chance on the other ones.
Also the online booking fees of $2 means that it makes sense to snaffle 3 shows in one session rather than just one
So gone were the days of just showing up and seeing what was available and taking a chance. More plotting and planning would be required
This year they went back to allowing in person purchases and added the nifty feature of a daily email with a list of the cheapies. So much more civilised than rummaging through the website from hell, one show at a time trying to find interesting things

So the year they have made it easier than ever to indulge is the very year that the serpent has a budget of $200 silver sickles.
Every year since 2012 I have been to between 16 and 20 shows nearly all of them at half price or less.
There are some duds but they are the exception not the rule ( except for stand up comedy which is nearly always sad and pathetic)
Added another show to the wish list - just the title alone is reason enough to sign up
Cardinal Sins - Pell in a Cell

But even without attending any shows, just lurking around the assorted venues and the Pleasure Garden is a magical way of spending the evening.

So strange that the city is at its safest when the freaks are unleashed.

Izzie never ever imagined that it would be necessary to turn on the heater during October. This is Oz after all and we are supposed to be sizzling and certainly not snuggling up, toasting our toes and listening to the howling wind and the rain lashing the window panes.

Just the perfect weather in fact for listening to the radio and catching up on podcasts.

First there was the history of a rather infamous book (I tried to read it many moons ago but it was just too whiny)
I nearly died laughing on hearing a BBC program about it which claimed that "Mein Kampf" is a best seller in India where it is seen as a sort of self help book. How one man began as a down and out doing time in jail to become the leader of a powerful nation in such a short time. The fact that he made things so difficult for the British Empire just adds to the allure. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that)

Or to put it in more modern business jargon
"They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it"
source

Then there's the more recent cult courtesy of Old Mr Hubbard. The good old days seem well and truly over with Anonymous and an assortment of whistle blowers spilling the beans on the monstrous cash cow. Unfortunately this program starts at the witching hour of midnight and I've usually fallen asleep half way through it. Of course there's always the podcasts but a serpent needs 9 lives to catch up with all the tasty morsels.

Then there was a fascinating exploration of the subtle difference between scary and creepy

I love the list of dodgy jobs. It will make perfect nanowrimo prompt. This year's sad and sordid story will need to feature at least four of the following occupations with bonus points for all of them.


Clown
Taxidermist
Sex Shop Owner
Funeral Director
Taxi Driver
Priest
Janitor
Garbage Collector
Security Guard
Writer
Actor

It is that time of year. In the spookiest of parks where the Cthulhu trees grow, circus tents are popping up like mushrooms and a mysterious labyrinth extols all who dare enter its tangled verdant shrubbier to “Get Lost”
There is a very real enormous bunya nut tree without the giant seed pods that have been known to seriously maim or even kill those who encounter them but the rest of the maze is made of plastic plants and shrubbery. With a decadent entry fee of $15 and no early bird discounts, I guess I will just have to die wondering about what really lurks within those plastic walls.

It is the time that the freaks and wierdos come out of their broom closets and take over the town. It’s the most fabulous time of the year. Much more fun than Christmas and a whole lot freakier.

It is the only thing that makes the sizzling stinking hot summer here bearable.

( Fun and Frazzle )

It’s scary to think that it’s exactly 6 months between last Christmas and the next one. At least the weather is gorgeous and there’s no chance of the mercury melting at 40 celsius at this time of year in Oz.
There’s just too much weird stuff and so little time to squiggle about it.

The fun started last Wednesday with an invitation to a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It was a fund raising event for the Alzheimers Association. It was the perfect opportunity to dress up as Dolores Umbridge and wear one very special Cthulhu hat. It’s a tough job being the Queen of Hearts but some one has to do it.
( Curiouser and curiouser )

It’s been a very freaky three weeks. The Izzie must be a glutton for punishment. In the midst of a serious Fringe Binge also juggling the video lectures, readings and home work assignment for not one but four online courses with another starting next week!
The Edx course starting next week “Effective thinking through mathematics” was supposed to have started in early January so that seriously stuffed up the serpent plans. But having read their book “The 5 elements of effective thinking” and found it interesting and inspiring, the serpent is determined to pursue this puzzling path at whatever price. Which in fact is FREE

A similar class has just started again over at Coursera. Done it several times already but signed up again for the sake of curiosity and nostalgia. It is also fascinating to watch the evolution of online education - MOOCs in particular. Here’s thinking that within a few years as the pressure for return on investment from the vulture capitalists increases, these few years will be fondly regarded as the Golden Age where priceless learning could be obtained for no cost but time

Another of these courses has a bunch of fabulous books on the reading list. This week’s subject is "Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice through the Looking Glass"
Having already got one of these as an ebook on the tablet and both of them in Martin Gardner’s very erudite “The Annotated Alice”, reading them should not have been a problem

But the Annotated Alice is as fat as any Bible and just as big and heavy. Not the sort of thing you would pop in a back pack for a bit of reading at the bus stop. And this ancient serpent still struggles with the new ebook things. Worked out how to do bookmarks but anything other than reading one page after another seems quite tricky to master

So resorted to the local library and snaffled a pocket sized paperback dead tree copy with illustrations by Marvin Peake which are really spooky and gorgeous
Having searched in vain for Humpty Dumpty and the Red Queen who keeps running to stand still in the ebook, was relieved to discover them all alive and well in the Looking Glass

So spent a good few hours today reading that story and was delighted to find the Jabberwocky, the walrus and all sorts of strange creatures within. Had not realized that “believing six impossible things before breakfast’ was from that book along with a whole bunch of other ideas and phrases that have become part of everyday speech

But the really freaky thing is that on several visits to the Fringe Pleasure Garden the loudspeakers were playing the gorgeous and ever so creepy song “White Rabbit”. Grace Slick has sold her soul since then but it's still a brilliant blood curdling spine tingling song

Had no idea just how much this book influenced the sixties drug culture. Of course just about everyone is going to take that angle for the assignments or the ever so predictable and boring Freudian sex angle. A certain Cat found another sick and twisted take on these tales but Izzie ain’t going there either.

It was exactly 5 years ago that Izzie first had froggie lodgers in the house. One of them was mad about those books and used to say that Lewis Carroll was a fuddy duddy old conservative and hated all the new fangled maths. He wrote the Alice stories to take the piss out of such crazy illogical ideas and would likely be turning in his grave if he had known that his book would turn out to be their Bible. And Poe’s Law hadn’t even been invented yet
In a stroke of good luck there’s a few posts in the latest iteration of the Introduction to Mathematical Thinking about this very topic

So with the help of Martin Gardner and Keith Devlin, it should be possible to present a reasonable amount of evidence to convince a jury of five members. But the tricky bit is being rationed to a mere 320 words to state the case

In the sci fi and fantasy course the assignments are peer assessed and grammar Nazis are given the green light. One of them was exceedingly upset by a lack of dots at the end of many sentences (usually the last one in a paragraph)
Had the same comment in another course. It’s funny. Had never even noticed this little idiosyncrasy until it was pointed out. Still not quite sure why it would push anyone’s buttons. Unlike absent or misplaced commas it is unlikely to change the possible meaning of a sentence

But the Grimm’s fairy tales was just a warm up. The Izzie is going to get seriously esoteric in the next installments which include the Alice tales and Dracula
An essay length of maximum 320 words is pure evil genius. No room for waffling bullshit. Every single word has got to work to earn its place in the tale
And the Cat has set the bar exceedingly high.

So much wickedly wonderful weirdness in Izzieland of late. It's very rare for a certain serpent to be slinking about the city on a Friday or Saturday night. But then it's not any old weekend that we have Fringe World

The place is buzzing with life and most of it of the jolly quirky variety rather than the usual assortment of gutless punching drunk and disorderly mob on the rampage
It's wonderful to see so many ladies wandering around in corsets, fish net stockings and very crazy hats, hunch back zombie clowns doing impromptu performances in the gardens and lots of the performers meandering around in costume

A gorgeous old park with a dozen or so Cthulhu trees has been converted into a sea of tents and marquees and an assortment of very peculiar rickety bockety buildings. They have made the place even more magical than it already was. Even the old gazebo has been spruced up with the addition of an enormous glitter ball. They must do discos there after dark

But things have changed since last year. Gone are the days of turning up at 2pm hoping to get half price tickets. Most ticket sales are now online. The cheapies are available from 11am online and by the time you get to the box office in person the best stuff is already gone. It was possible to turn up in the afternoon and get cheap tickets for good shows for the first couple of days. But slowly the city folks have woken up to the big fat party in their midst and they want in on the action


But best of all is the weather. It seems that usual stinking forties we get in February have all gone over to Adelaide and Melbourne

Did have to do a mad dash last night in order to catch the last bus at 11.20. Made it with only five minutes to spare. Got to thinking how a really good show can be totally tainted by the mad ten minute dash at the end of it. Then got hassled by a happy clapper on the bus who was seeking converts for the Lord. Sussed out that he was a literal believer in the 6 day creation, Adam's rib etc etc.
But maybe the Good Lord did have a purpose in having us cross paths. The conversation served as a sort of circuit breaker to forget about the hassle of bus hopping

It turns out that there is some one doing a show about being from a Christian evangelical family.
May as well just quote the blurb
Chris Wainhouse is the Anti-Chris. The polar opposite of what his family expected. But when you come from a fundamentalist Christian household that believe in a literal interpretation of the bible, becoming the black sheep of the family can be as easy as not wanting to be one of the sheep. Prepare to have your mind fried as Chris take you on a Supernatural Evangelistic Expialidocious journey from the 6000 year old planet he grew up on to the 4.5 billion year old planet he now calls home.

After last night's encounter will most definitely be adding that one to the 'must see' list and with a bit of luck might get another one of those wonderful $5 tickets to see it

What a difference a day makes. The weather has gone from sizzling steamy 37 something down to a gorgeous pleasant and breezy 27 today. The old grey cells even got a bit twinkly as they recovered from the soul sapping miserable heat

The main serpent gossip is that the annual festival of freakiness that is Fringe World just started on Friday
It’s a four week feast of circus, cabaret, burlesque, comedy and assorted drama. It’s sort of like Halloween on steroids

And unlike the official city Arts Festival with all the capital letters and posh mining magnate sponsors, these folks not only keep the shows cheap but have lots of tickets on the day for half price or less. Needless to say there's more than a few shows that take the total piss out of some of these same mining magnates

Of course it’s not all sparkles and sequins and silver linings. There is one big fat grey cloud and this is the monumental stuff up that is the city centre road works and the public transport system
Gone is last year’s option of leaving a show at 11pm and having less than a ten minute walk to the bus station. Said station is being demolished some time this week and its replacement is a good twenty five minutes walk away in a creepy desolate part of town

So it looks like the serpent will have to slink back to the bus by 9.30 at the latest and then spend the rest of the evening catching up on various online course readings and assignments

Got two courses running at the moment and by mid February will have added Michael Starbird’s “Effective Thinking Through Mathematics” and “Fantasy and Science Fiction” which apparently has a massive pile of stuff to read.

So with the feast of art, books, cabaret and freak shows, there should be no excuse whatsoever for lack of serpent ideas for things to squiggle

Seen two shows so far and they were both very good.
One zany creation called “Hamlet and Juliet” had the mad (or not so mad) great Dane all set out to revenge his father. But that plan goes out the window when he meets a gorgeous girl who is a guest at his mother’s wedding. And the rest is a riot of twisted Shakespearean snippets, sleazy innuendo and all sorts of geekish allusions to scenes from assorted movies

Best of all was the decision to book for their other show which is a parody of Alfred Hitchcock movies and to take a chance on getting the mixed up lovers as a last minute ticket. Turns out the strategy to lure customers in is to have the long weekend sprinkled with lots of $5 specials. This show happened to be one of them.

Still slowly sifting through the big fat catalogue making a list and checking it twice. There’s just too much to choose.

So between visiting shows and catching up on Coursera readings and assignments, it’s likely the Izzie will not be lurking much in online journal land over the next three weeks

The serpent slowly slinks back to mundane muggle reality after a four week feast of freakishness. Totally pigged out on a Fringe Binge over the last few weeks. As most of the shows happened to be scheduled during the times normally dedicated to squiggling, slinking or doing Coursera homework, all those things have been sadly neglected of late. Now it is finally time to catch up and as a seriously introverted serpent to finally muse and ponder over all the recent adventures.

As if the Fringe Binge wasn’t sufficient to feast upon there was also an arts festival. This included a concert by one of my favourite singers ever as well as a wickedly wonderful writer’s festival last weekend. The Michael Leunig talk was sold out and this duck loving serpent missed seeing her idol in real life. Radio interviews are not quite the same. But did get to see the wicked and very twisted Margaret Atwood and China Mieville. Having the pair of them together in one room taking the piss out of the pompous presenter and just about everything else under the sun was a most amusing experience. Here’s hoping that Auntie ABC will broadcast their feast of snark some time soon

There was even a pitch fest where aspiring writers could book a spot and get their three minutes of fame persuading a big wig from the University of WA press to publish their precious manuscript. Presenters were bookings only but anyone from the public could sit in on the action. It was not quite the same standard as the Nanowrimo Pitchapalooza but it was interesting to see a real live Book Hunter in action


And it was simply not possible to go past the tent offering ‘A glass of wine and a good book”. They were only itsy bitsy samples but with six stalls most with 6 different wines for tasting it was not too difficult to snaffle a glass or two between them all

Most of the fun ended last Sunday. Paid a nostalgic last visit to the urban orchard and the adorably gorgeous freaky Spiegeltent. Now the whole area around the museum, art gallery and state library looks like the spooky wasteland that it usually is for the other eleven months of the year

It was with more than a sense of relief returning to the usual habits of pottering around Dursleyville in the daytime, slinking back to the Lair for twilight to water the weeds and do other garden stuff before finally creeping upstairs to slink about in Cyberia.
The weather is slowly becoming more civilized but is still too pickly to do any proper planting. Will be waiting for the first rains of ‘autumn’ before finally risking any precious seeds

Soon it will be time to start plotting and planning for Camp Nano. With 18 shows visited in the last four weeks there should be no excuse for lack of inspiration. A bunch of Zombie Drag Queens dressed in budgie smugglers running away to the circus could be a good start

Now we got one week left of another freak show. The state election is on Saturday and it's going to be so much fun doing a bit of polling station hopping