The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

The serpent is a member of a public speaking group. Due to a gradual decline in active members to the point of imminent demise, we have decided to amalgamate with another group facing the same problem.
So it's goodbye to early Friday morning meetings and hello to slinking in the city at 5.30pm on Wednesdays

Unlike the others most of whom are pen pushers, the serpent cannot simply turn up after work on a Wednesday and after slinking back to the Lair and scrubbing the scales often feel like nothing more than a snooze or lounging about in the Lair rather than rushing off to Silver City to commune with a bunch of boring old farts.
They call themselves Eastenders but Deadenders would be a much better title for this crotchety club and this week it was proved beyond all possible doubt

One of the activities we indulge in is called meeting procedure - where motions are moved, amended and voted on. There's one part of the meeting devoted to real business which is actually binding on the club and the other is an exercise which is a wonderful excuse for general rabble rousing and training in the dark arts of controlling the agenda for one's own evil purposes and doing it all above board
It's usually boring stuff about moving the meeting times, having pizza or even having a summer solstice sunrise meeting where all members attend naked (guess who proposed that one?)

On this one thing the Deadenders are much more innovative. They occasionally do role playing kind of things. A recent one was pretending to be the board of some British rail company proposing to build a rail line on some aqueduct in the middle of nowhere
Izzie spoke against the proposal claiming that the land in question was owned by the Gringotts Goblins and they would not take kindly to having their territory invaded.
With a bit more thought, would have been more entertaining to claim that we cannot build a railway line on the aqueduct as one already exists. But being the Hogwarts express, mere muggles such as the other committee members cannot see it.

So it was with great amusement that the serpent picked up one of the new agendas at the end of this particular meeting and seen her name listed as being the proposer of the motion for meeting procedure on the meeting scheduled for 20th April
The evil instincts rose up straight away. How could we possibly resist the temptation of such a delicious date

After some last minute slinking on Google, it was time to organize the battle plans.

A copy of the motion needs to be given to the critic and the chairperson of the meeting. With 20/20 hindsight should have made a copy for everyone so there would be no doubt about the serious matter under consideration
It would have been nice to have had some 'genuine' letterheads to add to the authenticity of the occasion but lack of a printer prevented that.

So in her best Gothic script and with a bright shiny brown inked stamp marked Confidential, the serpent presented her motion in writing to the two relevant parties

"Reichsicherheitshauptamt
Prinz Albrecht Strasse 666
Berlin 2000

AGM Agenda
Wednesday 20. April 1938

Item 1 That we XXXXXXXXXX"

Did write what it was but blanked it out as it will appear later in the serpent's speech

Was more than a bit peeved to turn up at the meeting and discover that only 9 members were there including the critic and chairman - neither of whom can play any role in the meeting procedure protocol.
With a proposer of the motion, another to second the motion and at least two to speak against that left only three others to either speak for, make amendments or generally cause chaos and craziness. In other words not much was going to happen at all

Unlike the previous 'let's pretend' meeting procedure episode did not give any background to the story but used the wording of the speech to convey all relevant information

"Guten Abend, Meine Geehrte Damen und Herren

My dearest and most loyal fellow members of the NSDAP, I thank you for your attendance at this very special meeting of the party
As our beloved Leader is presently attending various birthday celebrations, he has requested me to propose this motion on his behalf
I trust you will give it the consideration that it deserves

After the astounding success of last month's Anschluss which received a record 112% vote of approval from the Austrian electorate, it is time to continue our expansion of the Reich
While the Sudetenland may be the next item on our acquisition list, it alone will not be sufficient to provide the raw materials and resources worthy of our ambitions

We need more resources, more room, more land and safe locations for lots of toxic waste dumps
so therefore I propose that we invade Poland"

We had one enthusiastic member who wanted to invade Russia too and another bleeding heart liberal who offered his resignation from the party
One twisted critter wanted to replace the word invasion with 'incursion" (the abuse of which had been the subject of last week's "Word of the Day") and another softie wanted to replace the word 'invade' to 'co-operate with'
The chairman wisely rejected this amendment as being contrary to the spirit of the original motion

But the proof of the pudding came at the end of the meeting where the critic claimed that there was not enough back ground to the motion - and he was one of the two in possession of the agenda letterhead where it stated quite clearly that it was a Nazi party meeting in April 1938
But the absolute killer was when he said that the chairman should not have accepted the motion for discussion as invasion of another country is illegal (here in Australia, if a chairperson allows discussion of a motion that it is illegal and it gets passed and then acted upon, they can be personally prosecuted)

The serpent had already declared in the right of reply that voters should not concern themselves with mere legal niceties. That invading other countries was not only legal in Nazi Germany but actually compulsory

Such fuddy duddyness is beyond sad and pathetic. This old fart is constantly making snarky comments about the newbies especially when they forget to address him by his grand title of Freeman rather than Speaker. He makes caustic comments about ordering breakfast if the meeting starts late which it has been doing of late but largely because one of their number who is rostered on to chair the meeting will simply not bother to show up and one of ours ends up taking on the role instead. Chairing a meeting is a big job even if only 8 speakers turn up
He considers the new arrangement to be a take over rather than a merger and on more than one occasion the serpent has used the word "Anschluss' to describe his attitude towards us

The term ends in June so it is most unlikely that evil Izzie will get to propose any more motions. We do have to present a five minute speech next week on the topic of "The Voyage"
As yet completely uninspired.

Lazy serpent. Not been squiggling or lurking in Cyberia lately. Guess we need to make the most of the gorgeous weather before it becomes seriously stinking hot and sizzling and then it will be time to slink back inside most of the time

Thursday and Friday being the serpent weekend, decided to tweek things a bit and not follow the usual routine.
There's a particular cute cafe out of town. It's darkish but not dingy but most importantly has got very cheap and very good coffees - two thirds the price of the rubbish they serve in the mainstream cafes.
It's just the perfect spot for playing with the cards, scheming and squiggling. Last week's attempt to visit was thwarted by missing the bus and deciding to go to Delizioso pizza instead for half price Happy Hour.
Thursday left early enough to have plenty of time for the bus. But this time it was the bus that was ten minutes late. Got into the city to discover that the connecting bus was scheduled to leave at 15.08 and it was then 15.10. And Murphy's Law dictates quite clearly that all buses are at least ten minutes late except those that one is connecting too which always arrive right on time.

Could have waited 30 mins for the next one but figured it made sense to go straight to the university as planned for their spring festival rather than rushing and trying to visit the cafe and then go on using the two hour limit on the bus ticket
Loved lurking in the gorgeous gardens and old buildings of the university and then nearby cafe with fishbowl sized cups. The spring food festival itself was much less fun. Crowded and full of cackling squawking squealing humans and most of the offerings were not at all kosher. Will spend much more time enjoying the peace and quiet next time

Did finally get to the Little Pantry yesterday and the bus was more than ten minutes late. Had originally planned to potter around the Swan Valley and the assorted cafes there. But had been silly and gone to the grocery store and bought yogurt, bread and chocolate. The longer carrying it. the heavier it got. The weather was also increasingly warm so figured that it would be no fun carting around all that stuff and declared not to make the same stupid mistake next time.
Decided not to visit the spring festival which starts today as it's gotten all too boozy and crazy. Not worth wasting a precious day of holidays.

But the other amusing event yesterday was the usual Friday morning public speaking group.
Had mentioned to Joel - one of the younger members there that the serpent had gone over to the sparkly side and showed him a copy of a certain book with the letter T in the title. But made a point of saying that the corruption was not totally complete or beyond redemption by pointing at the library code on the spine.
He was glad to see that Stephenie Meyer was not going to make a cent out of this serpent.
Said he was sort of attached to the thing for the simple reason that he used it as the basis for an English assignment and it earned him 84%.
He said he was astonished at how truly awful all the male characters were. Totally stereotypical and one dimensional and offensive to all self respecting teenage males. Izzie added that the females were even worse.
Unlike others, Izzie's problem was not the sparkly vampires with super powers. After all, they are American vampires so are allowed to be different and bigger and better than their European counterparts. It was how such a superhero could be so infatuated with an idiot like Bella. He probably cannot read her thoughts for the simple reason that she doesn't actually have any.
Added that the whole thing is just as boring as bat shit. Unlike stuff by JK Rowling, Stephen King or Douglas Adams - there's just no voice or tone to the story - it's just totally dead, dead, dead.

As a few scheduled speakers were missing for the day, the chairman could see how excited we were about this masterpiece and decided to run a circle of impromptu speeches starting with the serpent
"Why I hate "Twilight""
After one minute, the baton passes to the next speaker who then starts their speech with the last sentence of the previous one
Joel was next and said he just loved trash and then proceeded to explain the concept of "Mary Sue' to those who may not have heard it before.
The topic morphed into the joys of doing household duties and the evils of mosquitoes and all sorts of unlikely twists and turns

Talking to Joel later after the meeting ended, said that it was bit where Bella does her online search for Vampires that was particularly painful. All those silly unnecessary details about shooting down pop up boxes and munching cereals. All totally corny. (and that was even before paying a visit to the Cullens' glass house)
Some one else joined in talking about a story where there were 3 pages about some character's hair - its colour, style, length etc etc and it never appeared again in the story. She found this seriously annoying and pointless. Izzie added - maybe it was just padding so the writer could increase their nano word count.
Joel then laughed and said that he had tried nano last November but with exams and all, got as far as 2,000 words. A group of classmates did it but all dried up after the first week of initial enthusiasm. But he did go on to finish Script Frenzy in April.
He asked Izzie about our final word count. First time ever mentioned the magic 50,805 to anyone offline. He was impressed and said he might give it another go this time. Izzie added that we should try persuade everyone in the group to have a go.

Mentioned the decision to join at the last minute last year so that no planning would be possible and to then compare the process to next time with having the possibility of a whole year to think about it.

Last year had a setting and a couple of characters but no idea what was going to actually happen. Now it's the other way around. We know what's going to happen - a whole bunch of murders and mysterious disappearances. It's deciding who is going to die and what the main characters are going to do about it that is the problem. Also got to decide just who the main characters will be.
This time there will be no shameless snatching from other people's stories.
So much choice. So little time