Monday, August 20, 2018

In which the pond does the Major and a crash course in great books ...


The pond is struggling to keep up with the reptiles today, but this offering from Stephen Brook is irresistible as a starter …

Note that reference to "off reservation."

No, that's not Faine's crime, that's stupid Stephen Brook, who doubled down in his actual report ...

It looks like ABC Melbourne Mornings presenter Jon Faine has wandered off the reservation again. Aunty has been forced to apologise on behalf of the radio presenter over an out-of-character ethnic slur he made against Indian NBN technicians. The apology follows a year of highs and lows for the ABC veteran. His spectacular take-down of managing director Michelle Guthrie for failing to defend the ABC against the government was well received at the Melbourne Press Club in June. Faine acidly pointed out Guthrie’s dignified-silence approach failed to stop the government freezing indexation in the next budget, which will cost Aunty $84 million. But Faine’s frank interview with a disability activist in March was labelled insensitive and bizarre.

"Wandered off the reservation again"?!

And Brook thinks he's being superior to the offensive Faine? How else to put it than to say than to put political correctness aside and call Brook a fuckwit of the first water? Unless of course he intends a meta-level of irony, and a deep sympathy with Faine, and a willingness to go there with him ...


There's plenty more at NPR here

Uh huh, and now for that apology from the lizard Oz for the scribbling of babbling Brook ...

Never mind, the pond has so much to tackle, it was just seeking a little light relief before heading off to Major Mitchell territory, the reptile galah reliably offering exceptionally uniquely infallible advice* (*ABC approved) …


Now it should be remembered that the Major is a climate science denialist and the mischief currently being produced by all the dissidents springs from the reptiles, and their love of dinkum clean Oz coal, oi oi oi…

How the reptiles have cherished the onion muncher and all the rest of the fundamentalist hard core deniers …Lloydie amongst them, and still beavering away today ...


Sadly the pond hasn't got time for Lloydie, because the Major calls ...


Oh dear, there's a reptile aware there's a drought going on. Someone put stick their head outside the inner city 'leet Surry Hills bunker for a nanosecond, did they, to see what's happening to their farm investment?

Here, have a cartoon …


What now?

Well the Major has stared into the abyss, and see now how he blinks ...


Constrain prices? That's what it's come to as the Major blinks and retreats from the onion muncher abyss?

How Ben Chifley would be chortling and dancing in the streets if by chance he happened to be able to see this talk of "constraining prices" …

 

Here, have a price fixed cartoon …


And now because the pond is a glutton, and a devoted reptile consumerist, it simply must provide an add-on, featuring Luke blathering in the wilderness, apparently unaware there's a real crisis in western civilisation centred on Canberra and Malware's fortunes ...

You see, Luke scored the Lobbecke of the day, and is maintaining the crusade, even as the lights go out in Canberra, and so attention must be paid to the man honoured with cult reptile status ...

Indeed, indeed, and how could anyone celebrate European Enlightenment, without mentioning the Donald and without being aware of the art of painting?


But enough, that's the pond's way of saying it's heard Luke-speak a zillion times before in reptile la la land … and sometimes a little distraction is necessary ...


Pathetic really, that the noble crusader dream should have been reduced to a great books course, with a few sops from elsewhere thrown in …

Issue after issue, the pond is confronted with ads in the NYRB offering great book courses, or great music courses, or great this and that courses …

Even as the country descends into a babble of conflicting voices and lies and phoniness, it's the sort of hucksterism and boosterism beloved of American triumphalism ...

 

… can Trump U be far behind?



Even if the great books proposal goes nowhere? 

So the pond has just endured another bout of existentially meaningless discourse, full of futility and pointlessness, up there with the very worst of French post-modernist relativism?

Enough of all that, let the debate continue, it's such fun to see reptiles flapping in the dismal breeze, when they could just sign up for a great books course by correspondence for a very modest stipend - extending the mortgage should raise enough cash - and perhaps, if Rosseau is included, discover the dangers of Italy and wanking …

{There I} learnt of that dangerous means of cheating Nature, which leads young men of my temperament to various kinds of excesses, that eventually imperil their health, and sometimes their lives. This vice, which shame and timidity find so convenient, has a particular attraction for lively imaginations. (Psychology Today

Avice? Not in the world of the reptiles and modern psychology… and then there's the virtues of using a goose …

...to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of Master John of Scotland, alias Scotus. (adelaide.edu here, though google is goosing them with a certificates issue. What a pain in the arse google is).

Well yes, that's full of references to Western Civilisation before reaching an apt conclusion.

But enough, the pond doesn't mean to mock, but to celebrate the joys of bum-wiping and wanking, and western civilisation reaching its highest forms in the comely shapes of the onion muncher, the war criminal little Johnny and of course the Donald …




7 comments:

  1. "Pathetic really, that the noble dream [of Ramsay] should have been reduced to a great books course, with a few sops from elsewhere thrown in ..."

    No, no, don't tell me, DP, that somebody other than me has finally read the Ramsay 'illustrative syllabus' and clearly seen it for what it is: something you could do much cheaper and more conveniently via Reader's Digest.

    "... it's such fun to see reptiles flapping in the dismal breeze, when they could just sign up for a great books course by correspondence for a very modest stipend..."

    Oh yeah, we're on the very same wavelength here, DP. But pray tell, wherever did the reptiles dig up that utter dvckhead Luke Slattery from ?

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  2. Sheesh, GB, has the pond got the course for you or what, and never mind historical context or the enlightening examples of other artists at work creating an environment for the great book. As a bonus, the pond could happily enrol you in a course on Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-worship and Heroic White Men in History (sadly the Sydney Anglicans insisted there should be no complimentary white women on the syllabus).

    Luke Slattery once wrote on higher education for the lizard Oz, but you know how reptile scribblers go a little funny in their dotage ...

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    1. Well I'm sure that DP could indeed put me onto a great course or two, Bef - especially as I'm not quite sold yet on Carlyle - but Slattery has my measure.

      For starters, I'll have to work very hard to catch up with Marx and read Aeshylus's 'Prometheus Bound' multiple times - more than Marx's "once a year" anyway or I'll never experience the full inspiration. Inspiration to what I know not, but once you have 'inspiration' who cares what it's about.

      Though truly I'll really have to work on the whole 'humanism' and 'impartiality' thing - after all, Hannah Arendt couldn't be wrong about that, could she ? So, when Slattery says:
      "But to get that, you have to read Homer, to read his poem closely, to read it in full and study it intensively."
      that clearly explains why the world is in the terrible state that it's in - hardly anybody has ever read The Iliad "closely and studied it intensively" and that is why there's hardly any "humanism and impartiality" in the world.

      Why, I'm just sure that if Tony Abbott took Slattery's advice and did all of that, he'd be a much better person and would become one of Turnbull's most passionate helpmeets. Aren't you ?

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    2. Come now GB, Homer can be directly credited for Caesar abandoning the Gallic wars, and for every war after that, and that's why talk of world wars now happily exists only in alternative realities and alternative dimensions …

      As for the onion muncher, it's not so much Homer as Jesus who has made him such a meek and mild child, turning the other cheek and showing the love on a daily basis. Ah, there's nothing like a good book to fix up human nature ...

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    3. Ah ... well, as always, I bow to your greater understanding of these deeply arcane matters, DP. But is there anywhere a good book - authored by Aeschylus or whoever - titled Epimetheus Unleashed ? I reckon such as that might be truly "inspiring".

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  3. Replies
    1. Well I've never encountered a naked Antisthenesian, nor lived the pure life of a canus, but according to Diogenes Laertius, in Antisthenes' teaching it all comes down to:
      "...that virtue can be taught; and that nobility belongs to none other than the virtuous. And he held virtue to be sufficient in itself to ensure happiness, since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates. And he maintained that virtue is an affair of deeds and does not need a store of words or learning; that the wise man is self-sufficing...".

      I reckon we could do with a bit of that now, except that those with "the strength of a Socrates" are rather few and far between.

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