In which the paywall blues continue, until Lord Downer of Baghdad rides to the rescue ...

(Above: today featuring, a bit like Hamlet's dad, or Banquo, a ghost from governments past ...)

Third day in, and the doctor is sounding guardedly optimistic, almost cheerful.

The fever is subsiding, friends day that my eyes now seem bright and alert, the hair is as pert as a brushtail possum, my mood seems to have lifted - I was once prone to irritability and a snarly, surly grumpiness - and I seem to be able to think a little more clearly, now that the fog of constant, incessant verbal warfare has lifted ...

The doctor says my left eye is likely to be permanently weakened - if I'd kept it up I might have lost all sight, and become completely one eyed - but on the upside my left ear seems to have recovered quite well. It's true I'll likely have tinnitus for the rest of my life, but it's a small price to pay, now that the daily hammering and yammering has turned into a murmuring white noise ... Put on some nice music and it almost disappears ...

It being Wednesday, the pond would once would have visited The Australian to read Janet Albrechtsen raging and fulminating about something or other - perhaps Lord Monckton explaining how the United Nations was involved in an international climate change conspiracy likely to produce world government by the turn of the decade - and the result would have been a day long funk of anxiety, depression, fear and loathing, and a tendency to foam and spray at anyone nearby.

I hadn't dared to return to the scene of these crimes against humanity, but today I felt bold and brave and strong, and yes, there was Dame Slap scribbling away in her usual spot, about free speech, and the way there ought to be outrage that feeling insulted can censor open discussion. It's probably part of the ongoing campaign to maintain the rage about the Bolter ...

No doubt in the body of the text she explains how getting your facts right is completely unnecessary, perhaps even inappropriate ... (no link, lest temptation strike you too).

A small gold brick showed that I'd have to pay to get in (ah the gold standard ...), which just goes to show that free speech must come at a price, preferably directed straight to Chairman Rupert's coffers ...

It's true I could have taken up the freebie offer, but the sheer preposterous absurdity of being asked to pay to read the views of Janet Albrechtsen on anything, let alone free speech at a price, was like having a very cold bucket of water poured over me. I felt a surge of relief. I wasn't insane, I was free, free I tells ya ... free like a lolcat in a field of catmint...

Even having to leave an email address to get the 3 month freeebie was a no no. Never leave an email address unless you want to be relentlessly spammed - you can't even leave a spam trap address of the kind I used to gain access to a Republican campaign site once upon a time, because the next thing you know you'll end up on the Obama email list, and lordy do the Dems know how to spam ... (do they share addresses just so everyone can be harassed by everyone?)

My doctor said I should get out and about, sample other views, read about other things happening in the world. So I headed off to The Punch, that treacherous site still publishing outside the Murdoch paywall, still breaking the curfew.

Sadly, it was almost alarmingly politically correct. Well almost. There's a piece by deep norther Andrew Fraser (Human relationships are a many splendored thing) explaining how civil unions are just the same as marriage, except we shouldn't use the word 'marriage' in relation to gay civil unions. Naturally this got other deep northerners deeply agitated (Qld Opposition tries to block civil unions bill).

And there's a piece by James Arvanitakis daring to suggest Gerard Henderson and Sophie Mirabella are being unkind to the occupiers, but strange, while there were links to all the rants in the Murdoch rags, and a pointer to a piece in The Australian (sign up, sign up now), there was no link to Polonius prattling away in the Fairfax rags ...

Even more shocking, there was an unseemly assault on Alexander Downer by Michael McGuire, in which he contends The Queen is not the glue holding Australia together.

It seems Lord Downer of Baghdad scribbled a piece, Rule for the People, which sees the difference between Libya and Australia as the Queen ...

Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen have lurched from instability to oppression for generations.

Our greatest strength is our steadfast commitment to keeping things stable. We shouldn't be swept along by every fad promoted by fashionistas.

So much for the United States of America, that dangerous piece of faddism mounted by fashionistas. At last an explanation of its violence and its dangerous instability and its taste for oppression and war. They booted out George the Third and had a tea party!

So it's god save the queen, or else the rabble rioting in the streets will sweep the pompous Downer from his perch.

Hmm, must keep the Advertiser in mind as a haven for loons, at least until the gold bar curtain clangs down.

Downer digested, the pond was still feeling more-ish, the way you do when you bite into a chocolate and the juices begin to flow ...

So the pond trooped off to the ABC, where people like to bang drums. It was a strange, weird, discombobulated world, a bit like Homer Simpson in 3D. People were wearing cardigans, some had patches on their elbows, a few wore sensible shoes, and some were as barking mad, almost as if they wanted to work for chairman Rupert.

Take this little outburst from Brigitte Dwyer in Losing control of the climate change story:

Today, the Green narrative incorporates no such faith (of the Henry Thoreau and Gerard Manly Hopkins kind), but rather a belief that humanity is blight upon the Earth. This is manifest in a palpable horror at the size of the world; a disgust at its incomprehensible billions; a disdain for the unfathomable numbers who hope to share our prosperity. It is a distinctly anti-human narrative, which buries the idea that humankind is a reservoir of possibilities.

Uh huh. The horror, the horror. This at the end of a piece which had started out with this comforting observation:

The natural reaction, when faced with humankind's insignificant, short-lived and futile life on this miniscule planet, is to focus on our immediate surrounds and the present moment.

Uh huh. The horror, the horror.

Why, it's Janet Albrechtsen on trainer wheels.

That's when I began to worry about The Australian's business model. You see opinion is actually dirt cheap - a hundred million and more blogs tell me so daily - and news is freely available, so pricing the news is hard, and as The New York Times found out in its first pay trial, before it settled on its current sensible model, pricing opinion is even harder ...

Luckily I stumbled across Tim Dunlop banging away at his drum, inviting me to Hold your nose and support the coming media paywalls.

It seems, according to Mr. Dunlop, that:

Constant, day-to-day, up-to-minute, comprehensive, fair, balanced, accurate and compelling journalism that can hold power to account is the work of big, mutha-fuquing corporations, not half-a-dozen well-meaning people and the smell of an oily rag in somebody's spare room.

Fair, balanced, accurate and compelling journalism at The Australian!?!

Well after I picked myself up from a laughing fit which reduced me to tears for a good ten minutes - try reading The Australian on climate science, for starters - the old tics and shakes started up again.

The doctor thought I had some kind of relapse, and that perhaps it began yesterday when News Ltd quoted Tim Flannery as being in favour of the coal seam gas and mining industry - with a beguiling invitation to trot off to The Australian and fork over some hard cash to get to the truth of the matter - and the next thing you know Flannery is off at Fairfax, in Report that I back coal-seam gas is wrong: Flannery, and the next thing you know I'm storming into the doctor's office, demanding some of that comprehensive, fair, balanced, accurate kool aid that Dunlop must have handy on his bed side table.

Ah well, it's just another day in the strange collapsing worm hole universe Homer found himself in, where fair and balanced means skew whiff and topsy turvey, and free speech comes at a price ...

Perhaps what's needed at the pond is an erotic bakery of the kind Homer found at the end of the episode ...

(Below: that eerie, threatening feeling that something's still not right, or at least, not right right ...)