In which the bromancer does a Shakespeherian rag and the Killer does a distraction ...

 

 

The pond watched PMQs last night entranced - it had already sat through the new Chancellor getting a burly grilling - and then woke to the news that Gove had gone. 

Where had this wilfully destructive new interest come from? 

The pond realised the reptiles had been right. As an innocent, the pond had started on the colonial invader, the Graudian down under, but soon the pond had gone hard core, and immediately clicked on to the UK version to sup on Crace and Hyde and the like, and Boris in full, flustered, chaotic flight ...

It was all the fault of the damned Graudian, even worse than the days when the pond used to read Punch for the cartoons, and occasionally get Muggeridged, and the New Statesman for the Webbs ...

The pond also learned that a good guy with a gun might not be much chop, if caught loitering in the wings, or unable to spot a loon armed with a military grade rifle taking pot shots from a roof ...

But there'll be time enough for a distraction from the killing fields with the Killer ...

First to Boris, and who better to say an elegy than the bromancer?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before the bromancer begins with his listicle, the pond will concede that as an elegy, it's not up there with that poem made popular by a romcom ...

 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, 


Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, 


Silence the pianos and with muffled drum 


Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead 


Scribbling on the sky the message Boris is going, if not quite gone. 


Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, 


Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves... 

 

And so on ...

 

Instead we get a listicle of self-interest, which being self-interested, the pond has to admit is very much in the spirit of Boris, the almost departed ...

 

 

 

What a deal-maker. Do a deal and subs and get nothing out of it. As for Shakespearian tragedy, the pond knew immediately what the bromancer was getting at ...

Falstaff: “To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man. But to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit but the true and perfect image of life indeed.”

Yes, Boris had to be Falstaff ...O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag – It’s so elegant So intelligent

Enter Falstaff and Bardolph

Falstaff: Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an like an old lady’s loose gown. I am withered like an old applejohn. Well, I’ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking. I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewers horse. The inside of a church! Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me.
Bardolph: Sir John, you are so fretful you cannot live long.
Falstaff: Why, there is it. Come sing me a bawdy song, make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be, virtuous enough: swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy house once in a quarter of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three or four times; lived well and in good compass; and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.
Bardolph: Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.
Falstaff: Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life. Thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but tis in the nose of thee. Thou art the knight of the burning lamp.
Bardolph: Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.
Falstaff: No, I’ll be sworn, I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a deaths-head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think upon hellfire and Dives that lived in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face. My oath should be By this fire, thats Gods angel. But thou art altogether given over, and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou rannest up Gadshill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus, or a ball of wildfire, theres no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandlers in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years, God reward me for it.

Exeunt Falstaff and Bardolph from the pond so that it might enjoy a Graudian cartoon ...

 

 

 

 

Yes, that door knocker is distilled essence of Boris, unless the pond got it wrong, and the bromancer had moved on to another metaphor ...

 

 

 

 

 

The captain of the Titanic! Be Boris British.

Why didn't the pond think of that, in a Brexiting bromancer way ... 

 

 

 

Indeed, indeed, such an astonishing success that Brexit, and yet strangely Britain has never been more embroiled in Europe and its dismal affairs, thanks to the sociopathic Vlad the impaler, such that the pond even overheard a British politician talking of "our Europe" ..

What else? 

 

 

 

Well there's Jimbo doing his bit to ensure nothing might happen to trouble the reptiles, and there's another minor Milner, doing his best to downplay Covid, but the pond resolved not to go there with the Pooh of the deep north, and so it had to be the Killer, seeking to douse all that talk of gun trouble ...

 

 

 

 

Indeed, indeed, enough of idle talk of a gun plague on America's national day ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so on with the distraction, because when not celebrating the Covid killing fields and showing a dire fear of masks, the Killer knows how to be distracting ...

How good of the Killer to avoid all the other distractions ...

 

And so for a final distracting Killer gobbet ...

 

Indeed, indeed, and let's not worry about any of those other distractions ...

 

And usually the pond would end it there, but the pond must note that today petulant Peta verged on treason and treachery ...

 

It fair set the pond's teeth on edge, it did ... petulant Peta in with a chance with Albo? 

And that set the pond to musing, because it had been a near run thing as to whether the mutton Dutton or the beefy pure Angus boofhead should have made it onto the revolving spot in the pond's mast. 

Sure, the pond was prescient, the pond knew that the mutton Dutton would win through, but there have been some great efforts of late, great contenders still striving for the top spot, so that their visage might sit aside Dr. Strangelove, as noted in this Crikey story ...

 

On ya Charlie, (paywall), that sent the punters into a News Corp frenzy, such that the pond might have missed beefy Angus boofhead doing what boofheads do, but you also came up with this one ...

And those splendid outings by the beefy purebred Angus allow the pond to do the right, decent, and proper thing, and finish with a celebratory Wilcox ...

In which imaginary friends, nuking the country and nattering "Ned" are on the reptile menu ...

 

The pond woke to the news that Boris had rather carelessly misplaced a couple of cabinet ministers. 

This completed a virtuous circle, because the pond had lulled itself to sleep watching a UK parliamentary session,  a level of perversity down there with the Marquis. 

Some minor functionary, some lapdog, some labradoodle, had been assigned the task of fielding questions from a dismal array of back benchers. (For the record muh lud, it was the right dishonourable Michael Ellis).

It turned out that in another world he'd been a barrister, which explained how his answers routinely, easily, slid from the oily to the greasy. 

The only surprising thing about the ritual performance was that most of the anguished questions seemed to come from agitated Tories. It was dismal entertainment, with the pond constantly reminded of the Professor dying in the field, saying "look what Boris has made me become", though no such insight came from the pathetic hack, a reminder of the banality of weevils ...

Then came more news of the sociopathic Vlad the impaler wrecking Ukraine, and the pond decided to get up and start the day with a dose of reptile stew ... only to discover there was a truly weird mix of ingredients on offer ... so why not start with the weirdest?

Someone is experiencing Entzauberung with petulant Peta? Is that like the Entzauberung with Boris? 

The pond couldn't quite see the point of the exercise, but then the pond had been a cowardly lion with a tin head and had ducked its petulant Peta assignment, and so must now do penance, though it draws the line at too many hail Marys ...

Now the pond is first to join in talk of imaginary friends, and pie in the sky on the bye and bye, but all this seems to be playing into the reptile game, with an ostentatious display of learning, of the kind the pond usually expects from the hole in the bucket man on a Friday ...

Surely this means that the fault of all this heretical treachery can be lumped at the feet of scholars and intellectuals (known to the reptiles as the inner suburban 'leets), who have ruined everything with their tedious book larnin' and their atheistic gibberish ... and so it came to pass ...

Damn you scholars and intellectuals, damn you all to hell ... nuke the lot of 'em, fancy taking the Garden of Eden as a fancy metaphor and myth, when we all know the reptile earth is flat, and only cranked into gear some ten thousand years ago ...

A 2017 Gallup creationism survey found that 38 percent of adults in the United States held the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings, which Gallup noted was the lowest level in 35 years. It was suggested that the level of support could be lower when poll results are adjusted after comparison with other polls with questions that more specifically account for uncertainty and ambivalence. Gallup found that, when asking a similar question in 2019, 40 per cent of US adults held the view that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so". (wiki)

Go Fox News viewers, go! Go SloMo of the shire, go!

And speaking of a good nuking, so to a more traditional reptile repast, and here the task is to look for signs of lobbying ... it might take a while, but the pond is confident that it will get there ...

Who is this Tony Grey, and why is he blathering on about nuking the country and nuking the planet in such a naked way, smoothing over difficulties, and laying palms in the path of reptile donkeys?

For the answer, patience is required ... first we must get rid of the tricky question of cost ...

Oh it's all the go with SMRs, but the answer to just how there are fifty shades of nuking grey is now at hand at the end of the very last gobbet ...

Oh indeed, indeed, free advice from an unencumbered, neutral source without the slightest sign of skin in the game. This is the sort of objective scribbling we need if we're to nuke the country and the planet and do it properfly ... but sadly the pond must report that the lizard Oz editorialist didn't get the memo in their very own rag.

Instead the lizard Oz editorialist provided the answer to a pond correspondent who had wondered what had happened to gas, and gaseous reptiles. 

Well the answer is, there's still a fizz in the carbonated reptile juice ...forget nuking the country, go gas ... explain how, lizard Oz editorialist ...

A 2% take-up, and the reptiles are having nightmares, and suddenly a night with British MPs didn't seem such bad entertainment ...

The pond can't begin to count the number of times it's heard the reptiles carry on about the wind not blowing and the sun not shining, and so forget the nukes, it's on with gassing the country and the planet ... because climate science, quoi? Gas, a carbon intense fossil fuel? Quoi? Interrogatif désignant une chose ...

There's no doubt about it. Boris is fucked, the country is fucked, and not just Britain, because the reptiles won't be satisfied until they've fucked the planet ...

And so to the bonus, and of course it had to be nattering "Ned". 

The pond took a look at Dame Slap having her usual argument with feminists - Dame Slap loves doing her patented "I'm alright Jill, so why don't you just fuck off with your talk of equality" routine - but the pond thought only this was worth noting ...

It brought out the pedant in the pond. Catherine the Great might have been a ruler of Russia, but she wasn't a Russian ruler ... she was a Prussian who knew how to do a bit of shape-shifting and fool the likes of Dame Slap ...

Catherine the Great, Russian Yekaterina Velikaya, also called Catherine II, Russian in full Yekaterina Alekseyevna, original name Sophie Friederike Auguste, Prinzessin von Anhalt-Zerbst, (born April 21 [May 2, New Style], 1729, Stettin, Prussia [now Szczecin, Poland]—died November 6 [November 17], 1796, Tsarskoye Selo [now Pushkin], near St. Petersburg, Russia), German-born empress of Russia (1762–96)... (EB here).

So that's what happens when you get a twit blathering about pop psychology, and offering Vlad the impaler the comfort of allegedly deep questions of history, security and economics. 

Could Dame Slap be a Vlad lover, in the same way that she donned the MAGA cap?

In a curious way, it seemed to prove Dame Slap's point. Why should a woman get a lavish amount of News Corp pay for being a fuckwit, when there are many fuckwitted men willing and able to step into the breach and show the way forward when it comes to treating women with disdain. Just call Faux Noise for the latest news on abortion in America...

And so to "Ned" ... as usual issuing advice, instructions and orders from the rear ...

The pond was unnerved from the get go. Was "Ned" implying that a coalition government, or perhaps the reptiles, didn't love a rules-based order?

Did they prefer a Boris-based style, full of lies and endless bullshit? Then the pond remembered that News Corp was right behind the mango Mussolini, the GOP, and the fucking of America, and understood why "Ned" might have baulked at the notion of a rules-based order ... unless of course they happened to be Dame Slap style rules, with allegedly deep questions of history, security and economics... because why not invade another country and ruin it, if you want to emulate Catherine the Prussian ...

Did the pond make a mistake by not sticking with the Dame?

Sorry, sorry, the pond wanted to slip that piece of nonsense from Dame Slap into the mix, so it could have a break with a cartoon ...

Oh heck, have another ... where's the harm ...

Well you can't expect Dame Slap to worry about such things, she's more a Prof Henry (Higgins) type ...

And now back to carrying on with "Ned" ...

The pond must add two notes here, as a way of celebrating "Ned's" style. Note the way "Ned" freely deploys injunctions - Albo must beware, Albo must find his own language, and so on and so forth "must", echoing down the musty reptile corridors - and "Ned" "must" find some way of borrowing another's thoughts. 

Come on down Hugh White ... pay attention Albo, "Ned" has found his Neville ...

And there you have it, and that's why "Ned" is as fine as any entertainment as anything the British parliament might offer ...

"Selling climate change is the easy part."

Do none of the reptiles ever read the lizard Oz? Is the pond the only one that bothers? If that's the easy part, please explain why the planet is spiralling down to hell in a handbasket, ably assisted by News Corp ...

In which it's always a good time for a sodden Groaning, or a war by Xmas with the bromancer ...

 

 

With those helpful additions, spain-and-portugal-suffering-driest-climate-for-1200-years-research-shows, lake-mead-drops-to-a-record-low, the reptiles have finally got around to noticing soggy Sydney and surrounds ...

 Never mind the devastated communities, marvel at the inflation shock ...

 

  

 

Meanwhile, on another reptilian planet the commentariat were beavering away, with some hapless loon called in to pretend that the reptiles gave the foggiest about charging electric cars ... Killer Creighton has already patiently explained why they're just an idle dream, a complete waste of time ...

So with battery charged thanks to Killer power, the pond knew that was just meaningless tosh, drivel of the first water, and that a good Groaning would show the proper reptile way ...

 

 

 

 

Of course, of course ... what soggy Sydney needs right now is yet another bit of groaning about energy, renewables, and the whole damn thing ...

Yes, yes, dear old Groaner, a fiendish array of solar panels, which are up there with a vast congregation of wind turbines as offences to the reptilian eye - pluck thine eye out, the pond kindly suggests ...

The pond doesn't mean to tell the reptiles how to suck eggs, but do solar panels really have the same visceral impact as those dark satanic windmills?

 

 

 

 When you've got a good meme going, why drop everything for solar panels.

 Meanwhile, the pond can hear some stray loon bleating "shouldn't we be meditating about the floods, and soggy Sydney, and the rains not falling on the plains in Spain (and Portugal and the west coast of the US and sundry other places, while rain seems to drop like buckets other places) ... you know... costs, inflation, peril, yadda yadda ..."

The pond must stop talking to itself, because never mind the climate or the planet, or the inflation shock on the tree killer front page ...

 

Never mind any of that, there's a bloody good groaning to be done, but sorry, in the world of the Groaner doing a groaning, when the tough get groaning, and the groaning gets tough, we don't mention climate science ...

 

A disorderly transition? Would that have something to do with the rain dropping in buckets on soggy Sydney, or the rain not falling on the plains in Spain?

Sorry, sorry, it was wrong of the pond to mention it ... let us instead finish with a good groaning, a proper yearning, for dinkum clean decent Oz coal ...

Meanwhile, in soggy Sydney, there's going to be a long, painful and expensive process to rectify the problems ... and while it's not the same without the infallible Pope and the immortal Rowe, there's always the road to take with Wilcox ...

Oh yes, we'll get from here to there and back again from there to here, with a jolly good Groaning ...

Meanwhile, astute reptile watchers will have noted that the bromancer was at the top of the digital page this day ...

What set him off? Could it have been the news on the far left at the top of the digital page?

 

Whatever, the bromancer went on one of his endless repetitive rants, replete with a number of pond-neutered click bait videos ...

 

 

 

 

 

With the greatest respect to Glen, he's just not the immortal Rowe ... but he can draw a feisty koala ...

 

 

 

But that won't placate the warrior bromancer.

The pond has said it at least once, heck perhaps a zillion times, but until the federal government comes to its senses, and appoints the bromancer at least head of defence, if not Generalfeldmarschall, then for all that Wong-minded blather, we're simply not going to be ready for war with China by Xmas ...

Forget the bloody Ukrainians, forget the sociopathic Vlad the impaler at work on the killing fields, we've got to bung on a do down under ... 

Bugger it, if we've got to take a stand, it's everybody for themselves, and let the bromancing devil take the hindmost, and why are we sending Ukraine any kit it all ... except maybe the tanks, because how could it be a work by our Generalfeldmarschall in waiting if it didn't mention those bloody tanks ...

 

 

 

 

 

Once again the pond was reminded that this colossal mess can only be sorted by the finest of minds ... and in our hour of need, why haven't we turned to the astute, if slightly hysterical, thinking of the pond's favourite fundamentalist tyke? 

Perhaps the rain in truly sodden Sydney has clouded the pond's senses ... but it seems the only right and proper solution ...no, no, not to the colossal mess of climate science denialism, that war with China by Xmas, for all the Wong thinking that's going on ...

 

 

 

The government must drive it politically? Surely that's a typo, or would it have been indiscreet to be open about it, come right out and say Generalfeldmarschall bromancer will drive it through the astonishing powers of his keyboard ... because there's nothing like the smell of a pounding keyboard in the morning ...

 

 

Indeed, indeed, but until we have the right Generalfeldmarschall bromancer in charge of proceedings, the pond senses that the country, perhaps the entire planet, will drift into extreme danger. What if we can't bung on a do by Xmas, what then? It simply doesn't bear thinking about ...

Meanwhile, what to do when missing the baroque ornamentation of the missing Rowe? 

Well there's always a Rowson celebrating patriotism and patriots of the finest stripe, with more at the Graudian here ... and occasionally when stricken by doubt, the pond can always find comfort thinking that we could be Britain ...