Sunday, January 31, 2021

In which the pond swelters with Polonius and our Gracie for its Sunday meditation ...

 

 
 
Having Polonius back in his proper place, leading the pond's Sunday meditation, seemed only right and proper.
 
Yes, it's a low grade effort, just the usual spreading of FUD about the Labor party, but still, as a conservative, the pond values tradition, and above all, mind-numbing stupefaction. 
 
If push came to shove, the pond would rather be reading about loons of the Craig Kelly, gorgeous George kind,  but at least in these outings Polonius doesn't pretend to be a witty dog, only to end up sounding like a witless creature howling at the moon ...

First up came Polonius's vast relief that nothing need be done about pesky, tricky, difficult emissions targets ...


 

Oh yes, it's all hunky dory for Joel and coal,  and SloMo has everything in hand, including that chunk of coal he loves to show to colleagues, and Labor is on the run, and climate science is ... well nothing really to do with Polonius. 

Are we fucking the planet? Don't trouble your noggin about that, Polonius will be long gone before the shit hits the fan, and that's all that really matters ... that and FUDing the Labor party ... oh, and history too, because the 1916 conscription debate can tell us so much about climate science and Joel's love of coal ...


 

Talk about a cracked gramophone record of the 78 rpm shellac kind. How many times has Polonius blathered about increasingly secular well off inner city 'leets while contemplating the world from his CBD bunker, and how many times has the pond faithfully noted it? 

Probably about as many times as the ABC's Russ Tyson used to play "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window" in his breakfast show, such that the pond only has to hear the first bar before it's rushing out to chew on grass for fear of barfing ...

Well if Polonius can keep harking back to the time of Chifley, why not match him with the 1950s, and romping on the sludge heap at the Tamworth Power Station?


 

Yes, embrace climate science denialism and Joel and love of coal, it's the only way forward for the good of Joel, the state, the country, the planet and the world ... and thus Polonius has fulfilled his FUD duties for the day.

Luckily the immortal Rowe was also on hand to take a look at Labor, with more immortal Rowe here ...

 



Ah, that helped the Polonial heap of desiccated coconut to down a treat ... and so to the next reptile treat.

By a curious coincidence, our Gracie was also rabbiting on about the climate today ...


 
 
 
The pond has been desperately worried about our Gracie for a considerable time. The pond can remember our Gracie under another name, and while the pond appreciates, understands and accepts the name change, it seemed to bring something of a sea change with it.
 
Remember the good old days? Here's Gracie being celebrated by Polonius in his delusional doggie persona back on 18th March 2016 ...
 
 
 

 

Oh it was love and darls all round back then, and the gnashing of teeth from envious types ...



Yes she was one of the flock back then ...

 And now what do we have?



Where did it go wrong? What happened? Was there something rogue in the batch of kool-aid the reptiles routinely supply to their commentary team? How to explain this dangerous radicalisation, which flies against everything that Polonius had so dutifully scribbled up above ...

Why back in the day, the pond can recall this letter from our Gracie back on 1st April, 2012, under her old name, and still up here ...


 

That's the proper reptile spirit. Consume, devour, with no thought of the morrow. Laugh in the face of science, hose down the throat with champers,  and hose the science down with a water blaster if required (Aldi regularly has a good special).

It made the pond wonder, what was it that might make a reptile turn? What might lead to hand wringing and anxiety about the future? Too much champers? Too much home lighting inducing a headache?

For now it must remain a mystery, but imagine if the pond could find the magic potion, and smuggle it into the lizard Oz HQ in Surry Hills. Why there would be Polonius devoting a whole column to deploring Joel and his love of coal, regurgitating masses of scientific data about the state of the planet, expressing his deep concern about the lack of action by SloMo and his mob, and so on and so forth.

It would be a new gathering of darls, an action group, perhaps called "sweltering reptiles" ...
 

 

Probably the pond was just having a fever dream. Just because our Gracie has gone slightly strange doesn't mean the likes of Polonius or other reptiles will follow her down the garden path ...

They'll keep celebrating Joel and his love of coal, and spreading FUD, and doing their best to wreck the planet, because that's what reptiles do ...

And now because the lizard Oz isn't really the best source for all that's wacky, weird and wonderful in the world, a few Sunday cartoons ...










Saturday, January 30, 2021

In which the pond takes the low road into the weekend with Dame Slap and the dog botherer ...

 

 
 
Visiting planet Janet is always a risky affair, but the pond thought it would start off with some good news from Dame Slap in her eyrie above the Faraway tree ...
 
You see, once Dame Slap gets a bee in her bonnet, it keeps buzzing at a fearsome rate, and the latest bee seems to be a deep, abiding fear and loathing of SloMo.
 
Who is the pond to stand in the way of this obsession? Instead, let it unroll like a tattered, moth-eaten, once royal red carpet ..
 

 
 
Low-rent populist? Oh sweet speaking in tongues to imaginary friends ... and better still, the pond has no dog in this fight.
 
After all, the pond in its day used to find slipping a case of beers, or a cash in the paw bonus to someone could make things flow smoothly.
 
It was inordinately stupid and tone deaf to fling around Cartier watches, when a generous cash bonus would have done the same thing, and slipped off the radar and nobody would have been any the wiser, or cared that much, since pissing public money up against the wall is a dinkum ritual ...
 
You'd think that Dame Slap, as an IPA stooge, would appreciate refined ways to reward a devoted hack, short of ostentatious, vulgar display, but who knows, perhaps in the IPA, preening vulgarity is all the go ... the pond has noted that, in her day, Dame Slap has sometimes seemed a bit of a Mollie, with a taste for eating sugar and wearing ribbons ...
 
That noted, if Dame Slap wants to embrace inordinate (or if you will inconsistent) stupidity in order to slag off SloMo as a low-rent populist, why should the pond care or try to intervene? Of course it's not like she's attacking his low-rent, coal-clutching climate science denialism, but it's a start ... go on Dame Slap, stick in the boot to this parvenu from marketing ...


 

Indeed, indeed, don't got the pond wrong. As a representative of public opinion, the pond is in favour of Cartier watches all round for the garbos who each week in the wee hours take away the pond's garbage.

Of course they might not have much use for the watches on the job, and the bloody council is likely to intercept them and hand them out to the councillors or the staff, tucked safely in their offices calculating how much they can stiff the pond this year so that the rates can be jacked up and then quite properly reduced for the long-suffering basket weavers in Balmain, but it's the thought that counts ...

And so to a final burst of Dame Slap outrage ...


 

Just to be a little petulant and picky, Churchill? 

The wiki that discusses the old saying manages to do so without mentioning the cigar-chomper once, as can be found here. What is it with the reptiles and Dame Slap in particular, always lazily willing to recite memes without using the google? Has the war on Big Tech reduced them to a righteous poverty when it comes to links?

Nonetheless, the pond does appreciate that the current coalition government of rogues, thieves, ruffians and rapscallions has been called out by Dame Slap, presided over by a mob rule gangster stifling the land with mob rule. How this quite squares with Dame Slap's devoted wearing of a mob rule gangster MAGA cap, in league with a mob of insurrectionists must remain a mystery to the pond ...
 

 


 

Oh the pond just wanted to slip that in there, because the USA still does it better. Talk about loon HQ.

All we have is watches and climate science is a UN plot to put in place a world government by Xmas (oh those were the days for Dame Slap).

And so to a more serious and solemn read, with the dog botherer doing what the reptiles have never done before ... bash the ABC.

We keed, we keed, how could it be a weekend at the lizard Oz without a goodly dash of ABC dashing, perhaps with a baseball bat to the head of urban 'leets in passing? (Surry Hills, it being understood, is somewhere backa Bourke, and so the reptiles are in no way 'leet or urban).



Now this is a lengthy piece of ABC bashing by the dog botherer, ostensibly in a good cause, but the pond was relieved that the reptiles immediately made it clear to the pond who it should hate. Those idle do gooder wastes of time stalking the street with signs ... while the dog botherer goes about his noble business of green left, social media, ABC bashing ... and by business, without a mention of "virtue signalling" in the first line, it would have been an epic fail by the dog botherer, though the pond would have accepted "cancel culture" at a pinch, perhaps with the cancelling of Liz Cheney to show how it's done ...


 

Of course the dog botherer can always be relied on for a laugh, usually of the hypocritical wanker kind.

"I do not want to be divisive in retaliation"?!

 All he does is divisive retaliation and idle abuse. That's the game plan, that's the business model, shouting away on Sky, pounding away for the reptiles, a vicious retaliation here, some idle abuse there.

Look at how he started, in good dog botherer form, and expect more abusive, divisive, ideologically one-eyed retaliation in the gobbets to follow ... but strangely, the dog botherer rarely picks on SloMo's mob, it's always the likes of the green left media, social media, Twitter (on which he made a fool of himself and had to give it up) and the ABC ...


 

So reporting is enough? That gets you off the hook? But doesn't the dog botherer still have connections with the mob that currently runs the country?

Might not he speak to them, might not he begin an extensive social justice and consciousness raising campaign that helped force the government to take action? Might he not corral his fellow reptiles into a crusade for truth and justice?

You know, instead of the usual whining and railing at the usual suspects? Or would that put the dog botherer in the camp he most hates ... the do gooders?

It's a perplexing problem for the pond. After all, if Dame Slap can celebrate the righteousness of handing out Cartier watches, why not a dog botherer campaign to ensure every indigenous Australian scored a Cartier on Australia Day?

Just a thought ... meanwhile, it's back to the bashing of the ABC and the rest of the usual lizard Oz suspects ...


 

Indeed, indeed. The pond can't count the many times that the dog botherer has handed his voice over to those he consistently skewers for their ideological errors ... perhaps because there aren't any.

Here's the thing. If Price thinks lining up with the reptiles is the way forward, good luck with that. 

Get them to fuck over SloMo and embark on a massive spending campaign to assist Aboriginal Australians. Good luck with that happening.

Get them to embarrass SloMo and thinking a single word change in a song will fix it and make things hunky dory. Get Aboriginal news on the front page of the lizard Oz every day of the week. Good luck with that happening.

Truth to tell, the dog botherer is only really interested because it allows him his usual Don Quixote routine, the chance to go out and tilt at all the usual windmills ...

It's a tawdry spectacle, and as tedious as all get out, and perhaps explains why Terry Gilliam had such a terrible time making a film about the Don ... but maybe that's because the novel is funny, and instead of the dog botherer, why not listen to La Mancha Screwjob? It's ancient, but not as ancient as the dog botherer's predictable whining and moaning ...



Well it was good of the dog botherer to demonstrate how polarised sloganeering and superficial media date is done, and sweet fuck all of the hard arguments, and not a mention that perhaps the federal and state governments might have a role to play, with even a nod towards what governments haven't done and might do, but then deep down, the dog botherer is just a fuckwit trolling in the usual way ... 

It's so much easier to do the media wars than to do something useful, like the garbos who reliably take away the pond's garbage, and are in the hands of private contractors, screwed to the ground, for their pains ...

If the pond has one complaint after wading through all that bullyboy guff, the dog botherer really doesn't reach the level his comrades have achieved in the USA, which the pond understands in scientological terms, is OT VIII (or Operating Thetan Level 8, "the Truth Revealed") if you will ...

 


 


Friday, January 29, 2021

In which it is an honour for P to gong our erudite Henry ...

 


 

Oh sheesh, he would say that, wouldn't he? Why do the reptiles bother? Why would the pond bother? Read Rove? Might as well do the biblical thing with the eyes, and get on with the plucking rather than the mind fucking ...

For a start, even in the header, he manages to get things dead wrong ...the President's first weeks have seen a Foxian race to genuine weirdness ...

 


 

Oh yes there's plenty of Google links at the moment, though who knows about the future.

Meanwhile, the Q is inside the Murdochian hen house! Not that we should feel left out or at a loose end. The Q is also alive and well at home ...



 

Trust the plan, listen to the Murdochians, join SloMo in speaking in tongues to imaginary friends, and soon the world will be transformed ...

Up against this sort of stuff, the rest of the reptile stew has a hard time holding the pond's attention ... look at this wretched mob, and the wretched front page of the wretched tree-killer edition ...





 

What to do, oh dear sweet absent lord and Q, what to do?

Luckily, as his wont, the erudite hole in the bucket man was to hand, and the reptiles had yet another chance to show off a prize loon in our Henry's featured photo ... what a lovely pair they make, so alike ...



Ah, that's better, the pond felt immediately at home, back in the world where the world was created in seven days, Adam and Eve were around to set the domestic housekeeping rules for angry Sydney Anglicans in search of a complimentary woman, and Leviticus might warn of the dangers of shellfish and mixing fabrics ...

And yet there was still a powerful temptation, a yearning to learn more about that Crikey story here ... likely paywall affected ...



 

By golly, that's rich ... Tucker on board, and the movement well advanced down under, and SloMo's secret plan to secure the next election, and slaughter all the pedophile-loving, pizza-devouring leftists and greenies ready to be enacted. 

Just remember you heard the tip from P ... as the pond would like to be known going forward ...

Never mind, the pond is of course of an elevated mind set, and always turns to our erudite Henry for sage advice and historical references, and so we should begin today's journey with that homophobic bigoted image of a woman whose only discernible ability - before she went barking mad and turned into one of the pond's aunts - was to hit tennis balls around a court, as meaningless an activity as reading the reptiles ...

 


 

What the fuck? Our Henry has wheeled out Hobbes to explain a love of gongs, including those of the scrambled eggs kind? How on earth does this help with the desire to play ostentatious dress-up games, be a good frock wearer like the Pellists, or don a penguin suit, or drone on like a portentous pompous ponce, and be rewarded with the chance to wear academic garb?

And is it half as interesting as the current crop of barking mad loons intent on a new sovereign order, and them so close to home?

 


 

How Tucker and the Murdochians would approve ... that race to weirdness is consuming the world, and all poor old Henry can do is invoke nasty, brutish and short Hobbes:

For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.

Now there's a challenge for our Henry, who else has he got in his portentous locker of references?


 

Rousseau! Another passing fair noble reference. Is there a celebration of mortifying wanking to go with it?

No doubt our erudite Henry, should he have lived in Adolf's times, would have been pleased and honoured to receive the Goethe Medallion for Art and Science (oh how the Nazis loved their awards and they had the best uniforms too, such a divine black, and wiki up an award for yourself here).

But was it all as interesting as Q being in the hen house, and not just in Congress, but alive and well with Tucker and among us down under?



 

Never mind, bewildered supporters ... just remember what comes before Q! And join P in attending to the next gobbet of the erudite Henry ...



 

Oh fuck, the cancel culture seamlessly woven into an echoing Robespierre, and talk of the scythes of tall poppy hunters in a rhetorical flight of fancy that shows the spirit of Q is alive in our Henry ... but really, it's no biggie, it's simply that the chance to stand in front of a dangerous, destructive lunatic and collect a gong, or even an award remembering the empire of good Queen Bess, sometimes loses its appeal ...



For those wanting more, with active links, the story is at the NY Times here ... and now for the big reveal, as our Henry takes a firm stand, and refuses nobly in his final gobbet to accept a meaningless gong from either Adolf or the Donald, and doesn't think much of a system that rewards a barking mad bigot for the ability to bash a tennis ball ...



 

Oh fucketty fuck, sorry, he didn't, he just offered more pompous, portentous blather, as is his wont ... but never mind P followers, when it comes to our erudite Henry, he'll be on hand next week, and P guarantees the best is yet to come ...

Speaking of the best coming, how nice of the immortal Rowe to share the pond's delight in SloMo's leaky vessel ... with more chances to sail with Rowe here ...

 




Thursday, January 28, 2021

In which the pond abandons the reptiles, leaving them to play with themselves ...

 

Just look at the dross and the rubbish served up in the lizard Oz today ...

 


 

No savvy Savva? ABC hours cranked up to eleven?

Just simplistic Simon stirring the pot? Oh it's a familiar reptile game, but as Albo does his best to evoke memories of Bomber Beazley, a really boring one ... and there's Tanya, apparently unaware her message is hidden behind a paywall and to access it, a tariff must be paid to the chairman?  Should the pond help out or fall into a deep ennui? And then there was the debt burden and the lizard Oz editorialist carrying on like a long-suffering Killer Creighton? And that's it?

Is it any wonder that the pond decided that it would go out and about on other early morning business and run a little late?

Elsewhere in other rags, there was a buzz about a recent announcement ...

 


 

That story was also in The Graudian here.

Poor old beefy Angus flapped around like a cawing crow in the back paddock, but even worse, that dreaded figure of supreme wetness was given a run ...

 


Now it's not the pond's business to attend to actual science or scientists, or those picking up the findings of scientists, but rather to look at an alternative universe through the eyes of the reptiles ... but it was tough going to find an angle, or a decent bout of eccentricity this day.

Even the tree killer edition looked decidedly lean ...


 

Yes, there was also a dib-dob piece on the war on China, but the pond is a bit over war, so all that left was the war on big tech ...

 

 
 
Ah, existential questions.
 
The pond wasn't particularly interested, but it was pleasing that this war was amazingly brief ... why, in his prime nattering "Ned" could have weaved five huge gobbets of malarkey about the world coming to an end out of it, but Swannie kept it brief ...

 


 

Of course in an alternative universe the next year should be shaping up as crucial as to why News Corp and Fox News should be allowed to exist, and what we want to do about it, but in lieu of all that the pond thought it would just abandon the field for the day, with that familiar instruction teachers used to write home: "not really focused on appropriate levels of loonacy, and could do better."

 


 

Really this was the day for the reptiles to strike back, and celebrate coal and the Nationals and a government-owned coal-fired power station, and instead they whimpered and wandered off ... leaving the pond with nothing to scribble about, and instead deciding to end it all with a cartoon. Anyone who arrives expecting something interesting will be better off talking amongst themselves.

Already we're feeling the numbing absence of the Donald, and it shows up in the reptiles, who have definitely lost their mojo, and quite possibly their reason to exist, with some sort of existential crisis sure to follow ...