The pond gets a dose of Zerg rush, the Bolter, Gra Gra, and a remarkable MAMIL ...

If the casual reader who stumbles on this page would avert their eyes so the pond can have a rant ...

Last night the pond had the misfortune to watch a dramadoc about Alamein. It was full of the usual under-done, half-baked, wannabe but under-funded feature film, mock-up footage of war action, with dubious extras posing, and looking completely unlike the real soldiers revealed in the stock footage that was also used.

But an even bigger crime was the way the creative team wheeled in sparkle (white specks), neg dirt and scratches to pretend that their footage was somehow derived from ancient film footage. As a result, the pond spent most of the time checking which footage was real and which was fake, and concluded that the entire program was a fake, a work of fiction, with bugger all to do with history, except for the interviews, which sounded genuine.

You may as well watch Saving Private Ryan for historical insight.

It got so bad that the pond began to re-live old nerd tricks on the browser. Type Zerg rush into your browser and you'll see how silly it can get. Or Let it snow, or Do a barrel roll, or Google Gravity, or Askew, or the hairy Chuck Norris gag, or ASCII art, or search for Recursion, or Mentalplex or Nessie or Mentalplex, or Ninja or Flight Simular (clues here, you'll need your browser set correctly for some to work), and when it's all done finish it off with a good hearty kekeke ...

Yes, that's what watching bad dramadocs can do for you. Now you might say the pond is being old school and that all docs cheat their footage or face Nanook of the North ethical issues, but this program had very little that was new, a lot that was dull, and a lot that suggested the creative team should have just made a really cheap feature film like Beneath Hill 60. It might have ended up feeling a bit more insightful.

Speaking of insight, that nattering ninny Andrew Bolt, the boasting, preening peacock of right wing demagoguery and rabble-rousing, has been at it again, as a reader thoughtfully noted. Here's the concept of fair and objective insight into the media that the Bolter would bring to the job of Media Watch host:

To help jog his judgement, I ask Scott to review all the times Media Watch has attacked global warming sceptics and how rarely - was there just the once? - it has gone hard on the ludicrous fear mongering of the media’s many warming evangelists. Let him explain the curious silence of Media Watch’s most recent episode. (here)

Of course it's all just childish - not even adolescent - attention-seeking and foot-stomping of a most petulant ratbag kind, and it really shouldn't be rewarded by having any attention paid at all.

Truly when all you can see of the world is automatically divided into Left and Right, you're right in the la la world of Dean Swift arguing over whether you should open a boiled egg from the little or the big end. Such is the Bolter's gigantic ego, he'd insist on opening the egg at the big end ...

The only real pleasure to be obtained reading the Fairfax report on the earlier Bolter open letter comedy routine - kekeke - was this mournful note explaining how hard it would be for him:

.. ABC ideologues would stone you for hiring me. (Could you compromise by picking Gerard Henderson?) 
"But it would be harder for me. I'd have to leave a successful show and betray a network that's been fantastic to me. Still, duty calls. I'm game. The real question is, are you?" (Paul Barry to return as Media Watch host)

That's where the real delusions of grandeur stand revealed. The Bolter actually appears on a wretched commercial network, the worst of the lot, driven into the ground by a thoroughly stupid board of ideologues who allegedly espouse capitalist principles, but don't know how to practise them.

He appears in a largely invisible show screened in a Sunday morning slot usually reserved for video clips, aged docs or in the good old days, church services. And now he doesn't even score an afternoon slot for a repeat, because, well because there's only so much pain you can inflict on viewers who don't give a stuff about the Bolter ...

The last time we checked the ratings at the invaluable TV Tonight, here, was for Sunday 28th April 2013:

The Bolt Report 146,000 (no repeats)
Insiders: 142,000/83,000/26,000

The Bolter did better than Meet the Press, but let's put him up against some real competition. Yep, The Octonauts did 238,000... the pick of the multichannels. Thank god some people out there think of the mental health of their children ...

The only reason the Bolter's show exists is through the indulgence of Gina and the Ten board. No sensible commercial programmer on such a badly performing network would bother with it. Ten has picked up a couple of points in its share of advertising - the only figure that ultimately matters to network heavies (Ten Network advertising rallies, behind the paywall but you know how to google) - but the network continues to wallow, well behind Nine, which is well behind Seven.

But if being up yourself isn't enough, the Bolter also gave us a good guide to his ethical standards:

Bolt even offered to ''rip up'' his contract with Channel Ten, where he presents The Bolt Report, if it meant hosting Media Watch.

Like a petulant Hollywood child, he'd tear up his contract? And walk out on Gina? Either he's delusional or he's a indulgent, self-serving, ship-jumping fop, or maybe he's both.

Anyway, the poll in Fairfax is running 70/30 against the Bolter, which you might think would wound his pride, but the point to remember is that it's very hard to wound a rhino because of its thick hide. It just keeps blundering around in the bush, bumping into things and shrieking about evangelists ...

Meanwhile, in other news the poor old head of Myers has copped a social media pasting for being a goose, while that grand goose Graham "Swiss bank accounts Gra Gra" Richardson could scribble this in the lizard Oz, under Working on monuments that may never be built (behind the paywall so you never have to know):

There may well be a couple of million Australians deeply concerned with the issue, but the rest of the nation has not got a clue about the NDIS. Apart from knowing that it is a scheme designed to help disabled people and their carers, I haven't met anyone that knows how the scheme will work.

Yes, bugger off wounded and the maimed, it's all too hard for Richo.

Now you might wonder why Richo didn't seize the moment, in his newspaper column written from the heart of the nation, and circulating around the nation - well at least to the ratbags who buy it - to explain how the scheme will work.

If he thinks everyone is so clueless, including himself, why didn't he provide a link or trot off to the website about the NDIS, put together in the usual bureaucratic way, and available here. In the usual way it even has a set of FAQs here.

Now you might have questions about the funding by way of levy or possible cost over-runs, but there's a deeper reality here, even deeper than Richo's wilful, wayward ignorance.

Which is that if you want to do something for the wounded and the maimed, it needs to be structural and far-reaching, and a damn sight more effective than a bunch of self-indulgent MAMILS hopping into lycra and cycling across country from Adelaide to Geelong, raising token amounts of money (and by token, we mean put $2.5 million for assorted charities, while having a jolly good time posing and preening for cameras, up against the billions re-jig involved in the NDIS).

The funny thing is that this year's theme, or so one MAMIL page assures the pond, has a deep message:

This year Pollie Pedal riders will again ride 1,000 kilometres to raise funds in support of Australia’s 2.6 million carers and help ‘Make Australia Carer Aware.’ (here)

Perhaps the MAMIL could start with Richo, who doesn't seem to have a clue about carers, or the couple of million Australians who might care about carers.

Instead here's Richo's capper:

If she wants to leave monuments she should take a leaf out of Kim Il-sung's book. He was called the Great Leader and was the grandfather of the idiot currently running North Korea. He built massive bronze statues of himself all over his country. They were 10m high and guaranteed he would be remembered after his death. She could well build one or two of those between now and September 14.

Could the pond just re-jig that a little? It's only a suggestion:

If she wants to leave monuments she should take a leaf out of Gra Gra Richo's book. He was called the Great Numbers Man and he knew how handy Swiss bank accounts were, and how much money you could make by selling out to Sky and the lizard Oz, pretending you were still a Labor man while helping to drive Labor into the ground. He looks like he lives pretty well, and is pleased as punch with himself, and he knows how not to give a single thought to those carers out there. Like any decent Labor man intent on selling his soul to several buyers would ... He might not have any statues to himself, but by golly the bank account will keep ticking over between now and September 14 ...

Finally, the pond has to report that there was considerable consternation within the pond at the news that Paul Sheehan has returned and that after a month's break, his first outing is a withering denunciation of the thuggish boofhead behaviour of Manly rugby league players (here, though most readers will be content to go on with their macrame). The pond's partner agreed with every single word, and almost immediately felt remorseful and possibly suicidal.

But as we all know, fish rot from the head, and footballers follow inspirational leaders. Who was hanging around Manly like a bad smell at the start of the season?

Tony Abbott has given the strongest indication yet that Brookvale Oval won't die if he is elected as prime minister. The leader of the federal opposition was a special guest at Manly's season launch at Brookvale Oval on Friday night. (here)

Bronnie was there too, of course, and that's the rub. The Opposition leader is the federal representative for Manly, Manly Vale, and sundry other northern suburbs in the seat of Warringah. See!

Yes the Manly rugby league team are simply emulating the coat-hanger, spear tackle, elbowing, nattering negative ways of their parliamentary leader. And Sheehan doesn't have a clue, because he lives in the style of an eastern suburbs ponce still brooding about magic sourdough breads and magic water.

Which brings us to our MAMIL of the week:

Which led to this cruel cartoon by First Dog. Click to enlarge and more First Dog here:

So here's your musical treat for the day:

We are the Manly boys, 
We had a win today, 
We are the boys you know of 
We showed them how to play, 
No matter where we’ll be 
Maroon and White you'll see, 
Oh aren’t we a wonderful credit 
To our locality, 
So cheer boys cheer, 
We are together, 
Every now and then we have a win…..have a win 
We will play them all around 
At our home or any ground, 
If they’ll always play a fair and honest game 
So it’s GUZZZLE GUZZLE GUZZLE 
As we pour it down our muzzle, 
And sing out the order loud and clear, 'MORE BEER', 
And we will drink all night 
Until we are very tired 
In the shade of the Manly Leagues Club.

Guzzle, guzzle, guzzle, more beer! Oh sheesh, can the pond just get back to Zerg rush?