Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings ...

(Above: First Dog sets the tone for the pond, more of him here, and if you're prepared to give up an email address, you can access Gina's think piece here. Don't do it, for the love of the absent lord, don't do it, you'll be on a list).

In an alternative universe, the pond dreamed of being a television programmer.

Sit around all day watching television programs and shaping them into a seamless gown that would have viewers riveted to their sets. What a wanton, wastrel lifestyle.

Which brings us to the Ten network, and its current woes, with the memory jogged by Crikey's Lach, stock and both barrels: who's killing Channel Ten, harking back the good old days when Ten owned the youth demographic, and even though it was invariably behind Seven and Nine, the network always made a tidy profit. It was lean and mean and quite often fun to watch.

A lot of water and television muck has fallen off the box since then. The Simpsons has long since nuked the fridge and lost its mojo, and then there was Ten's disastrous attempt to turn itself into a serious prime time news and current affairs channel with George Negus.

While fond of him, even the pond's maiden aunt thought George was a little long in the tooth.

And now we have the current regime, which fails at both a board and management level. They'd love to get the youth market back, but they don't have the first clue as to how to go about it.

The young 'uns have hared off elsewhere, lured by the massive repeats that Nine deploys of sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory. In terms of animation, Seven has similarly been saturating the airways with American Dad and Family Guy (and they even try to shelter American Dad from the impact of a show like Underbelly: Badness, here).

Seven knows what it is, and what will appeal to its audience which is why it can also run the squillionth repeat of Fawlty Towers and Yes Minister. Ten doesn't even have the gumption or know how to bring back Duckman!

Can Ten ever get its niche youth demographic - loved by advertisers - back?

Its secondary channel Eleven is a complete mish-mash of tired product, harking back to the glory days of the catalogue, but now completely irrelevant. Show the pond a nerd who isn't over The Simpsons and Futurama, and the pond will show you a nerd still on trainer wheels.

As for One, this secondary channel has become a mess, running arcane sports programs because Ten can't afford the big audience winners, and then pretending it's actually not a sports channel, it's for general entertainment. What a mess.

Worse, these days the youth market is tricky and flighty. Even if Ten could get hold of a cable show like Hatfields & McCoys, which shifts Romeo and Juliet to West Virginia after the Civil War, it's already out there, gone, done and dusted for anyone who knows how to click a button. And the young do ...

Which brings the pond back to Andrew 'the Bolter's' Bolt Report and why it's symbolic of management failure.

The Bolter is fond of comparing his ratings to The Insiders. Oh yes, it's a hit, a palpable hit for the Bolter ...

Excuse the pond burping.

The ABC? Boring cardigan wearers offering up Barrie Cassidy? That's an epic fail because in the meantime the show's rivals on the commercial networks have tippy-toed off with the youth demographic.

The pond's maiden aunt might have a soft spot for Barrie Cassidy, but she'd no more dream of watching current affairs on a Sunday than the average teenager who just wants to watch Video Hits.

The Bolter's show is something of a legendary joke in rival commercial circles - remember the joking about the Usain Bolt campery?

It's true the show is only a minor symbol, but it's a symbol all the same of a network distracted by trivia when the name of the real game is the audience. If Ten were serious and dedicated to a cause, it would toss out Bolt in the same way it's been shedding all kinds of shows these last few weeks.

The point, in the end, is that watching daytime television, watching any sort of television is a wanton, wastrel exercise. You don't get brownie points from your audience approaching them with cynicism and contempt, and by hectoring them for being bludgers.

Two things remain true in relation to Ten.

When David Mott walked out the door, there went one of the few people at Ten who had the first clue. And so long as the current board and management thrash about without a target demographic, programs that will deliver to that demographic, and a business plan that seeks to appeal to that key advertisers interested in that demographic, the network will continue to flounder.

This is a network with a serious identity crisis, and the Bolter isn't the way forward, no matter how much some people think he's big in the country (or maybe he's big in Japan).

There, and we ended this rant without once mentioning Gina Rinehart and how she doesn't have a clue, how she fears and loathes the audience her network needs, and how she supports ideologues when all the youff demographic, the pond and the advertisers want is a bit of entertainment. Especially on a Sunday ...

What else before we hit the weekend?

Well astute observers of The Australian will have already noted Dennis "the pompous tie" Shanahan's epic misuse and abuse of Lewis Carroll in Our leaders live in looking-glass land (behind the paywall but you know how to google).

After its relentless pursuit of Gillard in recent weeks, it seems the rag is now aiming for some kind of objectivity and balance in its ranting commentariat, and so Shanahan affects an air of cynicism in relation not just to Gillard, but also to Abbott:

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are behaving like Lewis Carroll's Walrus and the Carpenter taking young oysters from their bed for a walk on the briny beach.
The Prime Minister and Opposition Leader lead the fat young oysters along, remarking on how fine is the view, then sit down on a rock "conveniently low" to talk about cabbages and kings and "whether pigs have wings".
While engaged in conversation about boiling seas and sealing wax the two companions feast on the distracted oysters with buttered bread and vinegar.

Yep, Shanahan thinks its whimsical and engaging to portray himself and his readers as hapless distracted oysters. What a goose, and perhaps only a second class form of pâté de foie gras at that, given the way the rag shoves rabid right-wing corn down the throats of its readership.

Anyhoo, readers - oysters on the sea-bed of life - will have tremendous fun, watching Shanahan as he dares to take a poke at Tony Abbott:

The strategies are all about scare campaigns on the carbon tax, mining busts, penalty rates and job security, and the only defences are more scare campaigns and a refusal to speak about other vital issues.
No one expects Abbott to produce a John Hewson-style Fightback package of massive details on a new tax, and no one expects Wayne Swan to just roll over and give up on the prospect of a budget surplus.
But the hysteria, verballing and distraction have to stop.

What, you mean that the hysterical The Australian will stop verballing Gillard over a distraction involving ratbags and an ancient union scandal?

In your dreams Mr. Shanahan, in your dreams. The pond looks forward to the next crusade by your rag, and to its continuing slide into irrelevance through excess, which is right up there with Ten's inability to recover a decent audience.

And lastly a treat.

The pond's usual business is abject loonery, but every so often it's worth celebrating an amusing read, as is the case with Richard Ackland's With nod (and wink) to past, it's more fodder for maintaining the rage.

Ackland seizes the moment of the launch of Jenny Hocking's second volume of her Gough Whitlam biography to wipe the floor with Gerard "toxins into the brain for another burst of rage maintenance" Henderson, without once mentioning Henderson.

After pausing to contemplate the amazing judicial activism involved in the dismissal - no howls from Janet Albrechtsen about activist judges here - and marvelling at the audacity of Bob Ellicott, and remembering the alleged separation of powers, Ackland puts the meaning of the dismissal in a nutshell:

Hocking's revelations are a reminder of the informal world of nods, winks and forefingers tapping the nose.
Everything from the Crown to the judiciary, the Murdoch press and many in the legal profession were arrayed against Whitlam.
Need we be reminded that these embodiments of virtue are just as capable as the whatever-it-takes types of perverting the rules to achieve their ends.

Indeed. Right now Dennis Shanahan is crying into his pool of tears, and who knows, smoking a pipe with a caterpillar and munching on a mushroom, while the Murdoch press goes about the business of arraying everyone against Gillard.

The only upside? Dennis Shanahan is an oyster, and Gina Rinehart doesn't have the first clue about how to use the media to achieve her ends ...

(more Kudelka here).

And now, if you've made it this far, with the weekend beckoning, here's to the news that not only has Tony Abbott been reading Fifty Shades of Grey, he's also read Nikki Gemmell's With My Body and The Bride Stripped Bare (thanks Crikey, here, paywalled).

Here's a cartoon for you Mr. Abbott, and do try not to get excited:

And now that the pond has declared an uneasy truce with Optus, here's another cartoon, also doing the Facebook rounds. The pond doesn't agree with the Samsung Apple riff, but loves the Nokia motif. If it'd only been Optus ...