In which the reptiles seem subdued and sullen for a Monday ...

Every so often, when the pond seeks distraction from the reptiles, it comes across a little gem, and Yes, God, Yes is one of them.
 

Talk about an ex-Catholic atheist's dream fantasy fulfillment film. There's so much to like, like the feisty heroine catching the priest watching internet porn, and then when she subtly indicates to him in the confessional that she knows, and he lumbers her with 50 Hail Marys and 50 Our Fathers for his hypocrisy, she just walks out of the church, hopefully never to return.

And what about the heroine fleeing the four day spiritual camp to binge on a bottle of wine cooler at the local bar, only to encounter a wise, leather-clad, motor-bike riding, ex-Catholic lesbian who explains to her we're all just trying to get our shit together, or leastwise that's what she learned in 'Frisco in the seventies.

Even better, it's gently period, and so the heroine loves to play Snake on her Nokia, with no regard for Catholic metaphors. Who could hate a Snake-lover who loves to play with Snakes?

Natalie Dyer plays the heroine, about 23-24 when pretending to be an innocent 16 year old, but it helps make for a smoother performance, and she still knows how to look wide-eyed and yearning, like wanting a taste of sushi (what, raw fish?, says her dad), discovering the pleasures of a wank, and heading for the east or the west coast for college, anywhere but Tamworth - sorry, Georgia, sorry, so sorry, it picked up some finance in Georgia …

Karen Maine directed, and the pond salutes her and would love to ship a copy to every Catholic girls' school in Australia. If anyone attempts to tell the pond that Maine grew up a Mormon or a Scientologist, or an evangelical, the pond will, any and all evidence to the contrary, know it's a lie …she's a former Catholic, calling out the con, explaining to the young marks how they're being confused and screwed by nonsense about hell, and the pond worships at her feet.

Funnily enough the pond had the show on the Plex for some time, but it was the substitute reviewer for Kermode and Mayo that persuaded the pond to take a look, and what fun it was. Short, but evocative and punchy to the point of punch drunk for anyone who ever went near the hypocrisy-laden reality of Catholic schools …

The pond followed it up by skimming through the highlights in an old favourite, Cronenberg's History of Violence, and felt ready to tear the Catholic Boys' Daily, aka the reptile dirge, from limb to limb. So let's get on with the assault … and who better to start with than the wretched bromancer?

Oh wait, the pond didn't really mean that. What the pond wants to do is to skip back to yesterday when the sweet bromancer filed a little story about civility ... it's a detour, but it won't take long ...

Here's how to keep a smile on your face. Enjoy a burst of the bromancer being idiotic. In fact, you might like to call him moronic. It's your democratic right.

Yes, in a democracy, everyone has the right to call everyone else idiotic, though in the case of the bromancer, the pond prefers to think of him in the way that Rex Tillerson thought of the Donald ...

Feeling the warmth from this cosy fire-side chat? Well there's a punchline coming ...

Incivility? But didn't the bromancer just advise we could call the President an idiot, and by extension the bromancer an idiot? You know, acting in a democratic way in twitterdoms doesn't make it any less democratic ...

And by way of Ronnie's movies, why did the bromancer have to sound like an ill-informed idiot?

Regan wasn't always genial in his movies. He was an actor, and in his later days, he took the work that came along, and one of them was playing the villain, in particular, a sniveling corrupt man who dies badly in pursuit of wealth. It was Don Siegel's re-make of a Hemingway story, The Killers ...

In later life, Regan hated it, because he did a good job, and it showed that the idiotic, moronic sentimentalizing of Ronnie Raygun by the likes of the bromancer didn't pass muster. And sure enough, it turned out that Ronnie could play the thug in office just as well as he did in the movies ...

And so to today's reptile rag, and the reptiles seemed sullen and subdued, and even the dog botherer was off his game ...

Even the photo of the Donald accompanying the piece seemed weird, and off-colour, and the pond wondered why the reptiles hadn't called on the cult master to lighten the mood with a cartoon ...

Never mind, like the bromancer, the dog bother is mercifully short this day, but still blessed with the selective vision and hearing the reptiles value so much ...

Of course we've already been through all of this endlessly with the bromancer, and the pond is eagerly standing by to hear the bromancer's reports on the GOP event, and that Ronnie Raygun piece was just a dewy-eyed, extremely moistened promise of things to come ...

As for the dog botherer, all the pond has to say is the usual: person, woman, man, camera, TV; covfefe; and Yo Semite, and how many more would you like before we get to talking of the Donald's impression of Chauncey? Except he can't, because Chauncey is a kindly man, and the snake oil salesman is a deeply corrupt, snake oil selling con artist incapable of resisting a conspiracy when it wafts by, even one as deeply smelly as QAnon ... and naturally that brought the liars out and about ...

Donald Trump’s press secretary and vice president claimed they had not heard the recent praise he offered to QAnon followers and tried to frame concern over Trump’s unapologetic embrace of the conspiracy movement as a media obsession. “The media talks a lot about this so-called QAnon. I've never heard the president mention it,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News on Thursday, per Politico. “I talk to him oftentimes 10 times a day. Not once have I heard him mention this group. The media can focus on QAnon, but this president is focused on the American people.” She added that Trump “has not at all looked into who QAnon is,” something the president said Wednesday when he expressed gratitude to QAnon followers who support him.

Mike Pence also claimed he “didn’t hear anything” about the president embracing the movement and rather “heard the president talk about how he appreciates people that support him.” Speaking to CNN’s John Berman, Pence tried to play off the question as testament to the media’s alleged fixation on the movement, the urgent threat of which he dismissed as one of many “shiny objects” that the media “chases after.” (Vanity Fair here)

Uh huh, how he loves to dog whistle to white supremacists and straighout out loons ...

A reporter followed up, pointing out that QAnon supporters believe Trump is “secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals”. The president replied flippantly: “I haven’t heard that but is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?

“If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it, I’m willing to put myself out there and we are, actually. We’re saving the world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country and, when this country is gone, the rest of the world will follow.” (Graudian here)

The pond understands Jesus offered to do the same for Natalie Dyer ...

But back to the dog botherer. Cruelly deprived of Hillary, of course he needs the distraction of Michelle and as usual, the media ...
 

That the bias and barracking should be so blatant is disturbing? Yep, apparently you can read the lizard Oz, or watch Fox News and feel complacent at your Murdochian enlightenment, and not feel a whiff of bias or barracking ...

The pond's bold prediction? The reptiles will act like those two young 'uns who so startled Natalie Dyer when she caught them in the act of a blow job in the middle of a righteous religious retreat ...

And now to something the pond must endure before getting to the Major, because it has a bearing on the Major ...

Week after week, the reptiles have been running the naked, self-interested, unashamed pleading of Graham Turner,  full of lies and distortions, and all motivated by saving his own business ...

Of course you don't learn to live with the virus, so much as to suffer serious illness and die from it, and the dissembling nature, the obviousness of Turner's self-interest is both nauseating and sublime ...

But the pond only ran it so it could wrap things up with the Major ... out and about on his usual beat, and pretending to beat up on SloMo and pretending to care ...

Journalists must SloMo to task? Didn't the Major mean to write we must accept this virus isn't going to be eradicated, we must learn to live with it, and heck, if a few old farts must die, that's the way it goes, it is what it is, but for god's sake, won't someone save the Flight Centre business model, and do we really have time to rabbit on about the elderly, and who might be responsible for a few tragic, but necessary deaths?

Yes, yes, but the virus isn't going to be eradicated any too soon, and so surely we must learn to live with it, and if a few old farts die, while the Flight Centre gets on with the living, surely the Major's not going to get too excited?

Actually, given the statistics globally, the virus can be particularly damaging to the young, especially if they have vulnerabilities ... and worse it's the sense of invincibility in the young, encouraged by the likes of the Major, that keeps the virus in business ...

Even news.com.au could manage this sort of basic reporting ...

A leading Australian epidemiologist has explained why young people now account for the nation’s highest number of COVID-19 cases as the world’s youth have been blamed for fuelling a surge in infections.
People aged between 20 and 29 account for the largest number of coronavirus cases and the highest rate of infection in Australia, according to the Department of Health.
Professor Jodie McVernon from the Doherty Institute this morning told the Today show there’s a number of reasons for that.
“A lot of the essential workers out there making sure that we can buy our groceries or in health care settings are younger people,” Prof McVernon said.
“So they are required to mix for work.”
She also explained that a lot of the transmissions occur in families and households where we are not required to wear a mask.
“We need to be able to touch and be close to those people who we live with, if we’re fortunate enough to do that,” she said.
“So we are seeing lots of spread in families and that will bring the average age down because we see children and young people infected in that environment as well.”…
…Australian National University Professor of Infectious Diseases Peter Collignon said the challenge is that while young people are more likely to be infected, they’re less likely to get very sick, leading to complacency.
“That differential in death (rates) and also your chance of going to hospital probably also affects your view that ‘I’m indestructible and this won’t affect me’,” he told SBS News.
“Now it is a problem, because even if your risk of death is less than one in 1000, if 100,000 people get infected, that’s still 100 deaths that would be otherwise avoidable.
“But I think it’s all those factors, the fact that they are the most affected often socially and economically but the least affected medically, means that they may be less likely to comply with the basic things we need to do.”

Sorry, the pond forgot there for a moment, the virus isn't going to be eradicated any too soon, so we must learn to die with the virus, so that Flight Centre's business can soar once more ...

And so to the Major's real mission ... to defend the indefensible Bolter ...

Fuck it, the pond has to wonder how many times it must record what the Bolter wrote, down there with Turner in its callous indifference ...

Yes, the Bolter was doing a Turner, which is why the pond had to reproduce what the reptiles had published ...

Note: 40 per cent of aged-care home residents die within nine months. The average stay is just under three years.
So Victoria’s bans are doing huge damage to — essentially — save aged-care residents from dying a few months earlier.

Indeed, indeed, we must accept that the virus isn't going to be eradicated any too soon, and that reading the Major is a waste of the few weeks you might have left, because let's learn to live with the dying, so that the Flight Centre might soar again ... and if you're old, you're going to die pretty quick, why the Bolter gives you only a couple of months, and really, should you expect to be cared for, and worried over, and protected in your dying? For the love of the long absent lord that so tormented Natalie Dyer, think of Flight Centre and get out of here, the sooner the better, and we'll pen a few token words of blame for your going! The Major's an expert at tokenism ...

And now, as John Oliver would say, in search of a lighter note to wrap up a segment, this ...