In which the bromancer offers his kingdom for some kit or at least the horse's mouth, while nattering "Ned" and Dimitri deal with the Satanic Jimbo ...

 

It was a long time ago that the pond drove through an ice storm in the south of the USA. George W. Bush was about to be inaugurated, and Americans, deluded by the size of their vehicles, drove like mad things, with patches of black ice sending them spinning and into rollovers and crashes and chaos. The pond remembers one loon spinning out, and then a little while later, overtaking the pond at the same mad speed that led to the original spin out ...

The highway was eventually closed, and the pond retired to a motel, apologising to the makers of the film for thinking it exaggerated, with director Ang Lee for once being understated. Talk about a boat ride with a tiger ...

Yet even today, as the pond shudders and notes another event, and sympathises with those caught up in it, the experience steeled the pond for each day's encounters with the reptiles ... as the usual crew return in force at the start of a new month...

Okay, there's a red card right away. The pond simply isn't going to put up with Dame Slap offering a lecture on womyn's rights, and doing a J. K. Rowling style of tranny bashing ... shouldn't she be scribbling furiously about that recently announced inquiry on that other matter? She stuck her oar in that one often enough ...

But what else then? Well there's simplistic 'here no conflict of interest' Simon, but the pond has already had a reptile lecture about the voice, and he's simply echoing the top of the digital page ...

Ah yes, the details, the details ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles have just discovered that big tobacco is behind vaping, and it's worth an EXCLUSIVE? Only in reptile la la land, where no one gets out behind the paywall ...Really?

There was nothing for it but to start with the bromancer moaning about his lack of kit. How's a Generalfeldmarschall going to start a war with China by Xmas without decent kit?

Yes, yes, the pond has heard it all before, and yet there's a comfort in constant, incessant repetition ... and the lost, forlorn feeling that perhaps there won't be a war with Xmas, what with the sociopathic Vlad the Terrible showing what fun it is, and how productive and useful ... (post modern irony overload).

Well it wouldn't be a bromancer piece without him scribbling "that's nuts", so the pond was on the look out ...

Colour the pond shocked, startled and surprised ... no "that's nuts" and instead "that's ridiculous", and it just goes to show that the bromancer is capable of an infinite variety of thoughts and an abundant exploitation of the richness of the English language ...

Moving right along,  the other pieces this day featured nattering "Ned" and a certain Dimitri, and the object of their fixation was Jimbo and his essay ... it's likely to become as familiar as climate science denialism ...

For no particular reason, the pond decided to let Dimitri go first ...

Hang on a second, hang on a tic and a mo, the pond has a complaint. In its recent wanderings, the pond was struck by the standard of graphics at the NY Times, The New Yorker, WaPo, even The Graudian ...

Yet routinely whatever is left of the reptiles' shattered graphics department is limited to snaps of the scowling Satanic figure that's the subject of idle abuse? It's just not right, it gets the pond off on the wrong foot, and then the pond is likely to stay there ...

A classic reptile feint, that reference to 1776 and a history lesson, and yet if you've been through an ice storm, as Dustin Hoffman would say, that's nothing ...

The pond decided to check out Dimitri, just to see where he was coming from ...

Well that left the pond none the wiser, much as reading Dimitri did ...

But what of Eminence Advisory, you ask? And if you didn't, rest assured the pond did, and knew at once that Dimitri wasn't on the team here, with the likes of Kazi Azmain Akkhar and MD. Rahad Hossain Bhuyan ...

The pond did find a splash page for Eminence offering "Innovative Solutions", but eventually resorted to a hunt for an ABN, and found this ...

Excellent stuff, and henceforth as an individual/sole trader, let the pond be known throughout the world as "Preeminent Innovative Solutions to Your Reptile Needs" ...

And so to a last gobbet ...

Good old Milton, but after that effort by Dimitri, principal at Eminence Advisory, and former government policy analyst, the pond knew it had to turn to a heavyweight of the nattering "Ned" kind for the good oil, the drum, on Jimbo and his wayward journey to fiscal doom ...

It actually turned out to be a pretty subdued and restrained effort, just four gobbets long, and yet again the reptiles showed off their graphics department by offering a simple snap of the Satanic figure, designed to conjure up fear and loathing in the readership ...

No need to do any research on "Ned" ... just look up portentous, pompous bloviator, and with that kind of form, he'd obviously strenuously object to any politician offering a philosophical treatise, what with that sort of turf strictly being reserved for "Ned" and the reptiles ... (how they hated former Chairman Rudd being able to speak Mandarin) ...

There you go, Dimitri, that's how to ask penetrating questions ... you should pay attention to your betters and your elders, and in time, you might even begin to learn how to ask pivotal questions.

What's that you say? You thought that "pivot" had been a joke and a meme, ever since Silicon Valley made it so way back when? Watch and learn from the master of bloviation ...

He shoots, he scores. There's the pivotal question, and it takes decades of pompous, portentous bloviating to arrive at such a penetrating, pivotal question Dimitri, and now, hopefully having learned your lesson, we can proceed to the final instructive gobbet ...

Yes, Jimbo, better get a lawyer, better get a real good one. Fast. The reptiles now have their new bête noire and they'll be returning to this well as often as they can ...

What an excuse to talk of the zeitgeist as only "Ned" can do ...

And with both the immortal Rowe and the infallible Pope seemingly on a break - at least they were early in the day - the pond turned to Wilcox to sort out the economy and the real problems of the day ...