The Punch, Dennis Shanahan, and all the news that's fit to print from Murdoch land ...

(Above: forget the election result, it's back to the future with vinyl).

It's official. The election crisis is over. We can all get back to our daily business, our daily grind, our daily bliss, our daily bread, our daily whatever.

But how did I know? Did I poke my finger into chicken entrails? Look at tea leaves? Lose my mind and listen to Kyle Sandilands?

No, it's so much easier than that, because I went off to The Punch, Australia's most distracting, irrelevant conversation ...

Oh sure, there's Leo Shanahan at the top wondering What could Abbott be thinking?, but he's balanced by Joe Hildebrand trying to be funny in Revealed! The secret Bob and Julia tapes ...

Here's the closing patented Hildebrand punch line:

BOB: Those Mount Isa chicks. They could frighten the back end of a horse.

Groan. Next please. Those Punch scribblers, they could frighten the back end of a horse, and then pick up the result and fling around the pats as a kind of comedy routine ...

Then we get to the real meat. There's good old Dennis Atkins, proving his time in Adelaide on the Sunday Mail sleeping through movies comes in really handy when you want to prove that Nick Hornby is just a surface skimming poseur ponce, as he gets down and dirty with Quality vinyl: the top 25 side one track ones of all time.

Illustrated, as usual, by three YouTube clips, proving that all that talk of intellectual property rights in Murdoch land is just a blogger dream. Thanks to Chairman Rupert, we can all go on quoting our favourite songs and movies and still images until the cows come home ... All in the cause of fair comment and academic research of course ...

But if rarefied baby boomer referentialism in regard to vinyl isn' your thing, why there's Julia Thornton brooding about When it comes to women's fashion, size does matter ... and if you want to feel the real depths, why it's all rounded out by Miranda Ryan's shameful confession that she watches Neighbours, and likes it, in True confessions of a Neighours addict ...

It's okay sweetie, I'm a Rupert Murdoch addict, and the junk is sweeter tasting and with more kick than a horse's rear end or crack ...

Hey ho, feeling the need for astute political comment, we toddled off to Dennis Shanahan in The Australian, the dead heart of the nation, and in Forget three amigos, let's go back to polls, Dennis the menace confirms what we all suspected all along here at the pond.

You dumb Australian voters, you got it all wrong. It's F for you lot, which you can either take as F for epic Fail, or for F for fuckwits. You will now be detained after class at Mr. Shanahan's leisure and vote again and again and again until you get it right, which is of course to vote in Mr. Shahahan's preferred choice, a Tony Abbott government.

Alternatively, you can simply delegate your vote to Mr. Shanahan and he'll organise matters quickly and efficiently ...

That's the trouble with pesky democracy and these pesky bloody voters and all this sanctimonious nonsense about the people speaking and the people getting it right all the time in their infinite wisdom. What a bunch of bloody nongs, what a useless result, what a hopeless outcome.

The only man worth his salt is of course doing the decent thing, standing up against this wretched flood of independents foolishly claiming a mandate as if somehow a few voters might have thought Tony Abbott was a little on the nose:

Abbott's refusal last night to pander to the demand of the three independents to break the caretaker convention is right but will be used against him by an increasingly desperate government.

You see! Now let's all join in a verse of The Night they Drove Old Tony Down ...

The prospect looms of a minority Labor-Greens coalition government facing just as much obstruction and difficulty in parliament as a Liberal-Nationals Coalition government.

That's as opposed to a Labour government confronting a Senate where the Liberals found a natural ally in stampeding stomping slavering Steve Fielding.

It seems we now must - as a result of the unrelieved stupidity of Australian voters failing to heed Mr Shanahan - endure the worst of all worlds:

Indeed, a Labor government in formal partnership with the Greens in the House of Representatives facing a Greens-controlled Senate and the most successful opposition leader in Australia's history would be forced to face votes on troops in Afghanistan, another mining tax and a carbon price.

What a dire, hideous, predicament, and it's all the fault of Australian voters. Hang your head in shame you lot. Why it's getting worse than what Sol Trujillo and his three amigos did to Telstra, and we've already had a full astonishing five days of discussion, negotiation and contemplation, and the results not decided, and yet the fix is in, such is the devastating impact of devastatingly stupid Australian voters, and no wonder why Dennis stamping his foot and irate and suffering along with Tony Abbott, who never suffered fools gladly and now has to chatter to these insane rural gadflys as they babble about broadband, as if he was some kind of tech head or something:

The demands and claims from the cross benches -- the sitting MPs Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter, as well as the incoming Green Adam Bandt and the truly non-aligned Andrew Wilkie -- are becoming more obscure and contradictory with every day spent in the limelight. The independents declared for days that their core aim was stable, long-term government but it now appears one of the real options of the three amigos is simply to refuse to support Labor or the Coalition and force another election. So much for stability.

Five full bloody days and no stability and no long term government by Tony Abbott, and they call this a bloody democracy! Back to the bloody polls, you F lot, we're jack of it.

Worse still, the puny minded electorate don't seem to realise that the UN might be involved, the black helicopters are certainly circling, and nefarious international funding - say no more, nudge nudge, wink wind, a nod is as good as a wink to a paranoid - is likely to ruin the sweet reasonableness of Australian democracy:

Bandt, as the first Greens MP elected at a federal election after taking Labor's seat of Melbourne and denying the party's legitimacy, has declared he's prepared to go into coalition with Labor to ensure they stay in power. Bandt is a member of a party that has a worldwide movement, a national structure, funding from overseas and a platform opposed to much of Labor's election policy. So much for it being safe for Labor voters to turn Green.

Et tu internationally funded greenies, denying the will of the people to vote Tony Abbott into power if only they'd been smart enough to understand that Shanahan's will is their will!

Windsor, Oakeshott and Katter are turning themselves inside out to accommodate having the power to decide who forms government and spruiking a new independent political "paradigm" while squeezing both sides for old-paradigm concessions based on power.

Dear me, it's all ruined, and it's all the fault of those wretched Australian voters and their perfidious ways. It's just another rort, utterly unknown in Australia until these last few days has finally introduced us to the concept of pork barreling. Who'd have thought such a quaint political Tammany Hall tradition would turn up in sweet old Oz, as we all know sand bagging only refers to ways to prevent vicious floods affecting susceptible electorates prone to flooding.

Now I hear that the 2 billion dollar Epping to Parramatta railway is being shifted up north to run from Tamworth to Werris Creek ...

I think it's time to end it all.

Hang on, second thoughts, thanks to the inspiration and fearless leadership of Chairman Rupert, I think I'll embed a video clip, so we can all sing along to a verse of The Night They Drove Old Tony Down, and coincidentally and beneficially drive Dennis Atkins a little further around the vinyl twist by running track 3, not track 1, from the album!

Pond devotees are invited to scribble their top 25 track 3 vinyl favourites, but please do it in the piracy of your home, and don't let anyone know you're doing it ...