In which the pond begins Ēostre with the reptiles and an exceptionally mind-numbing outing from a pontificating, portentous, pompous prof emeritus ...

 

'Tis the season, so let us prey ...

The pond doesn't usually start with a nod to Colbert, but 'tis the season, and the reptiles have sent in their second eleven, with the AJN occupying the top far right slot in the digital edition ...

Instead of verbose referential Henry of hole in buckets fame, the reptiles sent in a second eleven prof to occupy the middle space of the digital edition ... and the pond knew its Ēostre duty ... checking only to make sure that there was nothing essential in the reptiles lurking beneath the fold ...

Nah, just The Mocker, held over from yesterday to keep the celebration of the orange Jesus going, the WSJ pressed in to service to fill in our Henry's loss, some blather about NZ and some nonsensical balther about sustainable aviation fuel - as if anyone cared about the cult of climate science after reading the lizard Oz. 

Throw in Kirby preaching money skills, as if four payments of $19.95 weren't enough - disciples are standing by at the lizard Oz for your subscription - and the offering of the usual simpleton "here no conflict of interest" Simon, and after that quick glance, the pond knew it could throw the lot away, it being a holiday and all.

No point dilly dallying, best get on with the pretentious pontificating prof ...

Of course it's deeply offensive. That's the entire point of this long-winded troll ...

Meanwhile, with the prof apparently in de nile about what's currently happening in Gaza ...

Talk about the finest flowering of Western Civilisation and culture clashes ... and there's more news here for anyone, apart from the prof, who might care to check if they don't mind an Ēostre depression ...

Meanwhile, the prof is so far up himself,  he invokes, in a masturbatory way of which the man himself would approve, Rousseau (with bonus Marx) ...

For some reason, the reptiles decided to undercut the prof with the illustrative snap ...

If we're taking a break from the pontificating prof, the pond might note that there was other news from the West Bank ...

The prof was still busy masturbating over his book learning, in the Rousseau way ... which is to say deploring the hand while deploying the hand ...

Indeed, indeed, that'd be. the mainstream Western consciousness that produced the first world war...

Around this point, the pond began to flail about and think of other things, anything to avoid dwelling on the genocide. 

The infallible Pope, for example, was in tune with the spirit of the season...

And what about a distraction from the genocide with a wondrous loon from the west, thanks to Rob Harris for Australian councillor praises Vladimir Putin’s election win on Russian TV...

The pond never pays enough attention to sandgroper news, and rarely panders to its sole sandgroper reader and correspondent, but this was a doozy, what you might call full Tamworth, and the pond can think of no higher praise ...

London: A regional West Australian councillor has appeared in a bizarre video on Russian state-owned TV, congratulating President Vladimir Putin on his election victory.

Adrian McRae, who was elected to the Port Hedland council in early March and has not yet been sworn in, was reportedly flown to Moscow as part of an international delegation to observe the presidential elections.

In a video published by Channel One State News, McRae congratulated Putin on his win and hailed it as the most transparent in the world.

“Can I please pass on my most sincere congratulations to Mr Vladimir Putin,” he said.

“In my lifetime, the world has never seen such a transparent and comprehensive victory as what we saw here over the last three days.”

(Photo) McRae said he received a Badge of Honour, the highest award of the International Slavic Academy, from opposition candidate Sergey Baburin.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the result was an “insult to democracy”, while British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said it had underlined the depth of repression of Putin’s regime, which “seeks to silence any opposition to his illegal war”.

McRae contested the last federal election as a candidate for The Great Australian Party, founded by former WA senator and conspiracy theorist Rod Culleton, in the seat of Durack.

He said later he had travelled to Russia as an “independent international observer” after being invited by Russian Ambassador to Australia Aleksey Pavlovsky.

“I was invited to Moscow to participate in an international delegation,” he said.

The Russian embassy told the ABC that McRae, along with many other foreign nationals, took part in the election observation program during the elections of the president of the Russian Federation.

From Russia, McRae told regional newspaper North West Telegraph that he could “write for hours” about “the most ridiculously over-the-top transparency” he witnessed as part of the election process.

“Having run as a candidate in both Australian federal and local government elections, as well as volunteering as a scrutineer for national elections and referendums, I was truly shocked by Russia’s transparency... It leaves the Australian system in its wake.”

Following the election, pro-Putin activist Simeon Boikov, known by his moniker “Aussie Cossack”, posted images of McRae receiving an award — the Badge of Honour — from opposition candidate Sergey Baburin, which he said was “for his efforts in strengthening friendship between Australia and Russia”.

Town of Port Hedland chief executive Carl Askew told the North West Telegraph that McRae had travelled in a personal capacity.

“The town does not comment on the personal activities of elected members,” he said. “All elected members are subject to the town’s code of conduct.”

Must be something in the water, but there was other good news, thanks to Crikey and Charlie Lewis, What the hell has Tim Wilson been up to lately (other than tweeting cringe)? (paywall).

The pond hadn't thought in many a long month about freedumb boy and what a splendid way to distract from a pontificating prof celebrating genocide. 

The pond will dispense with the smug ECU snap of a smirking freedumb boy and cut to the chase (sorry, you have to be a subscriber to enjoy the hot links) ...

But there's only so much fun allowed in any Ēostre, so it was back to the the collective displacement, the collective punishment, the famine, in short, the genocide, it being a proud part of the Western tradition, what with World War II and all. How the Germans loved their Wagner and their Beethoven as they went about their business and what joy there's been a new flowering of such a fine Western tradition in Gaza (cue ‘Mum knew what was going on’: Brigitte Höss on living at Auschwitz, in the Zone of Interest family) ...

Mum might have known what was going on, but the prof is completely clueless ...

For some reason, the reptiles kept interrupting the prof to show snaps of death and destruction ...

Well yes, there's been a fair bit of killing ...

Do the killing fields have any impact on the prof? Not on your nelly ...

'Tis the season for the good old Western tradition of cruelty dressed up in verbiage ...

Luckily the prof was starting to run out of steam, but not before mentioning Thucydides in a way that would have made the hole in the bucket man beam with pride ...

Or perhaps regressing into genocidal famine?

But of course the Western tradition insists that famine is sometimes necessary in the cause of genocide, so court rulings can be safely ignored ...

And then it was just one more gobbet of fine genocide-loving verbiage from the prof ...

What a wanker, in the Rousseau sense of don't do what I do, while I do what I do, which is to wank along to famine and genocide ... 

But the pond has done its Ēostre duty, in the original sense of that vexing "emeritus" word: 

In Latin, emeritus was used to describe soldiers who had completed their duty. It is the past participle of the verb emereri, meaning "to serve out one's term," from the prefix e-, meaning "out," and merēre, "to earn, deserve, or serve."

The trouble of course comes with some sense of merit, as opposed to meretricious tosh ...

(Merēre is also the source of our word merit.) English speakers claimed emeritus as their own in the late 17th century, applying it as both a noun and an adjective referring or relating not to soldiers but to someone who is retired from professional life but permitted to keep as an honorary title the rank of the last office they held. The adjective is frequently used postpositively—that is, after the noun it modifies rather than before it—and it is most commonly used to describe specifically those retired from a professorship.

If only loonish profs realised that retirement meant retire,  and they got lost, buggered off, or settled down to suck on humbugs while contemplating the view from their verandah ...

And so to wrap up where the pond started, back in the land of grifters who just gotta grift ...