How to cope on a Monday without Captain Grumpy ...

(Above: in the absence of Paul Sheehan, the pond thoughtfully dug into the archives, and discovered this in the Sydney Morning Herald of the 25th September 1948).

Monday is always the cruellest day.

The notion of waking up and reading Paul Sheehan is such an act of perversity, of desperation, a kind of EMO fear and loathing ...

Why it was extraordinary to feel the clouds part, the light burst through, the world suddenly feel less gloomy and grumpy, with the news that Sheehan is on leave.

It's metaphorical of course. Sydney is still cloudy and gloomy but what's a little rain up against the constant Sheehan downpour?

Instead Michael Duffy, long ago inspiration for the pond, has been snatched away from the cardigan wearers and let out for a canter, a gallop around the Fairfax paddock, with Tough laws on people smuggling are a con.

It seems the ABC's culture has infiltrated the Duffster's head space:

If anyone believes locking up poor fishermen is effective or reflective of success in the government's more general efforts against people smugglers, it's time Alan Jones disabused them. Someone is playing a cruel trick on those citizens concerned about border security.

Whatever it is, Paul Sheehan it ain't.

Head off to The Punch, and there's more shock horror, with Malcolm Farr scribbling The Liberal Party is offering opposition but no alternative.

It was swiftly becoming clear what was going on. There was an international conspiracy - perhaps organised deep within the United Nations at the highest levels - to deny the pond the essential fruitiness and loopiness it needs to survive ... the oxygen of feral rat baggery that's supposed to come with the start of a new week.

Where was the brooding about the Greek economy, where was the raging about lazy Celts ruining everything?

Oh sure if wanted to sign up to Murdoch la la land, you could still head off into the thickets with several days old Brendan O'Neill, already beginning to hum and pong like a fish-head left in the noon day sun:

Why the left should be deeply imbued with moral superiority - as opposed to the festering rage and moral superiority imbued in Brendan O'Neill - will have to remain one of the greater mysteries.

Of course if you wanted to read O'Neill in the raw, in the prime so to speak, though without benefit of a poorly lit mug shot, you could simply head off to him at his home, where the professional stirrer stirs the pot with Left's moral superiority fails intelligence test.

Yep, you don't even have to cheat the porous paywall at The Australian to get a ranting fix, along with a Monday latte ...

If you have time to waste, you'll be startled to learn that O'Neill is yet again outraged at liberals and leftists. In other news it was confirmed yet again the Pope is a Catholic ...

Thank the absent lord a few things remain the same. There was Dennis "the tie" Shanahan maintaing easy, poll-driven headlines on the front page of The Australian:

Reading the polls is these days the laziest form of journalism, a rough equivalent to ferreting through tea leaves, the runes, or chicken livers, and even worse than enduring a card reading with my grandmother, a week in week out gimmick that has all the substance of a lamington.

What's amazing is that Shanahan seems to be saying that the Gillard government successfully steered Australia through the global financial crisis. Funny, wasn't the Ruddster in charge when the financial crisis struck, and can we please have chapter and verse wherein The Australian routinely praised the Rudd government for steering Australia through the global crisis? As opposed to feral frothing about pink batts and the school building program ...

Yes, even the pond, which warms to the Ruddster in the way it warms to the cane toads that litter Queensland, began to wonder what was going on in the world. Is Shanahan reading a poll the best that's on offer on a Monday?

And soon enough it became even clearer why the pond doesn't like Mondays, and would like to shoot the whole day down.

What cheek for The Australian to put the fickle gold bar finger of fate about Troy Bramston's story Political drama set to stir pot (no link, why bother).

It has to be a beat up, a trading off, a rip off, a pre-emptive strike, based around a story that will hit Four Corners tonight, featuring the Ruddster as The Comeback Kid.

Pay to read a Murdoch hack scribbling about a yet to be aired program on the ABC? Tell 'em they're dreaming ...

Funny, it's usually the ABC running the Murdoch angle, but these days the two bodies are intertwined, like twin suns, or moons ...

All the same, when it came to the crunch, there was clear evidence of an international conspiracy at work. Why there was Henry Ergas trying to sound even-handed:

It was just too much to bear. The pond almost felt like shrieking 'bring back Captain Grumpy', but then the full perversity of that thinking struck home.

Let him stay on leave forever ... let the pond shrivel on the vine, so long as the clouds lift and a shaft of sunlight reaches the earth.

Why the pond could always into the business of doing re-runs of Doonsebury cartoons, and who would remember a single bit of grumpiness emanating from Captain Grumpy?