The pond answers a few questions in a lizard Oz survey ...

It should go without saying that the pond is here to help - we just love to help, where did we put our special sociopathic cheesy grin? - but where to begin?

Let's start with that survey that popped up yesterday at the lizard Oz. You see, there was a plaintive plea by the reptiles at the lizard Oz, anxious to find out what the pond felt, and with a really simple survey designed to find out. One click and you were in, though some might feel they'd just booked into the Hotel California ...

Now the pond considers itself inclined to centrism, moderate, enjoyed a good education thanks to a public education system (after the Catholics were left behind), interested in good management (which doesn't happen to involve catching a VFT to Canberra to visit Sydney's second airport), in short one of those faint-hearted weak-kneed liberals (with a small "l") who shrink at the sight of violence.

Home in the inner west, a relatively stable relationship (well at least more stable than a thugby league footballer), interested in public transport, loves a good chardonnay, has a firm view on what makes a good coffee, thinks it's the right of others to share the quiet life of marriage  ...

Oh wait a second, that puts the pond one step away from beastiality and polyamory (thanks South Australians for Cory Bernardi)  ...

Oh wait a trice, that puts the pond in the Nick Cater playbook of evil intellectual elites wanting to ruin the country.

Does a stupid inane survey allow the capturing of that sort of stupid inanity?

So let's get this straight - now you want the pond to fill out a form - for free - to help fix a cocky cage lining rag that routinely demonises, denigrates, deplores and denounces the mild Lois Lane lifestyle of the pond?

Hasn't the pond already made clear how it finds your EXCLUSIVES, which turn up on your digital front page on a daily basis, comical and silly? Pathetic and tragic, and rarely exclusive, except for the many exclusives who dress up an ideological axe to grind as an exclusive, when really it's only an exclusive insight into the level of the kool aid in the water cooler that day ...

As an incentive to pay to click through, they're about as beguiling and as tempting as an offer to tour a town camp and laugh at the inhabitants ...

And what about that rotating whirlwind, that digital splash from hell at the top of the right hand page. 

Have you ever heard of the notion of familiarity breeding contempt?

Like this offering from Peter van Onselen today:

By golly, here's a thought. Why not do a Crikey, which offers a sizeable amount of contra and goodies to help persuade people to sign up?

Why not offer a year's supply (quite sizeable) of the special brand of kool-aid van Onselen drinks to help him get through the day scribbling nonsense for the lizard oz. 

The pond says this while recognising that the pond's disdain for van Onselen might only be a short-term emotion, though perhaps shared by a (sizeable) section of your shrinking readership ...

And while we're at it, how about that splash from Kevin Donnelly, the oh so predictable, regularly regurgitating, special pleading panderer to private and Catholic education. He inspired another thought:

How about a year's supply of wafers to go with a digital subscription? 

That'd fit in with the Shanahans, the Sheridans, and be a fitting memorial to the late Christopher Pearson, as well as a celebration of your pet Tony Abbott, and his favourite poodle, Cory Bernardi (thanks South Australians, no really, thanks a bloody million).

Now there's just one trouble with the wafers thing. We have a coeliac issue in the family. Can't abide the gluten in the wafer. Yes, I know, I know, it's such a first world Irish condition, like depression, a taste for drink and literature, but still ...

What's that you say? The pope says coeliacs can go to hell, not even stop at purgatory for a few thousand years with Christopher Pearson and, no doubt in due course, Angela Shanahan? Seems gluten is an integral part of the body of Christ?

Well if you believe that, you can believe the sanctimonious righteous tosh yesterday from Tony Abbott about parliament needing to be a better place, with people who can do better than that. 

Like Cory bloody Barnardi (thanks a heap South Australians, no really, thanks a squilliion).

So what can we suggest as a subscription offer for Dame Slap?

Yes, that's it. Throw in a year of the Small Government monthly, soon to be reduced to a quarterly and then perhaps only released yearly, and instead of all this jibber jabber about governments interfering in our lives by providing decent working public transport, everybody can read it while on a shank's pony ride to work.

Oh dear, someone is cynically whispering in the pond's ear, and the kool aid has only reached chin-level.

Surely the problem here is that the pond can read rabid, raging anti-government diatribes any day of the week from frothing and foaming Republicans in the United States.

Yes it's completely bizarre to have to go to the bother to google to read Step up and end the blame game, and read what starts out as an attack on individuals using the court system to a more generalised rant about government.

No, there's no discernible or immediate connection, apart from Dame Slap's relentless desire to slap government, quite similar to the desire of other reptiles at the lizard Oz, high on the in-house kool aid to slap the Labor party, the Greens, climate science, bicycle paths, gay marriage, public education, public transport, Fairfax, ABC viewers, community radio, inner city elites, intellectuals, lovers of poetry, chardonnay sippers and latte swillers ... and so on and on, all notionally part of your target audience, part of your potential demographic.

Feeling the heat is on now are we lizards of Oz? 

After the split, you actually have to start turning a profit and beguiling readers? Want to know what you could do better? What you could do different?

No, second thoughts, don't worry, just keep on publishing the rantings of a well-heeled, privileged member of your in-house elite about how everyone needs to step up to the plate and take responsibility

The human tendency to look immediately to others when something goes wrong is not helped by politicians who encourage us to believe that government can fix more and more of our problems. If we are fed on a constant drip of government intervention, we end up handing over to others ever more responsibility for our lives. Then, when things go wrong, we don't look inwards, we look outwards. The blame game is surely -- at least in part -- the flip side of too much government interference in our lives. 

Which is of course just pathetic, sanctimonious righteous blather, just another part of the blame game, though it surely has to be said that it's ingenious to blame government for the actions that individuals take in court.

Why that's taking the blame game up to top notch level. Which is what Dame Slap does week in, week out. She's always blaming someone, somebody, for something that doesn't feel right in her self-contented universe. Her blather about the blame game is about as meaningful as Piers Akerman pretending he's not part of the chattering classes.

On a rhetorical level, it's meaningless gibberish.

The pond thinks it quite reasonable to hand over responsibility for public transport to others (though how a man who thinks a second airport for Sydney should reside in Canberra got his hands on the wheel must remain a mystery, thanks NSW Right of the Labor party).

And also thinks it quite reasonable to support public education over the incessant wheedling and noise emanating from the likes of Kevin Donnelly, anxious to ensure that Scientologists and the Exclusive Brethren and other cults like the Catholic church can keep on sucking at the taxpayer's teat, not that you'll read anything about that in the tirades published in the lizard Oz.

But do go on blaming government in the blame game:

And to make matters worse, when those at the very top of society play the blame game, it's hardly surprising that others follow their lead. Take a very recent example. When will a member of the Gillard government fess up to their government's mistakes, take responsibility for the train wreck headed their way at the next election and go about fixing what has gone wrong? Blaming minority government or misogynist men or Kevin Rudd for your political woes is not the sign of a responsible government. It is little wonder that individual responsibility takes a back seat among the people when our leaders can't resist playing the blame game.

Indeed. So when things keep going wrong at the lizard Oz in terms of trying to turn a profit, having alienated a significant and sizeable portion of its potential demographic, by publishing right wing gibberish of a kind that makes the IPA gasp in admiration, please don't play the blame game if some people refuse to sign up.

After all, the disdain felt for your rag is only a short-term emotion felt by a (sizeable) section of your potential readership, and it'll be a cold day in hell, or perhaps a warmish one in purgatory, before the pond disturbs the red-backs in the purse to reward your relentless, monotonous, tedious Johnny one note contributors singing their Janet one note songs ...

Oh alas and alack, we see that we've now reached the end of your survey, and that pitiful question "Is there anything else you'd like us to know?" lurks right at the end ...

Well since you asked, your rag is crap, Chris Mitchell is a disgrace, your EXCLUSIVES are risible and pathetic, your attitude to climate science reporting shocking and shameless, and in due course will lead to tears, and your unwillingness to tackle the potty mouthings of Cory Bernardi and Mal Brough and such like, or crusade against their divisive shit-stirring both pathetic and malignant ...

And worst of all? Your gormless ideological crusades are replicated all over the web ...

For free ...

Go take a a cold shower, forget the surveys, and stop loading the kool aid into the office watercoolers ...

And there you have it. An EXCLUSIVE insight from the pond. And remember (fixes cheesy sociopathic grin) we're here to help ... call any time ...