Dam it, let's pray for a new cargo cult ...

(Above: surely there's a mistake, where's Paul Sheehan?)


Today generally grumpy Paul Sheehan produces a splendid amount of blather about the state of affairs in television, including some magisterial insights into kitchen shows, in Television turns up the heat in kitchen war.

It seems the grumpster is at a loss as to what to write about on a Thursday, his time for lightness, except that we live in a golden age of television and fashion, and by extension, the pond concludes it must be a stone age for the commentariat.

Since he seems at a loss, can the pond suggest a few comedy stylings, in the style of the majorly grumpy epic Ten anti-anti-commandments and Lord Monckton's verbal bombs?

Pastor Danny claims to have risen people from the dead.
Pastor Danny thinks god causes bushfires to punish Victorians for abortion laws.
Pastor Danny thinks the Queensland floods are punishment for Kevin Rudd speaking against Israel.
Pastor Danny has prayed for Satan's strongholds - bottleshops - to be pulled down (along with brothels, gambling places - whither James Packer? - and Freemason, Buddhist and Hindu temples).
Pastor Danny claims to have discovered a black mass satanist site at Canberra's Mount Ainslie.
Pastor Danny thinks that rights for LGBT people are the reason for a spate of parliamentary marriage crises.
Pastor Danny shares Paul Sheehan's views on the dangers of Islam.
Pastor Danny thinks Lord Monckton is a spiffing fellow.
Lord Monckton thinks Pastor Danny and his new party are spiffing fellows.
Paul Sheehan thinks Lord Monckton is an intellectual giant and top notch scientist capable of amazing verbal bombs and insights.
Is this a new holy trinity?

Are you missing anything here? Why there's a first rate comedy column that'll have them rolling their jaffas down the aisles ...

Perhaps we could mangle T. S. Eliot and the way Sheehan seems to have gone missing in action when it counts:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together 
But when I look ahead up the white road 
There is always another one walking beside you 
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded 
I do not know whether a man or a woman -
But who is that on the other side of you?

No? Guess we can all go back to watching television's golden age, and remember your viewing experience will be enhanced by magic water and a good sourdough bread.

Moving right along, the Daily Terror has announced yet another splendid vision for Australia, as you can read in Tony Abbott's bold water plan leaked:

Up to 100 dams could be built across the country to prevent floods, fuel power stations and irrigate a food boom to feed 120 million people across the Asia Pacific region, under plans being considered by Opposition leader Tony Abbott.

Up to 120 million people? By golly that's going to make all the difference to the billions in India and China, and the 242 million or so in Indonesia.

The penny dropped when the rag revealed that the brains behind the document were Barners (that's Barnaby Joyce to you losers who never grew up in Tamworth), Andrew Robb, Greg Hunt and Heffo, otherwise known as Bill "barren" Heffernan, along with some other students of Soviet Union agrarian socialist planning.

The pond would have been more impressed if the team had announced plans for the building of Sydney's second international airport at Manus Island, connected by very fast ferry to the home of convicts and the Rum rebellion and Eddie Obeid (oh dear, the circus that makes the Moscow circus look like very small beer).

Naturally the Terror, in Build our nation, dam the protests immediately went into hysterical frontier dam-building and awful pun mode:

Millions around the world suffer chronic food shortages. A dam-fuelled Australia could help meet ever-increasing world food needs. If you don't care about the global population, you truly don't give a dam.

So this is where we're heading in the election campaign - stupid policies leaked to stupid tub-thumping newspapers, in the hope that when the flag is run up the flag pole, someone will salute. And never mind idle chatter about small government, balanced budgets, and grand socialist schemes.

Naturally Tim Bleagh was all gung ho, as in Dams Rock, and let's get building and linking to the editorial like a little Miss Echo ... he would have been right at home in Mao's five year plans.

Oh okay, the till's been tickled for the Godwin's Law breach.

Yes it's great that Australia's going to feed the starving 120 million Asians - do you have fond memories of posting a food parcel of steamed broccoli to the starving Asians because you were berated by your parents for refusing to eat the stuff? 

As for the rest of the billions, why they can go hang ... there's only so much the federal opposition and the Daily Terror can do for illogical jingoistic rhetoric and mindless agrarian socialist pandering.

Now how to wrap up the day? Well a kindly reader suggested a visit to the opinion pages of the ABC's The Drum to check on the Liberal hacks, lowlifers, and IPA types now littering the pages, so it was time for a body count.

Sure enough, right at the top, there was Peter "let loose the hounds Smithers" Reith scribbling Stop treating sport as a religion.

Naturally the discussion of sport (and the overlooking of Don Bradman's business dealings and controversies in his career) quickly turned to politics, and a strenuous bout of Labor party bashing, which suggested a keyboard on steroids, before concluding with this insight:

Maybe politicians should stop treating sport as a religion and chop back sports funding at places like the Institute of Sport, which was set up by the Fraser government and which was modelled on the East German model after we failed to win enough Olympic medals when Fraser was PM.

East Germany? The Liberals? Dam building and sports institutes, in good Stalinist style?

Oh dear, and that just after future glorious leader Tony Abbott has announced his first five year plan for  dam-building, and the saving of starving Asians, removing the need for future broccoli-laden letters.

And what about poor Gerard Henderson, who it turns out, after supporting hard-done-by sportsfolk, must now be considered a quisling cheerleader for Malcolm Fraser and East German drug cheats ...

Moving right along, Chris Berg from the IPA was doing exceptionally well, also scribbling furiously about the sports issue in Forget drugs - there's nothing natural about modern athletes, and holding down a top spot in the hot topics arena for what seems like months with If it looks and smells like a campaign, then it's a campaign - along the lines of If it looks and smells like the IPA flooding the Drum, then it's the IPA flooding the Drum.

Naturally Berg sounds like he's all in favour of professional sports people taking drugs - where's the harm, it's only entertainment, it's a business, not a game, and think of the sponsorship opportunities for the IPA, and without any of the health issues tobacco can cause, provided it's done with appropriate supervision and a keen eye to the Lance Armstrong edge.

But a special place of honour must be reserved for Kristina Keneally's column, which might have been called An unremarkable premier's unremarkable column, but instead was called An unremarkable pope's remarkable exit.

Keneally, who was a sock puppet for the Terrigals and can take as much credit as anyone, if only through dereliction of duty, for the circus unfolding on a daily basis in NSW - no need for enhancing drugs to enjoy the show - seems to have spent too much time in prayer:

Praying - trusting in God's grace and providence - seemed the right thing to do. 
So I did pray for Benedict, that he be guided by God's grace in the days ahead. But I also prayed for the new pope.

She lists how she prays for a lot of other things to happen in the Catholic church as well.

But she seems to have forgotten to pray for the people for the NSW, or even a second airport.

Which reminded the pond of one of its favourite full to overflowing intertubes memes, where is your god now, arising from a line in the bible and mistakenly attributed to Edward G. Robinson.

Oh dear, a Stalinist breach and now a lolcat. The pond is heading into Daily Terror territory. Dam it.

So all's left is for Kristina Keneally to keep praying for the Pope and the Catholic church, and the pond to pray for that second Sydney international airport to be set up in Auckland, and connected to Australia by very fast balloon.

Build dams all over the country? Guess it's simpler than getting the planes and trains to run on time ...

Is it time for a new cargo cult? 

Waiting, waiting, praying for billions to be spent on dams in a grand five year plan, and never mind a balanced budget, and still the DC3s have trouble landing ...