The pond heads off to the best circus in the known world, perhaps even the universe ...

(And yet they voted an illegal African into the top job again? Is this country mad or what? Or is it just full of cranks, dropkicks, weirdos and losers who believe in UFOs and angels?)


The pond is off to the United States.

The pond has many friends there, and they're in need of care and comfort.

Friends?

You may be astonished to learn that the pond is in intimate regular contact with President Obama, Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, Spike Lee, Jeremy Bird (he was the National Field Director, don't ya know, and Jeremy, the pond would have loved to make it to the Marysville party, thanks for the invite), Jim Messina (he was the campaign manager, don't ya know), Sandra Fluke, Jen O'Malley, and so on and so forth.

Oh and a whole ragbag of fundamentalist Christians and Republicans who somehow hijacked the pond's email account. And now, somehow, unaccountably, they routinely turn up in a spam-laden messages offering exactly the same friendship messages.

This is not some sort of superficial intimacy. Each email always starts with the greeting "Friend" along with some exhortatory declaration of an emergency or urgency or outlines immediate steps that need to be taken, not limited to but including cash and voting, or explaining how the United States is imminently doomed.

Sometimes it's a little unnerving, because being greeted this way sounds a bit like Labor party aparatchiks calling you "comrade", hoping you don't notice the knife they're hiding behind their back.

And Joe Biden as a friend? The man who did a little trickery and fakery on his way to the top?

Never mind, who could argue with this one degree of separation? The pond never gets emails from China's leadership, and frankly Vladimir Putin is off the mailing list ...

But strangely, this last week or two, emails have dropped off  in frequency, urgency and intimacy, as if something momentous had happened elsewhere, and there was too much to do to allow regular contact with old friends. Who could imagine what that might be?

Not a single note from Democrat or Republican friends at all these past few days, and frankly it's a worry.

Ah well, if you have any problems in the United States, just remember the pond has powerful friends, even if they can be a little flighty and inattentive.

For starters, who else could tell you the title of the documentary Sean Hannity called the most powerful documentary he's ever seen in his life? (The Hope and the Change, hat tip to David N. Bossle, sorry the pond didn't buy a copy Dave).

But it doesn't end there. Day after day the pond is inundated with gormless robo spam sent out by gormless SEOs who want to be buddies. Friends. Comrades. Sometimes there's deep praise:

Unquestionably consider that which you said. Your favourite justification seemed to be on the web the simplest factor to understand of. I say to you, I definitely get irked at the same time as people think about worries that they just do not recognize about. You managed to hit the nail upon the highest as well as defined out the entire thing with no need side effect , people could take a signal. Will likely be again to get more. Thanks.

Or good old common sense:

When I travel I normally eat club sandwiches or I bring my own food. When you go into a new town, it's very hard to find a good place to eat. Flights to Santiago Chile cheap.

Or just straightforward helpfulness:

Qefote puyufilad rudafeg igeyes ure afapikaw eder lulecul kuhaca zudi etegasep, xa ... Where I Buy Prosolution Pills..

And always with a handy website attached. For benefit of the friend that's given them such deep insights and understanding.

As you can see, sometimes the message gets a little cryptic, like that one about George Pell in the Hamster Wheel:

But remember google translation is your friend, just like all those other friends out there on the vast, full to overflowing intertubes.

It's all become so intense that the pond has decided to take this trip to the United States, to catch up on these old friends, help out devastated Republicans, give them hope and a sense they can change, move into the future, onward, forward, and naturally also take time out to have a meal and maybe do a bit of ballin with that atheist Islamic Kenyan socialist leader whom the pond counts as a dear friend, dearer than the pond's partner who sends bugger all by way of email, and never with the caring, sharing love of the young Renegade.

And maybe stop that damn pesky robo spam.

And you believe any of this, when did you join the Sydney Anglicans and start believing the story of Adam and Eve was a sound basis for relationships?

Regular business will resume at the pond in due course.

The commentariat and the Pellists and the angry Anglicans will run wild, but then they always do. There's no stopping them, just fun watching them run off various cliffs, then get back on the wheel and do it all over again.

But there's a limit, especially when the pond heads off to the biggest circus in the world. And in the land of the free, the wacky, the zany and the weird, the good news is that Austria is almost never mentioned by anyone ...