So what's news this Thursday?
Well Michael Rowland defamed Sigrid Thornton this early morning and mangled the English language yet again by calling her a "rolled gold legend."
He really does have a fairly infinite, totally unique way with words ... but it was the plight of that defiant badger that struck at the heart of the pond - and there's more Rowson here ...
Well Michael Rowland defamed Sigrid Thornton this early morning and mangled the English language yet again by calling her a "rolled gold legend."
He really does have a fairly infinite, totally unique way with words ... but it was the plight of that defiant badger that struck at the heart of the pond - and there's more Rowson here ...
From mangled English and defiant badgers, it's just a short hop, skip and a jump to outraged, hysterical reptiles and the pond immediately knew, thanks to its proud inclination to utter perversity, which cab would be first off the ranks this morning ...
What a line up. No wonder the reptile business plan is working so well ... and it's reflected in the astonishing number of hits the pond daily receives...
Why, we might be past ten by noon ...
Why, we might be past ten by noon ...
Now the weak namby-pamby, pamby mamby do gooders might wander off to read Colin Rubenstein wringing his hands and cluck clucking and tut tutting, but the pond knew where that would lead ...
Gently, Sweetly, Row by Row:
Let the Verse the Subject fit;
Little Subject, Little Wit.
Namby-Pamby is your Guide;
Albion's Joy, Hibernia's Pride...
There could be only one cultural warrior this day, the reptiles' pride and joy, you bloody dinkum beaut, Oceania's Pride, the wonder of the Sahul Shelf ...
Now the pond knows there will be a few cynics asking what on earth "essential freedom" means.
Is it a meditation on the importance of regular bowel movements?
What are these core values? Are we talking about the riches to be found in geological samples?
Oh, those core values ...
Righto, the pond has no time for those petulant cynics white-anting away at core values and essential freedoms...
Why the next thing you know, people will be doing devious things to our precious bodily fluids.
What we need is an ancient mariner stopping anyone and everyone for a moment, importuning them in his dulcet, beguiling tones to listen to yet another epic rant ...
Now the pond can hear the quiet murmuring in the background.
Wouldn't it be kinder to just have him put down? What else to make of that portrait of a hound supplied by Krygsman at top of page? Is this a coded message to Mike Baird?
But at least we now have an answer to what constitutes essential freedom and core values.
It consists of the right to be a barking mad climate denialist sobbing into a hankie while typing out "won't someone think of the children"?
Damn you UN and your fiendish world government plan, rolled out in darkest night (oh and thanks to Malcolm Roberts, we shouldn't forget the Rothschilds and the banks, should we Colin?)
Well dammit, the pond stands proudly alongside Moorice to celebrate a couple of world wars and the fruits of colonialism and imperialism. Proud heritage items, and there's plenty more war-mongering where that came from ...
Sadly however, it seems that these days Moorice quickly runs out of steam, or if you will, deflates like a party balloon, and so the rest of the rant is over all too quickly ...
Around this time, the pond began to wonder what it would be like to do a thought experiment.
Imagine if you were young, swimming in the world of the intertubes, with employment tricky and subject to seasonal change and short-term contract, the price of housing in Sydney obscenely high, and so on and endlessly forth, and you came across a loon in Hyde Park (that's the Sydney version) shrieking that "socialism is the dominant ideology."
You might well toss a coin or two in the hat - if you had any - and shake your head in bemusement and then move on ... and thereby miss the best line of all, a shouting at the ruling class (before the loon retires to a handsome restaurant before lunch) about too many freedoms having been sacrificed on the altar of equality ... and public tolerance wearing thin...
There are caricatures that have some remote resemblance to reality and then there's Moorice ...
Never mind, the pond can now pause to admire a roast duck in the Haymarket ...
Yes, the pond has spent many a happy hour in the Haymarket, and you just never know what you'll find on the menu ...
And while thanking Rowe with a click here, how about another Rowson?
Yes, and the next time you read about a Tory member of the Tory elite ranting about 'leets, just lie back and dream of Tudor England ...
Fuck all this freedom shit!
ReplyDeleteIt seems Cory was right...
He alone knew that the same sex marriage debate would directly lead to dogs and kangaroos mating.
Has Dorothy seen the heartwarming encounter between Tony Abbott and Pauline Hanson over a steaming cup of No 1 blend? The vid is easier to find than my ability to provide a link.
ReplyDeleteWhat to say? What to say?
I was mesmerized.
Miss pp
Actually we just popped it up Miss pp, it was entrancing ...
DeleteAnd continuing the theme of media oddities, here is the Order Of Lenin Hunter getting a warm and comforting Fisking by the AFR.
ReplyDeleteWho would have imagined he could be so wide of the mark on facts?
http://www.afr.com/brand/rear-window/on-newspapers-chris-mitchell-is-no-warren-buffett-20160831-gr5fta
An excellent link VC, though readers should be warned it's behind the AFR paywall ... and so they'll have to find cunning ways to read Joe Alston trash the Order of Lenin hunter (naturally Joe mentions the Kremlin, having started out "There's something oddly adorable about former newspaper editor Chris Mitchell when he gets like this: incapable of a backward step, backstroke-boring earthwards towards China."
DeleteHear hear, and Monday is now the pond's favourite day. Joe really got cranked up ...
Print advertising revenue for FY16 (source: SMI) in News Corp's metropolitan press (the daily tabloids of all state capitals plus Perth's Sunday Times) was down 17.8 per cent. Fairfax's (that's The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times) was down 6.5 per cent. The whole market was down 14.6 per cent. So actually News, not Fairfax, is dragging down the whole industry's print display income. Why? Because advertisers don't covet its audience of unemployed and retired bogans. As Bloomingdales boss Marvin Traub apocryphally said of the New York Post, "Mr Murdoch, your readers are our shoplifters".
Print cover-price revenue is collapsing even faster yet Mitchell, if you follow his illogic, argues for printing papers nobody will buy just to prop up their (sinking) ad revenue. Dead set, the old duffer would have been such a sassy receptionist at Allco!
On digital-consumer revenue, Mitchell cites as emerging saviour the 413,000 digital subscribers to Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and London's The Times. That's 413,000 people paying for national newspapers in a population catchment of 385 million – woeful penetration. Even so, how that's supposed to help The Sunday Telegraph or The Sunday Mail (in relatively tiny catchments, not the world's biggest financial markets) is anyone's guess.
Tiny catchments on whom News just spent $6.1 million not on the product itself, but promoting the launch of yet another free insert magazine, Stellar, that will do sweet nothing to slow the Sunday tabloids' collapsing audience and revenue. Murdoch's own reporters fly to the party by helicopter. Didn't Edward Gibbon write a book about this 240 years ago? Or was it Warren Buffett?
I'm just trying to remember, DP, the bit in Gabriel Chevalier's Clochemerle where he describes the French general in WWI in his tent with his staff, examining his battleground map and issuing orders: "attack here", "retreat there" "cavalry charge through here" etc who has no idea what is actually going on until German bullets start whistling through his tent.
DeleteI'll go get my copy of Clochemerle later and look up the exact part (I remember it, from some decades ago, as being very funny). Really kinda puts one in mind of the Lenin Medal Hunter though, doesn't it.