The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

If the fates had ignored a certain serpent then today I would have been marking 19 years of servitude in Salazar’s Sanatorium for Superannuated Sorcerers. Also known as the day job.
Thanks to the intervention of a certain toad, the clock stopped just short of 17.5 years. The loss of those 500 plus hours of accumulated sick leave still peeves me to this very day.

The grand plan back in May 2012 was to pay off a $25,000 mortgage in 250 days. The simple act of creating this deadline provided the motivation to nuke half of the total in less than one week. I raided several nest eggs to achieve this aim. This was largely inspired by the Queen of Cane Toads slowly and steadily picking off the old house elves one by one. The place was becoming so toxic, it was time to make plans to join the rest of the rats leaving the sinking ship.

( A toadish tale )

This serpent is amused when thinking of the rituals for this year’s nanowrimo adventure.
In order to save the hassle of shuffling twice, decided in early 2011 to kill two birds with one stone. So went and bought two 200 page spiral notebooks. One for 2011 and one for this year
So this cheapskate serpent shuffled one deck. 22 chapters and 4 cards per chapter with each group returned to the deck. Sometimes would work in batches of 3 in order to guarantee that the same cards would not turn up twice

In order to save time and effort in November when every minute is precious, had devoted two pages per card of the spiral notebook to the 88 randomly shuffled cards. The point of this exercise was to have somewhere to squiggle unplugged when out and about and away from a decent keyboard such as on the annual visit to the garden festival down south or at various nano write ins

But there was not one but two spiral notebooks. While the first was randomly drawn, the second was going to consist of exactly the same sequence but with a different deck. Aside from sheer laziness it would be an interesting experiment. A picture paints a thousand words so what sort of story would the Dark Grimoire deliver in comparison to the original Victorian Romantic deck (which was just perfect for a story about gardens and all sorts of green goodness)

After 8 weeks or so (this ritual being usually reserved for Thursdays and Fridays) had gotten through all 22 chapters. In both cases would take a quick glance of each set of four cards and find some story line to link them all together. Promptly put away the second set and forgot all about them until this September.
( The Map is not the territory )

The serpent has been busy in Nanoland. Combined with the ritual of the annual visit to the spring garden festival down south, this has proved to be an interesting mix indeed

Had looked forward to the train journey but had the bad luck to get one of the few seats just behind a wall meaning that there’s not much leg room and no table. Also there was a squealing kid strategically located in the seat just behind the Izzie. He wasn’t even particular pesky as far as kids go but the constant wailing and whining and banging of the back of the seat was as annoying as hell.

Did try to tune out by rereading “No Plot, No Problem” but its effect was rather limited. This is a bad omen indeed to be such a neurotic nut job when this journey should be for relaxing and unwinding

Turned out there was at least two squealing beasties in each carriage. Was a murderous wreck by the time the train got to Bunbury. Could not get on the coach quick enough. It at least was half empty and full of oldies. Space, peace and quiet. What bliss. Also had the inspired idea of listening to music since the scenery is too nice to be wasted on a book and not wanting to risk motion sickness by doing something so silly

Listening to Lisa Gerrard was just the spookiness this serpent needed to switch into mystical magical mode. So silly not to have thought of this earlier. Figured too that it would be fun to see how many Dead Can Dance song (or album) titles could do double duty as chapter headings too. The Serpent’s Egg has already made an appearance

But there were side effects too of being in this state. Got to thinking that it seems a bit implausible to write a story about the most evil corporation in the universe with its headquarters in Melbourne and offices in Perth and even miserable Manjimup (yessss - this company really is that soulless and awful) To have three Australians and four Indians on the board of directors which has twelve in total plus the CEO is even more unlikely. Somehow the excuse that it is the serpent’s story and she can do whatever she damn well likes just did not cut the mustard. It’s sort of the story equivalent of the parent who constantly proclaims “Because I said so”
But then just the tiniest tweek came to mind. What if Megatherion Money Management isn’t actually the most evil corporation ever but is just a sad and pathetic bunch of wannabees with delusions of grandeur?

Now that turns out to be rather more close to the reality of the organization providing the original inspiration for this story but there were some interesting side effects. Suddenly the story had an engine and could start going places.

Big M wants to get bigger and badder and its board of directors are constantly plotting to invade Poland while a whole bunch of other characters are trying to prevent that happening
Then there’s the board of directors who are continually bickering and bitching about each other. There’s rumours going around that the big bad boss (one John Winston Smith) is going senile and every single one of them is scheming and plotting how to get the top job while appearing to be eternally loyal to their goblin master.

Now there’s a nice little gold mine of potential conflict.

So with all those possible plot points simmering away in the serpent skull plus a few visits to a seriously kitsch cafe and bric a brac store (the same one which provided a cast of characters and locations for last year’s adventure) got out the spiral notebook and emerald ink and started squiggling. The fountain pen is much slower than a horrid scratchy ballpoint pen. The whole point of this ritual is to be forced to write slowly and neatly. No point in churning out thirty pages like last year and then discovering they were almost indecipherable when sitting at the keyboard two days later

Between those two days and the journey back on the train with no squealing rampaging kids and half empty seats was able to not only squiggle some forty something A5 pages but had a whole pile of fun doing it

Not once was there any need to resort to the safety net of the 88 index cards. That may have something to do with bringing a certain character out of retirement. But his seedy plotting and scheming will have to stop or else the poor old toad will not even get two minutes as a creature feature. She is supposed to be the star of the show after all.

The lazy loser hasn’t gotten around to writing a single memo yet and she seems to have outsourced all the disciplinary action. Tomorrow it will be time to take that stuffed cane toad out from her little bag which she shares with the Thoth tarot and let her loose on those muses.

Enjoyed these unplugged writing adventures so much that it might be time to add a few more of them

Yesterday was a glorious sunny day and a perfect excuse for some serpent adventures.

Been spending lots of time at the State Library’s new outdoor reading cafe where you don’t even have to buy a coffee to lurk there. But even better, they provide three trolleys of tasty morsels to peruse. One filled with novels, another with children’s picture books and the third with recent non fiction books. All bright and shiny with that delicious crisp new book fragrance

The inner goblin immediately cast her beady eye on an offering by the delightfully snarky Sartjinder Das. This guy is an ex goblin who is now revealing some of their darkest and dirtiest secrets. This latest revelation is called “Extreme Money” and all about the doings of the swinging dicks and Masters of the Universe playing pokies with other people’s money, losing it all and still claiming their big fat goblin bonuses

Even the chapter titles are little gold nuggets and well worthy of inclusion in the little brown book of nano muses. And this book would make the perfect birthday present for old Uncle Vernon

Returned the next day for another fix of this goblin gossip and the book was nowhere to be found. But no loss. Had already been eying up another fat and juicy tome by Peter Fitzsimmons. Had this book on the wish list ever since listening to an interview about it on Late Night Live at least a year ago. But the horrendous fifty dollar price tag was a complete turn off. Could always borrow it from the library but it is the sort of book that you cannot cart around due to the risk of loss or damage but also because of its size and weight. Pity because it is the sort of book best read by the beach overlooking the Indian Ocean or by the light of the moon in some spooky haunted ancient ruin

And here it was sitting on this trolley just waiting to be read and returned obligation free. A story of spices, shipwrecks, mutiny, murder most foul, assorted perversions and goblin galleons galore. A sort of X rated adult version of “Lord of the Flies”. The outdoor library is open for two months so should be able to bite off a big chunk of this sick spicy saga.

Then the serpent had the idea that if November’s nanowrimo novel is going to be about some seriously evil corporation with tentacles everywhere, then a saga where the first modern corporation plays a central role would be an excellent place to look for inspiration.

Had already paid a visit to the site that used to be the Headquarters of this monstrous Cthulhu Corporation way back in September 2006. What should have been the Holiest of Holiest temple of the first and greatest Elder God of capitalism was a shabby nondescript outpost of the University of Amsterdam with no indication whatsoever of its former glory some 400 years ago. All that remained was an engraving above a door post that simply stated “VOC 1599” (The company logo and date of establishment)

In his house at Amsterdam dead Cthulhu waits dreaming

It’s time to go monster hunting again. It just so happens that some of its most sacred relics are little more than 40 minutes away from the serpent’s Lair. They are located at a shipwrecks museum which is also running a “Fabulous sea monsters” feature for the school holidays. Its sister maritime museum has animated dinosaurs but they can wait a day or so.

Due to other temptations, ended up with just over one hour to visit the ship wrecks museum. The building itself is more than a century old and is a museum piece in itself.

Downstairs is its star attractions - a large chunk of the hull of the ship Batavia that was wrecked off the western Australian coast way back in 1629 and some of the ballast in the form of large blocks to be made into an enormous gate at some Dutch colonial outpost in Indonesia that was its intended destination There is another maritime museum much nearer the site of the actual shipwreck and there is a bit of rivalry between them. The compromise was that one would get the fake gate and the real hull and the other would get the fake bit of ship and the real gate.
But the cannons and the skeleton lying in a makeshift grave were most definitely real as was some of the silver ware and bullion upstairs

The upstairs gallery is also a sort of shrine dedicated to the history of that company. Its banners were hanging from the ceiling, the VOC logo was plastered everywhere looking rather like a very peckish bird with a pointy beak and big beady eyes

There were even pictures of their board of directors’ meetings. The only thing missing were actual shares and receipts for dividends.

The monster tour turned out to be little signs with notices to look out for relics, images on maps, coins, banners and assorted paraphernalia. They did not bring in cute and cuddly Cthulhu, rubber sharks or jellyfish or any other monstrosities. It was all so very subtle not like the screaming marauding dinosaurs up the road. But they neglected to mention that the biggest monster in the museum was the Dutch East India company itself or that its spawn still live on some 200 years after its dissolution on 31st December 1799.

Izzie’s own little monster Megatherion Money Management is a mere tadpole in the presence of such a magnificent and long lived Corporate Giant. But unlike its infamous ancestor, it is at least still in existence and growing. And in November it can be as monolithic, megamaniacal, murderous and monstrous as only this serpent mind can make it. Its evilness and greed is limited only by our imagination.

Izzie is so going to steal Jan Pieterszoon Coen one of the VOC board directors. He was apparently a bit of a head hunter himself and notched up quite a body count in the pursuit of profit for his shareholders

Some simple serpent musings while slinking at the nano campfire toasting a toad on a stick. Here’s hoping the serpent doesn’t get food poisoning. Toads are such tricksy toxic creatures that no amount of precautions are completely fool proof.

The serpent’s favourite saying of all time just has to be “The map is not the territory” It appeals to the introvert’s eternal questioning of the nature of reality and insanity and even to the toxic paper work culture where nothing has happened unless it is documented documented and documented to death

This particular map was made way back in January this year with the shuffling of a tarot deck. Twenty six stories with three cards each and no returns so every single card made an appearance at some stage or other. This is rather different from the usual story structure of a prologue and 21 chapters each based on the major arcana in order. Cards 8 and 11 get ordered according to what works best for a particular story but usually Strength works out best as 8 and Justice as 11 which also seems to work well with the cluster of shit sandwiches that usually make an appearance from chapters 10 to 16.

That pattern of course is what we use in November. Camp Nano is for playing the fool, doing rebellious and adventurous stuff and basically using the opportunity to brainstorm ideas for the November novel. Last time camp nano squiggling did not even make any attempts at producing stories. It was simply a run through a particularly inspiring deck from the point of view of creating characters and the odd plot point. When that did not produce the requisite word count simply grabbed another one and started with the Fool all the way some 77 cards later to the King of Pentacles

This year was supposed to concentrate on short stories. The serpent pattern for all nano adventures has been to crash around two thirds of the way through a story and never quite complete it. Always made the word count but could never quite conquer the nuts and bolts of story structure. Well of course it was ridiculously stupid to dive in at the deep end with a fifty thousand word story having never done such a thing before. This year would be dedicated to the art of finishing things. Twenty six stories should provide sufficient practice in theory

( The Map is not the territory )

For the first time since the start of August, Izzie has finally managed to find herself in the zone where a million muses offer inspiration but unable to take proper advantage of it until an hour ago.
It was actually this morning that the inspiration arrived for the very first time since the arrival of the latest nasty and very vicious Howler on the afternoon of Tuesday 31st July. It was almost as if the Old Toad knew that this serpent was plotting and planning and she wanted to sabotage our efforts. There is no way she could know unless she really does come from Stasiland where they know stuff even before it happens and make it up if they don't.

Paid a visit to Petunia on Tuesday so missed a whole day of nano squiggling. That is one very bad and dangerous habit. It takes so long to catch up and the lost words can so quickly accumulate

But today was the big day. Such a pity it was not really possible to make the most of it due to various things that had to be done today in preparation for tomorrow morning’s Grand Inquisition

Not posted a single thing about this latest instalment of the drama that is Toad Hall (also known as the day job) Wasted two Camp Nano days on composing a response to the outrageous allegations and have not been able to build up a sufficient word stash to take time out to tell this particular toadish tale in all its gory details

Several times both on the train and the bus was bombarded with brilliant ideas but was not within quick reach of pen and paper and so had to use the old serpent skull as storage space.
Did manage to snatch a copy of Animalia at the library as well as pay a visit to the art gallery with those creepy Alistair Crowley pictures and the assorted demonic sigils, sculptures and paper cut creepy crawlies including Baalzebub - The Lord of the Flies himself.
The grand original plan of writing one 2,000 word story per day did not work due to that ever so meddlesome toad sapping the spark out of this serpent and turning the ickle green cells to zombie mush. So resorted to just plodding along and writing 300 words here and another 200 there all the while hoping for inspiration to strike
It was only the sniffing out of a significant piece of written evidence that proves that not one but three different goblins are involved in ‘bearing false witness’ that the Izzie could finally calm down and relish the chance of our ‘day in court’ making these guttersnipes gobble shit sandwiches
Today was so relaxed and calm. Was finally able to remain in the present moment for the first time in weeks. It makes such a big difference to creativity.
But did end up crashing around 7pm when some creepy creatures got on the bus. Was suddenly overtaken by tiredness. The original plans to return to the Lair by 7pm got amended by an unexpected encounter with an old acquaintance.

So being too dark in the dungeon to properly see the tarot cards, got out that copy of Animalia. You know you have too many books when you have to go to the library to borrow one you already own because you cannot find it.
So set up a separate chapter and started at the letter A.
By the letter C we had hit a veritable gold mine. The main feature of the picture are a bunch of crimson cats sitting by a creek. One is wearing a cap, another snacking on crayfish, another wearing a collar and a camera while yet another plays with a calculator. They also have a party with candles, cake and cups of coffee while in the distance crows nest in a castle on a hill.
Came up with a character called Catriona Cardassian who loves the champagne and caviar lifestyle but has to manage on a beer budget. She gets out her calculator to work out the cost of her planned Caribbean cruise and cannot think of a way to collect the necessary cash. She then has the inspired idea to open a Cat Holiday Home offering respite for fussy Cats and their staff
So far we have gotten to describing the castle, the main foyer and dining room with the candelabra, chandeliers, and silver service dining experience
And how can we forget the obligatory mission statements and assorted company posters extolling their ‘creme de la creme’ of cat care services”

Turreted towers boast beautiful views of birds while flags with little Hello Kitty cats on them adorn the entrance of the castle. In the foyer sits a little old lady behind a counter knitting little mittens for kittens while waiting for the occasional phone inquiry or Cat lover to collect or drop off their darling charges into Catriona’s tender loving care
A dining room with linen table cloths and silver service bowls can be seen from the entrance. The cats drink certified biodynamic double cream from Jersey cows out of Czech lead crystal bowls and feast on sumptious silver platters of crayfish, lobster, caviar and cod. Vegetarian cats are catered for with cucumber sandwiches.
Chandeliers hang from the dining room ceiling and there are pure beeswax candles on every table
Prominently displayed on every table is a parchment menu in perfect copper plate script. No mass produced dodgy photocopies or some snappy crap from the local print shop but each individually written long hand with love.
Pride of place is given to the Mission Statement (to please the inner pussy) and Vision For Catfish Creature Comforts Castle

Every Cat is a cherished cat
Our marvellous moggies are at the centre of everything we do. A quality carefree experience is guaranteed
Protection, perfection, passion and politeness for your precious pussy
Catriona personally does the guided tours of the premises for prospective Resident Cats and their staff including the spacious gardens and sun house. She is such a stickler for perfection and attention to detail
The gardens are truly a magnificent sight. A copse of cherry trees and assorted rocks along with bird attracting shrubs. For the less ambitious or mobility impaired felines there is the Mouse House where they can feast on little creatures with little effort required. Of course this is not necessary as their nutritional needs are perfectly catered for by our team of qualified chefs. A dietician assesses each individual cat’s needs to ensure that they get the correct age appropriate mix of protein, vitamins and trace elements essential to the feline well being. But a cat needs to indulge her natural instincts so we have provided mouse catching and other occupational therapy activities to create a stimulating environment for your very precious pet.
A number of cats lounge languidly on large cushy chairs looking quite content. Some have little tails hanging out of their mouths while others paws are adorned with feathers
Others are content to simply sit in the sun watching the fish swimming about in the enormous aquarium.

But of course all that glitters is not silver.
No one gives a rat’s arse about old people but try running a Cat haven the way a certain nursing home is managed then there would be massive public outrage
So the Izzie is going to have a pile of fun taking the piss big time out of these dirty goblins. And there won’t even be any need to keep the finished tale under lock and key
Payback is such a bitch
When life hands you lemons, squeeze them till the pips squeak and make lemon champagne