The Democratic Monarchy of Askazer-Shivadlakia

We used to dread the WEF at my last job, because many people we wanted as donors attended. There was a lot of work to do – finding connections between our org and attendees, finding reasons we might connect to attendees we weren’t already linked to, biographical research for people who attended the party we threw, et cetera. Since leaving my old job, it’s been fun to watch the coverage of it while both knowing what it’s really about and remaining staunchly indifferent towards it.

But also there is definitely story fodder in the idea that the Shivadh royal family might attend. They’re less than a day’s travel from Davos, and there’s probably a special forum for micronations given there are several in the region. Michaelis has certainly attended in the past for political reasons (no, he never punched anyone at Davos, Eddie, please stop asking). Gregory and Ofelia would want to attend and appear together in solidarity at various functions while Milo, Alanna, and Jerry ran around doing legwork. Jes would find it interesting as a journalist and an activist; Michaelis might now go to Davos to raise funds for a pet nonprofit, or ferret out investors for Galia’s new economic initiatives (cementing Ofelia’s reputation as a woman who can make kings do her bidding). 

Honestly, I love worldbuilding but I'm not much of a specialist in the specific logistics :D At one point someone did some math regarding how many high schools the country would need based on population numbers, but I've been trying to keep it vague on purpose because I have very little sense of things like that -- like it has "less than 1.5 million" but that's only because Gregory at one point says to Eddie "I'm king of a country with a population smaller than Manhattan". It could be a LOT smaller. :D

I'm guessing it's closer to the Luxembourg side of things than the One Third Of Finland, especially since outside of Fons-Askaz it's a lot of rural agricultural holdings. The other day I went "Well, Askazer-Shivadlakia is small but it's probably about the size, geographically, of Chicago" and then got a sharp shock when I compared Chicago to the region Askazer-Shivadlakia is meant to be in.

I forget I live in a fuckin long behemoth of a city (although I also laid Chicago over London and it's only about 1/3 of London's full size). That red outline is Chicago; the dark line bisecting it at the coast is where Fons-Askaz is meant to be, and the entire country's meant to be maybe four times the size of Monaco, I just didn't realize how tiny Monaco is.

[ID: A map showing the border of France and Italy at the coast; a long vertical red blob overlays it, reaching from Menton and Ventimiglia at the coast to Monte Argentera in the north, covering a significant portion of France and the Alps.]

Me setting a timer when I got to bag claim just now: I'm so clever! I will now be reminded that it's only been five minutes and bag claim usually takes about twenty!

On the one hand, timing something is about reminding myself "No, it's only been five minutes," but it is ALSO about knowing when something is taking way longer than it should.

If I'm put into an exam room in a doctor's office, I start a timer. Because I have been forgotten about in a doctor's office before, I get nervous that I'll just be sat in there forever, and the timer tells me "No, they haven't forgotten you, it's only been 10 minutes." But it also tells me if I have been there longer than appropriate (generally more than 40 minutes) so that I know when it's justifiable to flag down a nurse to find out what's going on.

At bag claim, because I know it usually takes about 20 minutes to get my bag, I don't get concerned until the timer passes the 20 minute mark without any bags appearing. At that point I know I need to take off my headphones and start paying attention -- looking at signage, maybe asking someone if I'm at the right carousel. Maybe don't worry yet, but start double-checking. Perhaps the delay is unavoidable and it'll just be an hour, but at least, having asked, I KNOW it'll be an hour, and the timer will tell me when the hour is past and I should maybe check in again.

Now, if the bags do start showing up before 20 minutes but my bag hasn't shown up by the 40 minute mark, I know that again it's time to put my head on a swivel, and at the 50 minute mark it's time to go speak to someone in the baggage claim office. This has more than once helped me locate my bag when it's accidentally been sent to the wrong part of the airport. There is no point at which, without the timer, I would go "man this is taking a long time" and then actually go ask, because I wouldn't actually know how long it had been.

The timer both prevents me from worrying before I need to and tells me when to start worrying -- essentially, because I'm both perpetually impatient and also infinitely patient, I've outsourced my patience to a stopwatch. And because I time a lot of things, I now know the average time a lot of things take, which helps me calibrate my concerns appropriately. Ten minutes is a long time to wait for a burger from McDonalds, but it's actually on the short end of the time it takes to get a burger from Shake Shack. It's not a long time to be on hold with the HR office of my old employer, but it's longer than I'd usually be on hold with my pharmacy. Et cetera.

A multi-decade timer would be fascinating. "Timer" apparently, formally, only applies to things that count down, while "stopwatch" refers only to counting up from zero until something stops it (sorry, person who explained that distinction in tags like 4,000 notes ago) and either format is very interesting. Counting down implies an ending, a change of state, reminding us of the impermanence even of very long-lived things -- but we do count down to holidays and marriages and other joyous events. Meanwhile, counting up implies the infinite, a striving for a perhaps unknown goal, the endless potential of time. But unless you know the goal, it could be a very frustrating relationship to time you've made for yourself. When are you off the clock if the stopwatch never stops?

Theoretically you could do both, start a preset timer and a stopwatch together, and when the timer counts down to zero it cuts power to the stopwatch. Ooh fuck I like that as an artistic statement. You could even write a really long-running cloud-based widget or app to do it. But I like the idea of a spring-loaded hammer that, when the timer hits zero, is released from its tension and flips up to either gently tap the lap button on a stopwatch, or just smash the stopwatch completely.

And then title it, "A Tip For Staying Organized: Set Timers!"

King Gregory III, by birthright prince and election king of Askazer-Shivadlakia, bowed as low as his husband (King Theophile "Eddie" Rambler, dux a l'orange) had ever seen. He followed Greg's example, and heard a sardonic snort from the duke.

Jerry: I got an ADHD diagnosis and discovered the awesome power of writing things down in my phone.

Jerry: If I ever stop losing my phone constantly it’s going to be OVER for you bitches.

I used to help run a farmer's market. There was a retirement home around the corner, and we figured out that a couple of little old Russian ladies were trundling down to the market each week and loading up to resell the good at a... substantial markup to the other residents. It's Chicago. So we mostly applauded the hustle and let them roll. What I'm saying is you'd only be in trouble if you undercut the other vendors on market grounds. Beyond that? Viva Faux Joe's!

In the pilot, for example, she hears about a family of five kids whose single mother was a victim of gun violence and she thinks “I’d better pray for them to find a safe and loving home” and God is like “Cool. Their plane lands at 2:30. Go pick them up.”

And she’s like What and God tells her he’s super over her praying about shit and AT BEST doing nothing and at worst actively harming people by her behavior, so now she gets five kids to raise as a lesson in compassion. God assures her she’ll be fine. And it’s not like she can say no because it’s GOD.

GUYS. THERE WAS DRIVE-THROUGH IN ANCIENT ROME. FINDING OUT THIS ALONE IS WORTH THE COST OF MY MASTERS IN HISTORY.

“Look, if you’re making Davzda cocktails, all I want is a Davzda-based hangover cure you could drink on the way to brunch,” Jerry said.

“That’s not how hangover cures work,” Alanna observed.

“It’s definitely not how Davzda works,” Michaelis added, visibly appalled. 

“It’s also not how brunch works,” Gregory said, as if Jerry has blasphemed and everyone else had badly missed the point. There was a moment of silence. 

“Beloved, that was the gayest you’ve ever been,” Eddie said. “I’m so proud.”

“I could have you deported,” Gregory told him. 

Davzda cocktail #3, third and final for now, is the Askazer Coffee. It contains 1oz Davzda mixed with 1oz cold brew concentrate and two dashes of chocolate bitters. This is poured over two ice cubes made with cold brew concentrate, and topped with 4-6oz of water. A spoonful of brown sugar is optional. You could probably use milk or cream instead of water but that felt…excessive. 

Show up 15 minutes late to brunch with it.  

It tastes kind of like tiramisu. That’s not a compliment. Jes fucking loves it. This is also questionable as a recommendation. 

(Also I just realised, curtsy and courtesy are the same word. Performing your courtesy to the king. Performing a curtsy to the king. Wild, the leaps we make at midnight-thirty.)

Honestly it's one of those things where I kinda stumped my own brain. I mean there really are only so many ways to bow. And we know that the depth of the bow matters and also how it's executed because it's distinct from just Any Old Bow. (And curtsey as well of course.) So I've kind of been letting people imagine their own. :D

Realistically, I think what makes the most sense is for the curtsey to be a sort of Regency style, where you bend at the knee and bow your head, rather than bending from the waist. That's fairly distinct but still elegant. For the bow, what makes the most sense is to make it more melodramatic, like an actor's bow -- you put one leg back, bend at the waist, and sort of wave one hand outward. It's not necessarily the flamboyance of the movement, but the distance your leg goes back and the depth of your bend, that would count.

For both, the depth of it doesn't just show respect but also indicates rank, so you might bow deeply to someone you're very familiar with, but if you were the same two people who didn't know each other and you outranked them socially or culturally, you wouldn't bow nearly so deeply. That's why occasionally someone is surprised when one of the kings bows deeply, because most of the time the kings are barely nodding their heads, since it's acknowledged that they hold a particular rank. It seems like it would be a weird power trip but I think of it as the king acknowledging "Hey, you're a person, we're in this particular social configuration, I'm showing you respect by not treating you weirdly or trying to puff you up." And of course it's all contextual -- like most people you would meet in a day are basically your social peer because the Shivadh aren't highly stratified or rigid about class, but even Gregory would bow more deeply to an elder to show respect for their age. And you can imagine how much room there is to play with how you might snub or slight someone.

The first evidence of ancient Jewish piracy can be seen in Jason’s Tomb in Jerusalem. There we can see the painting of a war ship attacking two merchant ships. This comes from the Hasmonean era, in which the maccabees added the ports of Gaza and Yaffo to their kingdom.

The second big era of Jewish piracy was after the great Jewish revolt, in which the temple was destroyed. Jews expelled from the Galilee rebuilt Jaffa, and from there a Jewish restistence emerged trying to sabotage Roman commerce in the Mediterranean.

These Jewish pirates were so strong that Flavius Josephus wrote: “They also built themselves a great many piratical ships, and turned pirates upon the seas near to Syria, and Phoenicia, and Egypt, and made those seas unnavigable to all men” Vespasian destroyed the city in 67

But the “golden age” of Jewish piracy came in 1492. With the expulsion of Jews from Spain. Most Jews escaped to the Ottoman empire, others tried to go to Poland, but a few Jews went to the seas, looking for revange. Many with naval experience joined piracy. Probably the most famous one is Sinan the Jew. Sinan Reis was the right hand man of the famous pirate Barbarossa. This pirate fleet was directly financed by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman. Reis was so famous that he was also called “The great Jew”

We also know Samuel Pallache, the pirate rabbi, who was pirate, merchant and diplomat. Pallache was not only a pirate but also one of the funding members of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. We was known for keeping Kosher in the ships.

We also know about Yaakov Kuriel, who commanded 3 pirate ships in the Caribbean. He also was a Baal Teshuva, who got very involved in Kaballah and died in Tzfat. Finally, we know about Moses Cohen Henriques. Moses was a Dutch pirate who participated in one of the biggest events in pirates’ history: the raid of 25 Spanish ships filled with gold worth about one billion dollars today. He was also active in the Jewish life in Jamaica.

Finally, in 2008 an old Jewish cemetery was discovered outside Kingston. There we can see graves in Hebrew with bones and skulls.

Sources: jpost.com/magazine/jewis… esefarad.com/?p=65105 This book is amazing: amazon.com/-/es/Edward-Kr…

Hallmark Channel is always doing pride and prejudice remakes/reboots and I write Hallmark channel novels.

Which means I need, I NEED, to do a Shivadh P&P take. Or at least a Shivadh Austen novel. My preference would be Persuasion, which would be difficult because it's fundamentally about class, but also super funny.

Is there a Season in Askazer-Shivadlakia? Are there a million Coming Out jokes to be made? THE BALL JOKES. Does Michaelis make them honestly or does he not even know?!