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 )

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