In which the pond spends a quiet day with Akker Dakker and Aah Flinty me lad ...

And happy fertility rites to all, though the pond accepts that the festival has less to do with the celebration of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex (though who can doubt the argument that Roman Catholicism is actually Babylonian paganism in disguise), and more to do with Ēostre, but here again fertility rears its ugly head, courtesy the venerable Bede:

Writing in the late 20th century, Rudolf Simek says that, despite expressions of doubts, Bede's account of Ēostre should not be disregarded. Simek opines that a "Spring-like fertility goddess" must be assumed rather than a "goddess of sunrise" regardless of the name, reasoning that "otherwise the Germanic goddesses (and matrons) are mostly connected with prosperity and growth". Simek points to a comparison with the goddess Rheda, also attested by Bede. (Greg Hunters here).

Well yes, hares, rabbits, eggs and so on and so forth are all Freudian enough, but before the youff of today plunge in with enthusiasm, perhaps they should remember Bill Maher cheering them on for not reproducing quite as much in recent times, his argument being that there are simply too manny people on the planet.

But how did the pond come to be meditating on this ancient form of decadence, now transformed into a chocolate fest at the local supermarket?

Well the reptiles reliably disappoint and this day the lead story was yet another climate science denialist beat-up …

Some might think farmers are in fear of the effects of a warming planet, or the quest for coal fucking over the Liverpool plains the way it's fucked the Hunter Valley, but never in reptile la la land …

Meanwhile, the Mocker was still up, doing his usual thing …

The pond loves the way the reptiles support and endorse anonymity on the full to overflowing intertubes, even if it sits oddly with their routine railing against anonymity on the intertubes …

Meanwhile, the legendary Salt, bad for hypertension, managed to discover the grim reaper, apparently unaware that the Pythons had done it years ago …

Well yes, in due course we'll all be dead, and then it's somewhat had to maintain a lifestyle, or even an addiction to salty banalities …

And the legendary Kev caught the eye …

And of course the legendary Kev displayed a rat-like cunning, or a craven cowardice, by sending others out to do his dirty work …

Victorian Liberals president Michael Kroger has intervened to stop a motion on gay "conversion" therapy being debated at the party's state council. The move follows criticism from federal MPs on Monday that described the motion as a "dark" throwback to the 19th century. The proposal, from a Young Liberal branch linked to veteran federal MP Kevin Andrews, called for the law to be changed to ensure doctors "can offer counselling out of same-sex attraction or gender transitioning"... (here)

Yes, good old Kev knows how to stay clean, while being fundamentally dirty ...

Of course there was other entertainment around …

But in the end, being a slow easy Friday, the pond decided it would settle for a dose of Flinty …

Even here, the pond was disturbed, because the Speccie mob had buried Aah Flinty me lad right down the page …

There were all sorts of riffraff, low-lifes and degenerates given more prominence.

Why even Akker Dakker's diaries had more prominence, at the top of the page Ma.

Poor Akker Dakker was trying to explain how he'd been caught out helping the onion muncher, even going so far as to downplay his role as a humble sometime correspondent for the Terror …

Of course it's a tad unseemly for a journalist regularly providing what purports to be objective commentary out and about door-knocking for the onion muncher, but Fox News long ago broke the barrier between blatant bias and naked pandering and actual journalism (though to be fair, their heroes at rags like Pravda and Der Stürmer had shown them the way). 

Naturally Akker Dakker wasn't phased by any of this, and used his time with the Speccie mob to keep up the propaganda ...

What's that you say? The pond seems to have completely forgotten Aaah me lad Flinty in this Akker Dakker tale of woe … but after this final gobbet, the pond will do its duty ...

Oh fucketty fuck, did he just trot out the grandfather defence?

And now to imagine the Murdochian reaction if an ABC or Nine journalist had been caught door-knocking out-of-hours for a Labor party politician.

Okay, it's unimaginable, the level of fear, loathing and hysteria that would have ensued, but never mind, it's always fun to see Akker Dakker shooting himself, and the onion muncher in the foot … though it does seem to suggest that the onion muncher is in dire trouble, and all hands, and loons, have been called on to the deck of a ship which has taken on something of a list ...

And so to Aah Flinty me lad, though it's so mind-numbingly tedious, the pond can understand why the Speccie mob sent it down the page …

Yes, the symmetry is there, and once again the onion muncher has been summoned from the shadows to do his duty, but oh please, not another opus on Western Civilisation … though the pond does urge everyone to note that Aah Flinty me lad remains on song, with a mention of Gramsci and the march (surprisingly not a long one, though everyone knows it must be long), while all around the brave lad, everyone is succumbing to the Marxist philosophy of cultural hegemony ...

Of course embracing blather about "alien neo-com influence" puts Aaah Flinty me lad right out there on the fringe of loony, loopy linguistic follies, but that's our Flinty …

As for the rest, it was had not to suppress a yawn, and organise an Ēostre egg hunt a couple of days early …then only question was whether Aah Flinty me lad would forsake a few cliches, or whether he'd go the full "useful idiots" routine … as if the pond should have doubted ...

Too soon after Christchurch for this idle supremacist chat? Well no for the likes of Aah Flinty me lad, it's never too soon, and they will keep on beating the drum of supremacy forever, because they actually want a clash of civilisations, a war of worlds, and though they never say it out loud, a Western Civilisation where whites rule the roost and all those difficult, unruly coloured folk are kept in their place ...

The pond has nothing but admiration for the immense stupidity and ignorance of Flinty. Take that line about Australia being the only continent never to have suffered this moral taint (of slavery). For starters, convicts were despatched here, and made to work whether they liked it or not. Then for seconds, the same was done to many Aboriginal people, with all sorts of servitude imposed whether they liked it or not. And thirdly, even if people can find workarounds for those forms of slavery, there's no workaround for the blackbirding of kanakas …

Most of the original labourers were recruited from the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), and New Caledonia, though others were taken from the Loyalty Islands. Some were kidnapped ("blackbirded") or otherwise induced into long-term indentured service or unfree labour. (Greg Hunters here).

Unfree labour? That's just a fancy term that ropes in those convicts, Aboriginal people being turned into servants and Vesteys slaves, and kanaka slavery …

And what about that attempt to pretend that somehow Western Civilisation had nothing to do with the Nazis, or Mussolini or the like, or Communism? Karl Marx is pure, undiluted Pommie …

...Marx was exiled to London in 1849 and lived the rest of his life there. Much of his time was spent in the reading rooms of the British Museum (which then housed the British Library collection) - this is his entry in the 1873 admissions register. There he worked on his most celebrated book Das Kapital. It puts forward his theory of political economy, with its celebrated phrase 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'. (here).

And fair dibs, Western Civilisation can also claim credit for that great wrecker and destroyer, the narcissist barbarian known as the Donald ...

If all that's freedom and equality, how come the 1% own just about everything?

Might as well be a work slave …

In which the pond discovers the real world thanks to the savvy Savva ...

The pond was very angry this morning when the plight of Folau and the onion muncher, and dubious second-rate sub-Bloomian import distracted the pond from its Thursday pleasure, some quality time with the savvy Savva …

The reptiles are now in over-cranked, over-clocked hysterical mode, and yet the pond determined it would have its quality time no matter what the reptiles flung out into the world … and so there came this rare lunch time visit ...

Indeed, indeed, as the infallible Pope put it, with more papal insights here …

But please, do go on ...

Good old George …but you won't find the lizards of Oz mentioning his epic battles ...

Oh there's been some rich fun with gorgeous George …

And that's why the pond likes the savvy Savva.

Unlike the other lizards of Oz, she gives the pond a chance to get out and about, and see what's happening in other parts of the world ...

A tacky, grubby campaign against Steggall? Well, it is the onion muncher, the most destructive politician of his generation … and our man Moorice's marketing genius was standing by to help ...

One woman, Leonie, asked about the decline in standards in politics, noting the people in chicken costumes turning up at his rival, independent Zali Steggall’s events, billboards that she described as “misleading and deceptive” and most recently a video which she described as “misogynist and appalling” .
The video which featured a man dressed up as Captain GetUp rubbing himself against an image of Steggall in a sexual manner, was produced by the conservative group Advance Australia, which is supporting Abbott’s campaign. Amid a furore, it was quickly taken down from Twitter.
Abbott said that “of course” he would run an honest and respectful campaign, but he could not vouch for others.

Yes, you won't hear any of that in the bromancer's hagiography for his man, nor the continuing level of deep weirdness and delusion …

He's not expecting it, but he's standing by? Graudian that one here, but already the pond feels justified for having spent quality time with the savvy Savva ...

Yes, indeed, tough and tight, and with much at stake, as explained by Wilcox here …

In which the pond is deeply troubled at the fate of the onion muncher and dashing Donners, and the role of hellfire in the modern world ...

 

Temptations, temptations … as the serpent slithers from his tree and holds out his apple of "do nothing, and all will be well" … and yet if surveys are any guide, the dog botherer and the reptiles at large have already lost this climate science denialism battle with the young …

That doesn't stop them from trying. Oh there were a flurry of stories out and about this day, trying to generate alarm and panic at the prospect of doing anything … with the tree killer edition in a fine old frenzy ...

And with Lloydie and Dame Groan doing some of the heavy lifting …

 

But climate science denialism and love of dinkum true blue Oz coal and the mantra of do nothing are so tedious and boring, there's only so much the pond can take in a year … and besides,  there were other temptations, as the reptiles hit peak loonacy in the silly election season …

Freedom boy in company with Margaret Court? Of course, two loons in a pea pod of pond pleasure …

Well done Paige, getting a loon like Court on to the court put freedom boy in the company he deserves … but the pond had already made the fatal mistake of reading a reptile worried about the money and what certain sponsors might do, especially one company currently headed by a man Folau had just consigned to hellfire for all eternity …

Say what? An Xian lied, an Xian promised to do one thing, and then did another? The pond blames it on the Donald ...

Uh huh, and perhaps that explains the follow-up story today …

Lordy, sweet long absent lordy, he's a goner, and he doesn't seem to know it, and neither do all those indignant reptiles?

Well the pond resented the time it had spent on a game it has never watched, and which could vanish tomorrow, and still mean nothing to the pond, all the more so because it distracted the pond from an epic bout of keening and wailing and sighing, which could in time come to be considered a reptile masterpiece.

Come on down bromancer with a tale of woe that puts fundamentalist Xians with a martyr complex in their place. Show us a genuine persecuted, miserable martyr …

By golly the numbers for the onion muncher must be looking really bad. 

How else to explain all the weeping and the wailing and the flailing about?

There was Matt Kean doing his best over at the Nine rags, and the twitterati erupting at the onion muncher here, and now the bromancer has decided it's time to pour fuel on the fire ...

The pond was frantic. Could this be the end of the onion muncher? Mother of mercy, is this the end of little Rico of Warringah? 

Every line the bromancer wrote reeked of rampant despair ...

Just imagine if someone from the Christian lobby saying they found the existence of politicians offensive? 

Why the reptiles would rush off to Freedom boy and Margaret Court to defend the Xian's right to say it, and might, for good measure, conclude that it was probably a fair point … since those bloody politicians are probably doomed to an eternity in hell …

Never mind, just admire the romancer in full rhetorical flight, blathering on about Soviet propaganda in Pravda down under … 

It's too rich, and too funny, as if somehow it was only the ABC that thought that the onion muncher, with his destruction of the Labor party and his destruction of Malware and his destruction of the NBN and his destruction of climate science and his many other destructive attitudes and destructive policies hadn't managed to make him the most destructive politicians of his generation. 

Why he made the spiteful chairman Rudd seem like a rank amateur in his destructiveness…

How quickly they forget these reptiles … how they yearn for their beloved, and yet how they fear the worst ...

Yes, the bitterness, the bile, the fear and the loathing … it's all someone else's fault, it's nothing to do with the sweet, innocent onion muncher, as the bromancer returns to comfort his one true love in his desperate hour of need …by golly, that private polling must be an exciting read, though nearly not as excited as the bromancer ...

Say what about the Nine papers? Didn't they just run a puff piece by Matt Kean? Wasn't it a fine bit of click-bait trolling? Didn't it produce over five hundred comments? What more could they do?

The pond felt the urgent need to console the bromancer. You see, we've recently been told by the reptiles that Ming the merciless should inspire us. Well, Ming knew when it was time to go, and Malware himself, in his Mingian lordly way, went away when told to do so … only the onion muncher, being a bit thick, has resolutely failed to heed the message, and so might end up doing a John Howard, and that's all on him.

Why? Because he's ill-equipped to do anything else in life. He's singularly useless, without a meaningful skill set, but there's hope even for onion-munching dumbos. He could do a Mark Latham, reconcile with Pauline, and get himself an upper house seat, and slumber out his days … or he could simply bugger off and live on his parliamentary pension.

It wouldn't be the end of the world …

Only the bromancer could lather up this sort of hysteria about an untalented man being given the boot, when everyone knows that if a door closes, all that needs to be done is open another. Why his very lack of qualifications could make him an expert opinion writer for the lizard Oz, with climate science his speciality …week after week, he could demonstrated to the world his rich understanding of matters beyond his destructive ken ...

And now to another piece of pond misery. The reptiles had already warned that they were in search of a new culture wars warrior, and thought they had found him …

No doubt that apocalyptic talk of empty lecture theatres and the world taken over by Martians was the sort of sublime nonsense the reptiles expected in this area, but the pond was indignant.

What of dashing Donners? What of the local home grown warrior? Why turn to Bauerlein when Donners knew how to talk of the neo-Marxists and the long march by Gramsci through the institutions?

How wretched of the reptiles to turn to a cheap import, and abandon Donners …

Oh fucketty fuck, this is entirely wrong. He's already had two pars, and there's no mention of the neo-Marxists … just a simplistic, half-arsed division of the world into traditionalists and multiculturalists … 

Why the man is clueless, and it sounds as if he's about to embark on a bit of academic pedantry, as if that will somehow stop the long march …

Uh huh. But why not mention that Pound was barking mad and a Mussolini lover to boot …

Knowing such things is hardly a novel notion, and it helps understand the works, and their authors, and it provides more insights that some dunderhead blathering on about romantic passion lifting students above the easy pleasures of modern love …

Who is this loon, why does he rabbit on about the world in this way? Is he some wan ascetic, who between his Wagner moments, lashes himself into a frenzy in the Grainger way? Might not he be better off with a fuck in the Henry Miller style, or at least a wank, as a way of avoiding his congenital tendency to academic wankery?

Through it all the pond was haunted by memories of poor, abandoned dashing Donners. He would never have carried on like this, like some second rate humbug poor person's Harold Bloom … he would have shouted out warnings about the slippery slope and the downhill slide ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, he even drew attention to Harold Bloom … as if to parade his own second-rate credentials and trade off on the masters ...

Once again, it's as if the entire twentieth century had been erased from the conservative mind, and anti-semitism and love of Mussolini wasn't so bad, because you can forgive artists and their acolytes anything …

The pond had never imagined it would say it, but the reptiles must bring back Donners. 

Sure the keyboard pounds out the same dross, week in, week out, as if Donners had overdosed on shortcuts, but it's our local dinkum dross … and at least Donners is honest enough to reveal his fundamentalist anti-Marxist Catholic agenda, instead of wittering on about labours of love winning over labours of censure …

By golly, Dean Swift would have taken that sort of Big Endian pious bilge and blather to the cleaners, and so the pond feels absolutely no guilt turning to the infallible Pope for a reminder of the real world, with more papal insights hopefully at the end of this link …

In which the pond salivates at the salvation offered by saintly Murdochians ...

They were all at it today, diligent beavers beavering away for Pravda down under.

Et tu Dame Slap? Just another serve of union bashing, when everyone knows the entire world of Western Civilisation is under dire threat, and poor Folau must wait another day for his Dame Slap salvation …

Other favourites were also to hand, with dinkum clean true blue Oz coal likely to triumph as the militant unionists somehow found themselves in unholy alliance with Dame Slap …

ALP figures!?

And though Dame Slap had forsaken him for union bashing, the reptiles kept the Folau matter bubbling along by turning to the angry Sydney Anglicans for a comment ...

Have a conversation? The pond fears that the venerable Stead doesn't understand the difference between a conversation, and a standard bible-thumping damnation and consignment to hellfire for all eternity. Perhaps he needs a complimentary woman to help him understand …

If that's a conversation, it seems a tad one-sided, a bit like the wretches who sometimes howl at the hellfire moon in King Street, but at least it allowed the pond to reference one of its favourite movies …

Moving right along, the pond was determined to avoid the devout work of the reptiles engaged in their Pravda down under duties, and hallelujah, as always, the long absent lord provided, and salvation was at hand …

Now in the usual reptile way, to signify the importance of the affair, the reptiles did a double.

First there was good old Tess, assigned to cover proceedings, and write a sycophantic report.

Then there was the oration itself …

Of course the pond was up for the double, though the pond should warn that in Tess's servile, supine coverage there was a grand parade of poobah penguins, strutting for the cameras …

As for the topic, the pond was elated at the way that Robert Thomson was finally going to come clean, berate Fox and Friends, and admit that the Murdochians had been responsible for the installation of a mafia boss in the White House, while conspiring in the matter of Brexit to reduce the poor hapless Poms to a complete mess.

Okay, the pond was hopelessly optimistic, but doesn't he look like an undertaker? Perhaps he's just come from the burying of liberal democracy?

Oh dear, as well as the penguins - how fortunate only men seem to have attended - it seems Thomson has had a severe dose of the angry alliteration ailment that sometimes breaks out, no doubt thanks to anti-vaxxers.

Seething secularism… evanescent evangelical … devotee of the deviant.

The pond suddenly, in a revelatory moment, understood why News Corp was fucked … but why Fox and Friends sounded so pleasing to the reptile ear …why only Fox and Furry Friends might have sounded better …

Dear sweet long absent lord, they dragged Gareth out of the closet to parade in a penguin suit. Was that intended as a distraction from the alliterative assault on all that agitates the alligators of action?

Well that makes as much sense as cognisant communities and net narcissism …

The pond knew it was hooked, and hung around for the main event, though it was disturbed that the reptiles had consigned inverted commas to do the duty of a thumb portrait …

Um, there's just one problem here, when we get to alliterative talk of truth and those who tell it … while no-one can touch the Donald for shameless lying, equally no one can touch the Murdochians and Fox News for cheering on the shameless lying …

Yes, the pond broke early and felt the need of a cartoon, but now it's time for a terrific tirade full of tumultuous, tempestuous, turbulent thundering ...

Oh it's too much, even as the pond tries to be sanguinely supine but salivates at the vociferous vocalisations about the panics and prevarications from the man at the head of a media mob, which manages on a daily basis to whirl in the sky like a murmuration of starlings and do the boss's bidding …

Indeed, indeed, and the pious pond is full of piety …

—Hell has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth without any limits—words taken, my dear little brothers in Christ Jesus, from the book of Isaias, fifth chapter, fourteenth verse. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 
The preacher took a chainless watch from a pocket within his soutane and, having considered its dial for a moment in silence, placed it silently before him on the table. He began to speak in a quiet tone. 
—Adam and Eve, my dear boys, were, as you know, our first parents, and you will remember that they were created by God in order that the seats in heaven left vacant by the fall of Lucifer and his rebellious angels might be filled again. Lucifer, we are told, was a son of the morning, a radiant and mighty angel; yet he fell: he fell and there fell with him a third part of the host of heaven: he fell and was hurled with his rebellious angels into hell. What his sin was we cannot say. Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the sinful thought conceived in an instant: non serviam: I will not serve.That instant was his ruin. 
He offended the majesty of God by the sinful thought of one instant and God cast him out of heaven into hell for ever. (more readings from Brother Joyce here)

Put it another way ...

Strangely the pond was warming to this roasting of the recalcitrants by a wretch presiding over one of the most monstrous, malevolent, malignant corporations of corrupt conduct ever conceived … even if Tess had the temerity to provide a digest of the vacuous, vapourous, vacant, ranting of a smug, sneering member of the elite ...

Oh not a fucking media miasma, it's too much, and the pond blames it all on the Donald, whose own connection with the English language is sometimes remote, almost as absent as his empathy …

As for The Wall Street Journal being the most trusted newspaper in America, the Murdochians have always consoled themselves with bullshit polls … but it's possible to point to any particular poll to produce a perverse point …

...In the intro, the researchers write, “We look to assess whether support for President Trump and other anti-establishment candidates reflects a loss of confidence in institutions — or even a more serious underlying alienation from liberal democracy,” and explain that they asked 5,400 respondents (more than is typically used for a nationally representative political poll) to “indicate their level of confidence in 20 US institutions.”

The top five were the military, Amazon, Google, local police, and colleges and universities. The bottom five were the press, the executive branch, Facebook, political parties, and Congress.

Sorted by major party affiliation, the findings become even odder, because Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply on almost every point except Amazon (and the military, and their loathing of Facebook). The five most trusted institutions for Democrats are Amazon, colleges and universities, the military, Google, and the FBI (bottom: religion, Facebook, political parties, Congress, and the executive branch). The five most trusted institutions for Republicans are the military, local police, Amazon, the executive branch, and religion (bottom: Congress, organized labor, political parties, Facebook, and the press). (Vox here).

Jeff Bezos over chairman Rupert? Explain that furtive furphy if you have the fortitude …

But now back to the master of magniloquent eloquence, the rhetorical lord of declamation, the man with a frenzied fluency … the objective objector who berates others for a lack of objectivity, while going up the bum of his own company's corporate glories …

Say what? They abridged this hagiographic hysteria just when the most interesting question was posed? 

How will we make the most of our time? Perhaps by reducing our minds to moronic rubble by watching Fox and Friends each day? 

Perhaps by adopting as a hobby the tending and attending of a herpetarium to see what ranting the reptiles reel out each day as they ramble with zealots, humbugs, rogues, grifters and snake oil salesmen of the Donald kind … with the pond watching in fascination as it sees the seas of understanding leach into a morass of mind-numbing verbiage and adoring adulation?

Well it's not only Thomson who can produce undiluted gibberish ...

Frankly the pond couldn't get enough of it, and so turned to the reptile editorialist for an adoring encore, but curiously the result sounded flat, almost sullen and surly, and surely lacking in the lofty rhetoric that soared, like Icarus, dangerously close to the Sun King …

Oh sure, the editorialist did the right thing, and was a right royal suck, but the spirit wasn't there …with only a humble "vituperation as virtue" echoing the master mariner's magisterial, monarchical ability to mangle the English language into a spinning hagiography of malicious Murdochian ideology and dismal verbal dross …

Well the pond wasn't satiated, but it was sufficient for the day, and there were a few more cartoons standing by to wrap up the verbal sallies with picturesque portraits of what's become of the United States, thanks to the ubiquity of Chairman Rupert and his uxorious, pandering sidekicks…

But never despair … there's always a solution to hand ...