The mace of authority

The mace of authority 

I said some pretty harsh things about the readers of this blog in my last post, which in TV shows and book series is a pretty sure harbinger of doom for the production, a sign that the crucial relationship between the readers and the auteur, the business and its customers, has degenerated so badly that the business has given up on customer service and will just start ripping out huge bogus fees and resentful passive aggressive advertising just to unleash all their pent up frustrations, much like Comcast or the US healthcare system, or in the case of this week's presentation; the British House of Commons. That's right, I just did last week's complaining about my beloved and intelligent readers in order to thematically introduce this week's episode of the magical family visiting the house of non-magical "frumpity grumps", which is how we in the magical community of less popular writers have to refer to nonmagical people without being sued. 

I had worked up a fair amount of excitement for the opportunity to render the seat of power for a country as we entered the chamber, but as we sat and angrily berated our offspring for noise they hadn't made yet, in the hissing snake language that magical parents use to shout in places where they can't shout, and sat down with a scattering handful of other bored spectators, and intoned "Renderanis!" in as unobtrusive a manner as possible while I waved my elf spine wand, I was overcome with a feeling that I was being bamboozled. We sat overlooking a chamber where the representatives of the country, an entire island and a half of millions of people, met to debate and vote with total authority on the disposition of oceans of money, large armies, millions of lives, and it felt exactly as interesting and vital to my existence as a Sunday school lesson. Meanwhile, earlier in the day, we had happened to walk by an enormous beautiful palace, gated and closed to the surrounding multitudes who gazed raptly through the gates like stray dogs staring through a pastry shop window, where a royal family stripped - according to all reputable accounts - of any real power a hundred years before occasionally resided. At one point while we stood at the fence staring at suffering guards in the silly hats, there was a commotion, a flurry of excitement, as an honest to God horse drawn carriage rolled up to the gates from nowhere and a bunch of very real looking cops with guns shooed people out of its way. The people shuffled aside by this outmoded vehicle loved it. They clamored for a view of the superior beings inside the carriage (who, seriously, could not possibly have had any serious business to conduct) and stared in awe as the carriage pulled inside the gates. 

Remembering this inexplicably exciting event, and surveying the intense boredom with which the purported center of power conducted business, I could not help but hypothesize that some kind of vast scam had been implemented upon the populace of this country and of the international community in general, and that the bored functionaries welcomed people to freely enter the viewing gallery and stare down at their somnambulant performance in order to camouflage the true workings, conducted in secret behind the massive gates by people so contemptuous of the modern world that they are able to ignore its existence, preferring to play pretend with ancient animal powered devices that are lovingly protected and made way for by the armed constabulary. 

And so I present my sad depiction of the camouflage, a prey animal rendering the tiger’s stripes from the safety of the shrubbery, wondering at their movement - surely that isn’t foliage there, what could it be?