Two years old, or is that two years young ...

(Above: two years ago the pond cranked to life, scribbling on, inter alia, Tony Abbott and climate change."Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr).

It was two years ago today that the pond came to life, metamorphosed from an absurd time spent in Michael Duffy land.

Two years. Lah di dah.

Since the meaningless observation of trivial rituals is part of the joy of life, let me count the benefits:

in this time, I have expended no money on psychologists or psychiatrists;

in this time, I have posted no comments, rants, snide asides, or other responses to newspapers online, whether Fairfax or Murdoch, whether Tim Blair's tomfoolery, or the flummoxing Miranda the Devine, the perplexing Janet Albrechtsen, or the irritating Paul Sheehan, despite many and varied temptations, provocations, and inane stupidities (and if you multiply the benefits world-wide, into the land of David Brooks and Daniel Pipes and ... why it's a lifetime savings benefit);

in this time, a few kindly people have left comments, suggesting that howling into the wind, into the gale of silliness peddled by assorted minions, whether Punch-drunk or otherwise employed by Rupert Murdoch, is a protective strategy commonly employed by many docile rational, sense-seeking souls, confronted by the awesome sight of hacks paid to be elite members of the commentariat, and then daily burbling on, in the style of Gerard Henderson, about the dangers of elites;

in this time, when wandering dangerous inner urban elite streets (strangely populated by tattooed junkies, wretched students, lowly ethnics, pensioners and street bums), I smile at the passing parade, and give thanks for the pleasures of being alive, and not being paid to whinge and moan and run around like Chicken Little at least once a week, in the manner of Tony Abbott invoking the wrath of the carbon tax and the destruction of everything;

and in this time, even the parrots feasting on the winter cherry blossoms chortle like loons, at the sheer joy of the intoxicating loonacy of squabbling and bickering, while being far removed from the ugliness wreaked on the world in the name of post-colonial adventurism.

In short, to paraphrase Catch 22, the pond has kept me sane, by way of allowing me to express my profound insanity, brought on by the insane ways of the world ...

Along the way, the sublime contradictions and hypocrisies of the commentariat have provided enormous pleasure.

Even the smallest follies will do, and somehow it all links together, as with Max Mosley, former president of the FIA, bankrolling legal actions against the News of the World because of the way the rag did him over with stories about a Nazi-style orgy. (Max Mosely bankrolls phone hacking cases against the News of the World, Formula One's 'Nazi' Sex Scandal).

So it goes, as Bob Ellis says when channeling a decent writer ...

Somehow that segues nicely into the news that Melbourne F1 Grand Prix cost taxpayers $50 million.

That's right, long suffering mug punters shove fifty million buckeroos down the copious pockets of Bernie Ecclestone, supposedly to generate up to $39 million of economic activity (don't get me started on the multipliers used to justify this kind of government waste - been there, peddled that snake oil).

Why next thing you know you'll end up like the HUN carrying on about the waste of money involved in bringing Oprah Winfrey to Melbourne, while at the same time US visitor numbers have fallen, as if they were ever going to rise given the current US dollar exchange rate (Oprah's Down under show a big blowout).

Never mind, the Grand Prix remains a shocking waste of taxpayer money, so we immediately raced off to gadfly petrolhead Tim Blair for a searing indictment of the waste, since after all, international socialist big government conspiracies are the daily durum wheat grain he feeds his tea party chooks.

Oh foolish pond. Blair isn't too worried about the taxpayers or the idea of rent-seeking, he's worried about the size of the engines, and the amount of noise, and the possibility that soon enough we won't be able to hear the growl.

Did we ever mention the pond's theory that some men think the size of their penis is somehow mystically related to the size of their exhaust pipe?

Oh the suffering, oh the humanity, on show in Formula Prius.

It seems that the cars might be forced to use electric mode and be quiet in the pits, and that's the real reason we shouldn't be bothered by the Grand Prix any more!

Blair's hopes for the future?

The era of lame may yield to an era of helmetless death drivers aboard V12 nitro trikes with bodywork made from corn chips

Helmetless on trikes?

Perhaps Blair could yet emulate the irony of the American motorcyclist who died protesting helmet laws, because he wasn't wearing a helmet that might well have saved him. (Rider dies at motorbike helmet protest).

Or maybe not.

Perhaps the entire commentariat should be encouraged to ride and drive their nitro trikes without helmets, on the basis that we always need more entrants in the Darwin Awards. (The awards have their own wiki too).

Next week, Tim Blair goes feral about art subsidies one more time, perhaps because Cate Blanchett can't reach the back row with her feral growl ...

And so on to an entirely unrelated matter.

Thanks to a mention on Slate's Doonsebury page Say What? feature - you truly have to be a loon to make the cut - we found ourselves reading Andrea Peyser's astonishing bilious assault Harry Potter scribe casts a sexist spell for yet another Murdoch lowlife publication, the New York Post.

Serendipity being what it is, that led us to this response 'Harry Potter' sexist. Yes, and I am Jessica Rabbit.

How is it possible that such bitter, incoherent, talentless, mean-spirited, humourless, eaten-up-with-naked-envy (of other people's fame, money and niceness) utter crapitude is appearing regularly in the New York Post? Either blackmail is involved, or someone is very, very good in bed. The former seems much the more likely.

Actually Kerryn, you're way too kind. Even if you have no time for Harry Potter, reading Peyer's piece was a bit like seeing a dog playing with its vomit after eating too much green around the gills grass. We commend it to readers with strong stomachs, or perhaps with a gruesome desire to see Jimi Hendrix or Momma Cass re-enact their deaths ...

And it leads to an even grander thesis, way beyond blackmail and being good in bed, way beyond Blair and Peyser bleagh.

The entire blogosphere has had to be invented simply to provide people with a way to respond to the astonishing diversity of biliousness, stupidity, silliness, nastiness, misinformation and misunderstandings visited upon a hapless world by the minions of Murdoch ...

With a bit of luck, the forthcoming paywalls down under will remove these scribbles from antipodean consciousness, in much the same way as The Times' paywall has removed that paper from the general conversation.

That's been way better than the physical closing down of the News of the World.

With a bit of luck, there will be no need for a pond in several years, with the Murdoch empire broken up, or in ruins like some Ozymandias statue, or trapped behind paywalls of its own making ...

The result? Max Mosely can quietly about the business of wearing Nazi memorabilia while copping a whipping, and Bernie Ecclestone keep going about the business of picking the pockets of Victorian taxpayers ...

Meanwhile, to those who drop by from time to time, thanks for your patience and interest, and now a poem to celebrate the passage of time, and the wounds it can inflict:

I met a traveller from an antipodean land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in Holt street. Near them on the strand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Rupert Murdoch, King of Tabloids:
Look on my rags, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level pavements stretch far away".

And now for that Doonsebury (click to enlarge).