Mumbrella, unleashed, let loose the hounds and a quiet pond where the loons have bicycles and peddle to save the planet ... ...

We're always anxious to discover where the loons might head to next, so that they can congregate, flap about and set up a ceaseless squawking. The mass migration of loons around the full to overflowing intertubes is one of the marvels of the modern world, like watching a flock of birds soar and swerve through the air.

So many loon ponds around the world, and so many competing voices.

Now it seems, envious of the attention-grabbing loonacy of other ponds, the ABC is determined to re-vamp its own site, and draw loons into its sheltering big aunty bosom.

The unleashing of the new 'unleashed' is apparently underway, and you can read the details here at the always invaluable Mumbrella.

Apparently the god delusion is strong at the ABC. As well as hatching endless Pinky and Brain plots to take over the world and make it safe for the wearing of cardigans, the powers that be want to tackle such sites as the National Times, Punch and Crikey head on.

Mumbrella provides some stats regarding site hits which I commend to you - amazing how many people go the Punch and think they're having some kind of cheap skate dumb assed conversation - and it immediately led to a feather display in the comments section from the National Times team, claiming squillions of hits and much traffic, way more than the poseurs and pretenders surrounding them.

But is this just another way of saying we have the biggest, most irritating loons in the stable, and just as they used to do in the old days in the hope of seeing Hulk Hogan pummeled, people now log on to pummel or be pummeled by the likes of Miranda the Devine?

In short, is it just a blood sport, this kind of loon driven traffic?

Well better minds than my mine can cogitate on what kind of pheromone works best at drawing the loons. Each time I provide a link to Miranda the Devine in future a little bit of my soul will wither and die, curl up and fade away.

But it does raise a question for the ABC, because 'unleashed' has been around since 2007, and it's fair to say that it's unremittingly dull, about as controversial as trying to whip up a lather of soap suds in hard water.

It's infested with the likes of Bob Ellis, and worthy folk writing earnest essays about the meaning of life.

If you trot off there today, you might contemplate Rose Jost on the freddo frog affair (The Freddo Frog and the gaping gap), or Maggie Dent on school rankings (Testing times) or Philippe Sands on The 9/11 trials.

It's all very sober and seemly and the comments seem remarkably genteel and polite. People in the comments section seem to be able to spell, and use words like "fortunately" and "sadly", and write in paragraphs, and deploy aphorisms and wit.

Even that reprobate Bob Ellis doesn't seem to inflame sensibilities the way he might if let loose inside a Murdoch publication. Sure there's the odd flame and signs of life at the bottom of the latest example, The Politics of apology, but why do I suddenly remember the robust debates you once could have over a hot cup of tea and a lukewarm jam-saturated scone at the CWA, with sugar ladled in so deep that the spoon can stand on its own?

Even Donald Brook's rant Need answers? Talk to the fish, which purports to express outrage at government, ends up so tangled in its own metaphor that you'd swear he's in as much need of a fish as a woman is in need of a bicycle (oh dear did I get that wrong? How does it go - a man needs a bicycle like a woman needs a fish?)

Here's the sweet possum getting upset about everything, but it all sounds so intelligent, like David Burchell trying to sound rational while still using big words:

Communication presupposes a theory of mind that governments do not need. They face the electorate with no theory at all; only vacantly parted lips and a pair of fins animated, at best, by a benign neurological tremor or; at worst by Tourette's syndrome.

Anyhow that's what the doctor said to me. Or it may have been the fish.

Oops, should we make fun of people with a ... condition?

Never mind. No doubt he, the doctor, the fish, and perhaps even the government all feel better for him having got that particular load off the chest, but I felt curiously deflated.

Where was the pornographic tawdriness, the flash of voyeuristic delight offered up by the rantings and ravings of a Miranda the Devine, or a Janet Albrechtsen? Where was the fascinated awe at the abusive comments, the incoherent FU's and mis-spellings and incestuous couplings from angry old white males as they all chortled at the wit of Tim Blair?

Well it was only a short anthropological dig, but I came away shaken, with a number of conclusions:

I can no longer tread with any calmness or safety amongst sane, ordered minds. It's like missionary sex after you've become belle du jour in a brothel.

Bad grammar and spelling are urgently, intensely necessary to convey forceful communication.

The unhappiness perpetrated in loon pond is essential to good domestic relationships and possibly world order. There is no medical benefit in communicating with like minds, but it's wonderfully reassuring to read someone like Miranda the Devine and realize that while you might be mad, you're not necessarily stark raving bonkers mad. That's when talking to the fish really means something.

The company of loons corrupts, and the absolute company of loons corrupts absolutely.

And the ABC, that haven for the likes of Gerard Henderson, has an image problem with 'unleashed' which will be hard to solve.

Let us remember a typical definition of unleashed:

un·leash (n-lsh)
tr.v. un·leashed, un·leash·ing, un·leash·es
To release or loose from or as if from a leash: unleashed the guard dogs; unleashed his pent-up rage.

Guard dogs?Pent up rage? Do they have guard dogs full of pent-up rage at tea and scone parties at the CWA?

I know, I know, these are my people, my own kind, the ones that join Choice, and hate irrational emotional arguments and distasteful racism and abuse of the working class (except when Kath and Kim were on), and read Jane Austen, and love British dramas, and possibly are married to doctors, and most likely read The New Yorker, and certainly take The New York Review of Books, just like that dunderhead Phillip Adams, and possibly attend classical music concerts, unless hooked on 702 and the like, and yet I came away reeling ...

What's the point of a loon pond, if there are no loons?

Is Donald Brook the best loon you've got? Is that all you've got? Bob Ellis? Is that all you've got? Calm rational debate and considered arguments? Or hysterical emotionalism cloaked in verbiage of a soggy scone kind which melts down into pious platitudes about the urgent need to care about humanity.

Is that what's on offer? And you'll do even more bigger better rational debates and sensible viewpoints in the new 'unleashed'?

Beam me up Scotty. No wonder I've never been able to find a decent loon in the ABC pond. Even Crikey's got Clive Hamilton.

Well I'll give it a try - I'm nothing if not loyal - and Annabel Crabb is always worth a read, and Jonathan Green helped re-position Crikey, and if nothing else gave First Dog on the Moon a deserved prominence.

But I can sense there's going to be a lot of serenity and calm on this particular pond ... or risk offending those quiet, serene, calm types who like that aspect of the ABC brand ...

In other words, a pond without any loons, unless of a staid, sensible left wing kind, which will of course make it remarkably similar to a fish without a bicycle.

Golly, perhaps there's a place in the world for a loon pond without any loons, but you know I reckon I'll miss the loons. There ought to be loons ...

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the loons.

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the loons?
Send in the loons.

Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.

Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the loons?
Quick, send in the loons.
Don't bother, they're here.

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the loons?
There ought to be loons.
Well, maybe next year.