Wednesday, July 13, 2016

In which the pond attends a wedding feast and scores a public dividend with Paul 'nattering Ned' Kelly ...


It is an ancient Mariner, 
And he stoppeth one of three. 
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, 
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? 
“The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, 
And I am next of kin; 
The guests are met, the feast is set: 
May’st hear the merry din.” 
He holds him with his skinny hand, 
“There was a reptile newspaper,” quoth he. 
“Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!”
 Eftsoons his hand dropt he. 
He holds him with his glittering eye — 
The Wedding–Guest stood still, 
And listens like a three years child: 
The Mariner hath his will. 
The Wedding–Guest sat on a stone: 
He cannot chuse but hear; 
And thus spake on that ancient man, 
The bright-eyed Mariner... (and the full poem here with Doré illustrations, thanks to ebooks. adelaide. edu.au).

Or perhaps it's just Paul Kelly stopping the pond, and transfixing with glittering eye, and the pond cannot chuse but hear, called yet again to be reptile whisperer, devoted listener and part-time therapist ...

Yes, with Miranda the Devine still raging about Mike Baird and the doggies - and much as the pond loves to see the rabid right attack the wayward right - it was time to chuse quality time with nattering Ned ...


Indeed, indeed. The pond was reminded of another ancient poem ...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
The reptiles cannot hear the tweeting Murdoch; 
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 
The best lack all conviction, while the worst reptiles
Are full of passionate intensity
Surely some Paul Kelly revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Murdochian Coming is at hand ... (and the full poem with notes here).

Well it's about the only way to get through this tale of woe and paranoia and fear-mongering, as if nattering 'Ned' Kelly gave a toss about social liberalism or even feminism ...


But enough of the albatross and the sea-snakes who berate gay marriage and Safe Schools and then wring their hands and worry about the way they sound like Islamic jihadist fundamentalists, because there's another gobbet of anxiety and fear to be inhaled before we're done and can scuttle off to the wedding feast ...


That's it, that's all, he wrote?

Barners as the solution? The man who transformed Tamworth from the centre of the known universe to a wretched provincial backwater howling in the wilderness for the fibre broadband that Armidale scored years before ...

The member for Gina off to a wedding in India is the man for the common man, focussed on daily lives?

Barners doing over the dogs isn't some kind of rampant populist?

This is how to restore trust in the dollar and the banking system, and strangely, the American dollar, which acts as some kind of de facto world currency ...

Well the pond has learned its lesson. Never ever head off to a wedding feast where you're likely to be stopped by a grey-bearded loon ...

And speaking of weddings, lest we forget Coalition MPs in 'overseas study' claim for wedding ...

It'd be funny how 'wedding' keeps cropping up when the pond thinks of Ned's cry for the public dividend, if  the albatross around our necks hung wasn't so pathetically obvious ...




10 comments:

  1. "There is no greater delusion than ..." that Roop's tools give a flying eff for the national interest, in favour of distortions & divisions. Give me a soothing dose of cognitive dissonance, any day.
    Tooooo late, yeah! Too late for they'll never see again the life they choose not to follow. Alright! Alright! Don't be lost when your time comes! For the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night!

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  2. Shorter Ned: "We're all doomed! DOOMED!!"

    *sigh* - he does go on, doesn't he? Funny how he didn't have space to include "Partisan, incompetent or just plain corrupt mass media" in that long list of problems that beset us.

    At least Ned seems to realise that his wafflings are of no significance whatsoever. As he admits, "The lesson of the Australian election is that people won't be lectured to by policy elites and told what is good for them." I'm now sure why he drops that into the middle of a 'leet lecture, though.

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    1. And he has the gall to talk about rising inequality as a bad thing? With all the reams he writes in support of it?

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  4. A referendum on the death of white Christian America? Bring it on!

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  5. "Because it is multi-faced there is no easy or single solution"

    Damn those NZ subs! Multifaceted, unless of course he was refering to Janus who could see the past and future.

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  6. Poor Ned,he ain't well,but everyone has to make a living to the best of their ability I guess.
    http://giphy.com/gifs/warnerarchive-classic-film-son-of-kong-xTiTnmsvYIx9XiGmTC

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  7. I thought of Yeats' Second Coming straight off as well, Dorothy. But what struck me was how it was all "Brexit - Triumph of the Will" and now only a week later, and without missing a beat, its "they're boned". This reptilian lack of retention reminded me of the poetry of a (thankfully) former Australian parliamentarian:

    Once anti-Euro elation
    Now economic damnation
    So Queensland votes One Nation
    Short Memory
    Those 'leets blamed for the del-con's rage
    Nostalgic for a bygone age
    They want to turn back history's page
    Short Memory
    The farmers told they have no voice
    So voted for that dumbfuck Joyce
    The rest of us got Hobson's Choice
    Short Memory.

    Short memory, must have a shor-or-ort memory
    Short memory, must have a shor-or-ort memory...

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    1. Most excellent FrankD, and these are surely the lyrics the Oils must use if they ever want to revisit the tune ...

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