Chairman Rupert, Luke Williams, sundry Punch wankers and tossers, and a little free content ...

(Above: Blonde after Roy Lichtenstein, Martin Missfeldt, 2006, here. The text translated: "Is a lot of rain in May weather, the worms are also fatter", but hey it makes a lot more sense than reading what's on offer below).

It's interesting that Chairman Rupert is suddenly ducking and weaving, and flagging a delay in his online pay plans (Murdoch flags delay in online pay plans).

Mr Murdoch said the goal of having users pay for content on the media company’s newspaper websites by the end of this financial year might not be met.

‘‘We are working all very, very hard at it but I wouldn’t promise that we are going to meet that date,’’ Mr Murdoch said during a conference call with journalists. ‘‘It’s a work in progress and there is a huge amount of work going on, not just with our sites but with other people.’’

This is a tragedy of the first water, as it suggests the likes of Janet Albrechtsen might remain on brazen public view, for many more months, rather than being discreetly hidden behind a paywall screen requiring a handsome stipend for access.

Fat Prophets research analyst Greg Fraser said he is unsurprised at the delay.

‘‘It’s a mammoth and unenviable task of being the first to try and break the ice of the perception of a free internet,’’ Mr Fraser said. ‘‘I think he is right to try and charge for his premium content, but he is going to have to do that in a very cautious and measured fashion.’’

Or perhaps Chairman Rupert headed off to The Paunch, News Corp's bold exercise in blogging, and discovered just how hapless and wretched it's become in such a short time.

There you can be confronted by the mindless shit-stirring of dead possum tossers like Luke Williams, with A bogan's revenge: 10 signs you're an inner-city tosser, wherein young Luke proves you can be a tosser wherever you live:

Well I don’t know about you, but I’d sooner hang out with a down-to-earth, drunken, badly dressed bogans in their “good room” any day of week than be subjected to yet another underground film festival or conversation about the nuances of identity politics on a Saturday night.

A bogan might have bad taste, but the space between their ears is their own.

Well I don't know about you, but if the space between Luke's ears is his own, perhaps instead of advertising it as a vacant site ready for development, he might fill it with grey matter, and spare us all vacant, idle, smug, condescending reverse snobbery of the most mind-numbing vacuous kind.

Yep, it's more of the Paunch's tabloid anti-intellectual streak, dressed up as wannabe larrikinism, and it leads young Luke to rip off a blog Things Bogans Like, which rips off the original riff on stuff white people like, so that he can arrive at the ten signs you're an inner city tosser.

Some of the things that offend Luke? Well any signs of life and enjoyment of life, like music festivals, fun hairstyles, travel to exotic locations, dressing up, retro furniture, large words, a love of television in a post modernist, ironic way, and so on.

Here's Luke at his pithiest:

3. You use unnecessarily large words

A really good wanker will find a use for obtuse, dichotomy, paradigmatic, Latin words, figurative and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in daily conversation.

Figuratively speaking, young Luke cogently demonstrates the schizophrenic dichotomy of a man with hair on his palms calling others wankers, while demonstrating a deep, almost paradigmatic reluctance to understand thinking in a holistic, epistemological, theoretical context.

Or put it another way, if you're going to send wankers up, you should avoid sounding like a desperate wannabe wanker just trying to fill up some space by ripping off ideas.

2. You spend Saturday nights having deep, depressing conversations

And you’ve probably spent all day in an independent bookstore or reading the weekend newspaper to research your topic.

Yes, burn all the books, that's the answer, and while we're at it throw the weekend edition of The Australian on the bonfire, as it's full of poseurs and wankers desperate for intellectual credibility.

1. You decry bad taste, suburbanism, materialism, boganism, marriage and children or anything else which reminds you of where actually came from

Next thing you’ll start using the term “aspirational voter”. Then you’ll get annoyed with working-class people who have the audacity to earn more money than you and start calling them “cashed-up bogans”.

That's it? You've hit them with your best shot? Quick, bring back Pat Benatar.

Poor Luke didn't even celebrate the motley selection of goths who reliably gather each Halloween in the main Enmore drag. Has he ever visited the inner west? It helps to know and love the things which you attempt to send up

But so it goes in the increasingly enfeebled Paunch.

There's David Penberthy trading off on a tell-all interview by South Australian Treasurer Kevin Foley, under the header The politician mugged by his own humanity, when you might just as well read the original interview and be done with it, so little does Penberthy value add (the interview's not for the faint hearted, only for those who have lived, will live or are living in Adelaide)

Then there's a piece of idle chatter by Duncan Fine under a header which says it all, and prohibits any interest in further reading, Romy and Michele and Duncan's School Reunion, and down below that there's a clip from The Office (never mind the intellectual property rights) as an attempt to set up a water cooler conversation about office rules, and the now obligatory standard bit of free inanity from a federal politician, this time from Stuart Robert under the header Is ideology threatening a crucial service in schools?

His beef? The Howard implemented chaplain program - which happens to be a bit of ideological activism - might be under threat from Chairman Rudd, but everyone loves their chaplains.

Chaplains are doing what teachers can’t do. Connecting with students in a neutral way, as they have no teaching or disciplinary role, but are just there to care, listen, encourage and support. The community should rightly be outraged at the federal Labour government’s lack of action on forward funding. Why wouldn’t you fund such a dedicated network of professional chaplains? Why wouldn’t you give the thousands of schools and their chaplains the certainty they need by announcing the funding roll over?

Why wouldn’t you?

Because, you ideological turkey, in a secular society, people in public schools have a right to expect secular education, and if you want to introduce counsellors, do so, and some will have religious beliefs, and some will not, but they can connect with students in a neutral way (without the garb of religion), and be there to care, listen, encourage and support, without prattling on about pie in the sky in the by and by.

Further down, I see that by taking myself off to the heartland to rediscover my bogan roots, I'd missed the likes of the ever incoherent Steve Fielding rambling on about alcohol yet again (Targeting drivers is one thing, what about drinkers?)

But by then I'd got tired and disheartened, and am sorry for anyone who's wasted their time lurching so far down into the depressing pits of the flabby Paunch, as it streaks towards irrelevance.

Charge for this rough hewn assembly of ill-considered, unamusing tosh? You couldn't give it away, and there's the dilemma for Chairman Rupert. If he's going to charge for content, he's going to have to do a lot better than this paunchy punch-up. No wonder he's filibustering.

Bah humbug, I'm heading back to read the latest edition of the New York Review of Books, just arrived. Content I pay for, and gladly so. Luke Williams can call me a tosser, but pardon me if I just call him a fuckwit who can fuck off (oops, he might find that a bit too Anglo Saxon, but then it has to be said that reading about the etymology of the word "fuck" is much more amusing than reading young Luke, and you too can do it - for free, no payment to Chairman Rupert required - by trotting off to wiki it here).

Take it away Eddie Duchin:

(We believe) He kicked the bucket,

(We believe) Yeah man, buck-buck-bucket,
(We believe) He kicked the bucket and ol' man mose is dead,
(We believe) Ahh, fuck it!
(We believe) Buck-buck-bucket,
(We believe) He kicked the bucket and ol' man mose is dead.

(Below: and now a totally irrelevant, gratuitous cartoon for the gentleman reader from The New Yorker, content I willingly pay for, because reading The Punch is so bloody boring, and reading about reading the Punch is even more bloody boring).

(ah fuck it, here's ol' man mose. The track takes awhile - some twenty seconds - to kick in, but hey it's free. Here's to underground films, music festivals, independent book stores, goths and fuck it, whatever else turns you on).