Arise, Sir Joe and Dame Blow, today the pond has promoted you ... to whatever you feel is a decent sort of promotion ...

You'll have to forgive the pond today, it's such a madcap social whirl.

Luckily we've already whipped up a tidy column for News Limited, dripping with pious sanctimonious humbug and hypocrisy - thank the long absent lord we acquired a very comfortable armchair last year, and it turned what has sometimes been a burden into a breeze.

We've also mastered the art of the sepulchral, sombre tone, all gloomy and dismal while strangely uplifting, for a few radio interviews. Dearie me, what an inspiration Fran Kelly is ...

And now it's time to bung on a do.

Get on the turps (we don't talk of the piss on the one day of the year), down to the school for a flip of the coins - we'll spend the arvo on the bandits - knock off a fly with lashings of dead horse, and take a little time to give a few problematic types a touch-up. Like the ball of strife - now there's a reliable disappointment - and those bloody wogs who still don't get it and refuse to show the proper respect, and never wrap themselves in the flag.

What's worse, a quick tour of duty confirmed the worst - there are swarms of ponces sitting around idly in coffee shops, sipping away, confirming that Nick Cater's nightmare vision of a dangerous elite has already come true.

What to do, apart from hand-wringing while slumped in an armchair?

Well happy are that band of brothers who took a four day long weekend, to participate in the invasion of New Zealand. That country has taken to showing absolutely the wrong values in recent weeks - come to think of it, it's always been the way what with all that rugger bugger bum sniffing - so here's hoping we can save the country from itself with a decent game of real footy.

Oh and if you happen to cop a blast from some bugger moaning about PTSD and the rigours of the battlefield, give them a clip over the ears and tell them to pull themselves together and send them on their way. Or otherwise dose 'em up with lashings of anti-psychotic medications ...

And now if you bow your head, let's find a little time to contemplate Johns Frydenberg's splendid suggestion, which is to give John Monash a promotion from general to field marshall, as proposed in Fitting time to honour Monsah (behind the paywall so it won't interfere with your pokie-playing pleasure).

It's a brilliant manoeuvre, of the kind we've come to expect from the Liberal member for Kooyong. It takes care of the Jewish demographic, and the militarists all in one fell swoop, and allows a short sweet burst of Monash hagiography as well.

Monash continues to be remembered in many ways: his name adorns a leading university, a state electorate, a freeway and his face pictured on our $100 note. 
 But there is one hill still to climb, namely to make our greatest soldier-citizen a field marshal, cementing his reputation for all time. 

Because, you see, if he doesn't have that promotion, that hill to climb from the grave, why there might be too much lime in the mortar mix, and the next thing you know his reputation won't be cemented, and it might well fall down, and he won't have any reputation at all, and we'll  have to take back that uni and electorate name, and put another gob on the big note ...

With the centenary of Anzac soon upon us this would be a fitting tribute to a great man and to all the men and women of the AIF who served with such bravery and distinction.

Indeed. Come to think of it, why don't we give all of them, all the ones with such bravery and distinction and are now dead and gone, a posthumous promotion. Say if you were only a staff sergeant, you get to make captain. If you were a private, well why not a sergeant ...

It's surely time we at last arranged for the clearing of 'Breaker' Morant - don't you worry if he murdered a few people - and his promotion to at least Captain, or perhaps Major (allowing him to die with the murky status of a lieutenant is a permanent stain on the British nation).

And how about a posthumous pardon for all those poor buggers who were shot for desertion? Oh wait they've already done that - World War 1 'deserters' to be pardoned - so it's probably best that we just move on to giving a promotion to all the larrikin rapists and spreaders of STDs (Portrait of the Anzacs: deserters more interested in booze, brawls and sex).

You know it's always stuck in the pond's craw that Robert Gordon Menzies never donned the uniform of a military man, so now's surely the time to give him an honorary promotion to field marshall for his splendid work in relation to the war in Vietnam.

And so on and so forth because Monash really will only rest easy if the Frydenberg solution is adopted for all the poor buggers who missed out on some kind of honour or award in their lifetime, and now can only make it up in death ...

Meanwhile, speaking of cement, the lizard Oz has come up with a fine exclusive:

Faithfully regurgitated by the Bolter, showing his usual editorial flair by adding a few words "Have they no shame".

Indeed. What a journalist he is. He uses that cut and paste key like a fiend to fill his blog full of content, always ready to step up to the plate to defend the innocent and the helpless. Like Grocon, poor hapless persecuted Grocon.

Let's face it. No one has the first clue what caused the wall to fall down and kill two students and an academic. Most likely it was just a perverse gust of wind, the kind of random cruelty we expect of an indifferent universe. Nothing to do with anyone except perhaps the creator of perverse winds.

Oh sure there's been all sorts of jibber jabber in the Fairfax press about what might have done it. There's been speculation that a sign affixed to the wall promoting the Grocon development acted like a sail, and that the brick wall was a disaster waiting to happen and that the hoarding seemed to have no planning approval and Grocon had just let it all slide and then compounded the problem by carelessly affixing said sail:

Mr Huggard has studied the photographs and concluded that the wall had been poorly constructed with a grossly inadequate number of metal ties holding the two courses of bricks together. He said there appeared to be little, if any, buttress or other supports. 
''It appears to contravene every rule in the book,'' he said. (The wall, and why it collapsed)

Have they no shame, you might ask, with three people dead?

No, you see it's just a militant building union politicising a wall which just collapsed, because well, walls just collapse, that's what they do, and all this chit chat about government regulation up against the wonderful free market is so much of an onerous overlay on the hard business of making a crust, and if a few people get killed along the way, a kind of collateral damage, well that's what this day is all about, fighting for the right of freedom and the right of walls to collapse all on their own ... and anyone who says different is against big honest business going about its daily big honest business, and might well be part of a cosmopolitan internationalist latte-sipping elite ... or a union politicising an event which was just random and casual and determinedly apolitical and completely unindustrial.

And if you'll excuse the pond, now it's time to get on with the rest of the day's celebrations and deep thoughts.

Perhaps we could promote John Howard to emperor when he carks it? How about Sir John Kerr as warden of the Cinque Ports? If it's good enough for Barry Humphries, why can't everyone be a Dame?

Should everyone be given the Medal of Life just for getting born? Perhaps with a bar and ribbon for each year lived?

Truly it's the one day of the year for incisive thinking ... lest we forget how to booze and gamble ...