While Menzies House unveils a petition, the pond unveils plans for an Über weekend ...

(Above: together in unity and vitality).

Does anybody at all pay attention to Menzies House?

The valiant battlers against their own obscurity have launched a staunch campaign of defiance, demanding people sign a petition to close down the illegal, racist and divisive Tent Embassy. And they've bravely and boldly issued a press release to back up their agitprop action.

And never mind that Tony Abbott doesn't agree with them, or want to go there ...

Why even the average Trot or Maoist would blanch at this fine display of bolshie activism.

Oh those bloody black racists, wherever did they learn their racism from? It seems the tent embassy is a divisive attempt to create two Australias based on people's race ...

Thank the long absent lord no one ever attempted to create two Australias way back when ... and it only began when those pesky blacks set up a tent embassy.

Come to think of it, it's likely enough that the entire unfortunate history of the Aboriginal people in Australia is entirely the fault of Aboriginal people because ... well because they're just so damn divisive, and racist, and inclined to judge people by the colour of their skin.

The pond keeps forgetting the comedy potential of Menzies House, but it was good to see that others visit the site and leave the occasional comment:

I'm all for closing down racist & divisive institutions. Let's start with the Young Liberals and the Australian Libertarian Society.

Meanwhile, there have been other comedy highlights arising from the fracas, most notably Martin Flanagan's incisive analysis: Why we need to find a new date for Australia Day.

Flanagan is anxious that Australia Day is currently conflated with Invasion Day, and the pattern has now been set. Henceforth dissidents, radicals and ne'er do wells will seize the day for ratbaggery, and harmony and peace across the land will disappear:

A situation now exists which extremists on both sides can work to their advantage.

By simply shifting the day, such extremists will be defanged, detoothed, dearmed and disenfranchised.

It will simply never occur to them to use the Australia Day symbolism on a new Australia Day to protest about various issues, and instead everybody will be happy and frolic in the meadows together in bliss, possibly to a tune sung by The Seekers.

There's a new world somewhere

They call The Promised Land

And I'll be there some day

If you will hold my hand

But then there's the problem of deciding on the new day.

Anzac Day simply won't do, though it's absolutely fair to say that Australians have never ever used Anzac Day to mount protests about the uselessness and folly of war, most notably the Vietnam war.

Oops. But hang on, hang on that was in London on April 25th 1968, and was all the fault of lax Pommie security. In Australia no one ever used Anzac Day as an opportunity to protest against war ... did they?

Not to worry, surely there's a day of war when we can all come together to honour war yet again?

My suggestion is January 22. That is commonly regarded as being the date when the Battle for the Kokoda Track - sometimes referred to as the Battle for Australia - ended in 1943. Australia was on the verge of being invaded by a force, the Imperial Japanese Army, with a record of mass human rights violations. The New Guinea campaign involved at least one Aboriginal hero, Captain Reg Saunders.
We must summon an occasion when we were united.

Is that a kind of Anzac Day lite? Will the government issue little koala toys and a bunch of chocolates so we can in unity celebrate the efforts of the chocolate soldier diggers on the Kokoda track?

Will Japanese people in Australia be led into the town square and ritually excoriated for the Japanese army's massive human rights violations? Could it become burn a Mazda day? Compare and contrast with the nuking of Hiroshima and the fire-bombing of Tokyo, in no more than five hundred words ...

Oh dear, the pressure of turning out words and columns, how it shows sometimes.

Never mind, the pond has its very own solution, inspired by the massive amount of sickies that struck across the nation last Friday, and inspired by the 'floating day' way that Easter and the Melbourne Cup work.

Every child in the nation - in training to become a poker machine addict - knows that the nation stops for a horse race the first Tuesday in November.

So why not stop the nation for Australia Day on the very last weekend of January, no matter on which date it falls. And here's the kicker. Each Friday before that weekend will be deemed the Good Dinkum True Blue Get on the Piss Good Friday, and each Monday will be the Day of the Vegemite on Toast reviver. And the Sunday will be deemed You Must Attend a Non-Divise United As One Barbecue, No Matter What the Weather, Day ...

Sorry Martin Flanagan, eat your chocolate soldier heart out, the pond is applying for patents at this very moment ... a four day holiday at the peak of the heat that will stop the nation dead in its tracks.

How can it possibly miss?

Meanwhile, the pond has been brooding about the tent embassy, and by a curious coincidence on the weekend watched Phil Noyce's Backroads, and was reminded how Gary Foley was front and centre once upon a time:

And how attempts to banish the embassy gave its adherents a sense of purpose, and it turns out, longevity.

Well played Menzies House. Now all you need to do is get the police to demolish the tents under a Government ordinance, and that's the last the nation will hear from troublesome racist, divisive, illegal blacks ... and we can all, because things are going so swimmingly well in every way every day for everyone, join together on the pond's Über January weekend ...

Put it in another George Santayana way. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...