The eternal laurels, the peculiar Exodus and the Braganza way

When I find myself in times of trouble, Queen Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: just leave.

Many of you may think I was dead, or Sabia and Verona was dead, or just very, very inactive. Sadly, the latter is true. Nearly 10 months have passed since the last time an article was published in The SiV Phonograph. Thankfully, since I’m not particularly fond of summaries, not much has happened in that time. Or at least not until now, it seems. You’ll have to pardon my French, but shit’s going down.

But not really though. I just wanted to make use of that fantastic pun, because in a couple of days I’m quite literally going down. Not to hell just yet, but to Argentina: the land of tango, Maradona, asado, questionable wars on European superpowers, Evita, penguins, and conceitedness.

It appears the time for the House of Ricky to abandon Venezuela has come. It had been foreseen, but I didn’t really expect it to be this soon. The economic and social shithole that this Bolivarian Republic has become has finally toppled all sort of national pride or nostalgia, and thus after getting enough hundreds of thousands of bolívares to buy a ticket plane, I am to fly to Buenos Aires towards the end of the month to make my life over there. I won’t be the first one: a couple thousand of Venezuelans now inhabit the capital of Argentina, a city of grey skies so polluted they make one of the world’s most ironic place names, right there next to Greenland. I will not dig any further on just how bad things are in Venezuela for my family to have made this choice. In the past I have spoken of the political situation of the macronation, but at this point I doubt I’ll be able to explain anything objectively, and I’ve been considerably biased before. So instead I’ll answer a question you may or may not be asking right now: what about Sabia and Verona? Naturally, I wouldn’t dream of leaving Sabia and Verona behind. After all, what would I do with my seemingly endless free time?

We could have just claimed everything from here to there, but then we’d have risked touching Brazil and we don’t wanna mess with the Kossians.

So it happens I won’t be the only Sabian immigrating, as I’m taking quite a few fellow countrymen with me. Just about the ones that fit in my travel suitcase, though, which is still enough to form a decent outpost of our Kingdom in the south. Here is when we honour the good ol’ Braganzas, who on November 29, 1807 decided they liked samba more than Lisbon and made a capital out of Rio. This new outpost, which we’ll be cleverly naming Alios (Sabian for “silver”, get it?), will serve as Sabia and Verona’s capital from August 25 onwards. Sorry, Salisse. Some will be happy to know that among those coming with me is the dearly beloved Napoléon Bleuberrie, probably the only Sabian with the talent in him to become a meme. God, am I proud of that.

There are many things that need to be done before all of this happens. Though the territory that Sabia and Verona claims will remain Sabioveronese (it’s my house, after all, and we’ve got someone trustworthy to keep it), I can’t expect to look after it all the way from Argentina the same way I looked after it by living here. Several reforms may have to be made to the constitution. Things just can’t be administered the same way as before. There are still many blank spaces regarding the fate of the government, the monarchy and the state, most of which I’m hoping to fill in the week and a half I’ve got before I leave for Caracas and then Buenos Aires. Though the future is uncertain, one thing is pretty clear: where I go, Sabia and Verona goes.

Partially, at least.

(Also, hurray for the 50th post of The SiV Phonograph.)