Is Ming the merciless rolling in his grave at the sombre sight of Menzies House?

It's been a long time since the pond dropped in on Menzies House, and what a surprise and disappointment it turned out to be.

Now let's not get into an argument as to whether Bob Menzies, aka Ming the merciless, actually owns the house, and it should therefore be Menzies' House. It's much better to assume that Bob Menzies wouldn't have touched the site with a barge pole and certainly wouldn't have wanted a possessory credit.

It seems the vital spark, the enthusiasm has gone, and the place has dead into a dead zone for links. First out of the blocks right at this moment is a link to the ABC and then to Quadrant online, and a piece of profound stupidity from Michael Galak about PC:

It started slow and easy. I remember, for example, when “black” and “negro” were just words, no more and no less, that designated skin colour and had no other meanings.

The pond is not sure which alternative universe Galak remembers, but since he wants us all to ruffle a few precious feathers for liberty's sake, the pond feels free to call him a dickhead first class.

Clearly also he's never been in a room where someone has whispered an aside, such as "he or she is black, y'know" or perhaps elaborated with colourful talk of a touch of the tar. But you didn't really need to say black bastard for the meaning to be clear, just the word black said it all - bone lazy, idle, a wastrel, a source of malaise and ruination. The pond recommends that Galak tries these lines:

First laconic Tamworth lad: He's black, you say?
Second laconic Tamworth lad: Yeah, he's black.

Clearly Galak wasn't in touch with the zeitgeist out Moree or Bourke way in the good old days. You can do the same with "negro" when next passing through Mississippi, though there inflection, tone and the bending, shaping and enunciating of the word is everything.

I mean, the pond doesn't generally mind obdurate thickness, but wilful blind stupidity and an ability to forget the past is simply beyond the pale, though it does evoke memories of old men sitting in leather chairs sipping a port and murmuring wot wot. It turns out Galak came from the Soviet Union in 1978, and therefore really doesn't have a clue ....

But back to Ming's house, and there's a dash of original content, bizarrely provided this day by something called Toby's Sunday Light, which wouldn't pass muster in a student newspaper. Toby's opening prediction will give you a taster:

1. A daring tv producer will show two men kissing. He will be praised to the max by the ABC, the SMH, the NSW education minister and every forward thinking organisation in Australia. On TV he will state that his intention was to shock Australians out of their complacency and homophobia.

Oh the sweet darlings. They must still be watching repeats of Are You Being Served? and chortling at the jokes about pussies ...

And that's the opener! It gets pathetically feeble pretty quickly after that:

11. The term ‘Climate Change’ will be replaced by the term ‘Climate Uncertainty’ and the UN will demand that industrialised countries will hand over half their GNP to Somalia to fight the Global Climate Uncertainty caused by air conditioners. 
12. A member of the Royal Family will make a joke causing reporters to laugh. 
13. It will be hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement somewhere in the world, and old blokes in skimpy cossies will dive into a swimming pool in midwinter somewhere else. 
14. The date for the end of the world will be announced causing millions to get pissed at end-of-the-world parties. 
15. The Australian government will slaughter all of the nation’s 1.2 million wild camels in a bid to reduce carbon pollution because they fart.

Oh a fart joke. Now there's a genuine touch of class. How about an oyster up the nose, and eating the snot, Stork style?

The pond quotes these at length simply because the pond has long argued that conservatives generally don't have much of a sense of humour, and if they do try to feign one, a bit like Spock trying to feign human emotions, the sight is spectacularly woeful ... as are the jokes.

And then came this:

Editor's note: We realise that some MH readers may not find hunour or accuracy in Toby the Elder's predictions. Given his advanced age MH seeks your understanding and indulgence by refraining from rude and abusive comment. 

The pond's not sure which readers couldn't find any hunour in Toby the Elder's work, but damn straight, it's way too easy to understand why some MH readers might not find any humour.

There is one other recent bit of original content, from one Viv Forbes of Queensland with a cheerful insight into science and many good wishes to those filthy, vile greenies and their delusional ways:

If you were so silly as to want a sustainable long-term method to keep locking away the sparse carbon resources of the atmosphere using “carbon farming”, the ONLY way to do it is to harvest regular crops of trees, pastures, cereals and grazing animals. Then use these carbon-rich products to build homes and feed families, thus creating long-term storage of the carbon in buildings as timber, or in human bodies as flesh and bone. Finally, when these carbon carriers reach the end of their life, bury the old timber and the dead bodies in deep holes so that the carbon never gets back into the biosphere. Such burial should attract carbon credit payments. Such a scheme will methodically remove carbon dioxide, the gas of life, from the carbon cycle – a sure way to starve life on Earth. It is the road to biocide, but that seems to be what the Deep Greens want. Let’s hope they starve first.

Uh huh. So Menzies House is still a home to cranks, but below that there's a link to re-heated Miranda the Devine getting agitated about current Chairman Rudd in the Sunday Terror - keep the line moving folks, nothing to see there -  and below that a link to Charles Waterstreet scribbling in Fairfax - good old Charlie, man about town, and with about as much of an ideological bone in his body as he has milk in his blood - and below that a link to a Fairfax poll daring to suggest 3 out of 5 Australians are happy with the carbon tax, and below that another link to Fairfax, this time to a story about Abbott slamming Rudd on the carbon tax, as if he'd do anything else, being Dr. No and all, and below that a link to a story in the lizard Oz on Rudd's shifting to an emissions trading scheme, bizarrely titled Rudd robs the Coalition's nest, as if an ETS was somehow in the Coalition's nest, as opposed to a glimmer in the eye of one-time thesis scribbler Greg Hunt, MP who has long since forsaken his heretical addiction to the marketplace and substituted direct heroic action by a cohort of strong, brave comrades, 15,000 strong, swearing they will go on the long march to save the planet ... more heroic than the comrades who undertook that long march with Mao ...

And below that a link to Richard Farmer, and if you flip the page, another link to the ABC, and you begin to think, what the heck, all the young Liberal lions do these days is languidly link to the ABC Fairfax conspiracy ...

Oh sure right after that there's a satirical piece about K. Rudd by an "Insider" which is about as funny and as well-targeted as being hit about the head by a haddock in a Monty Python sketch, and then more links to News Corp, the Daily Terror, Fairfax, and so on and on, and it becomes clear this is now a site that's really little more than a place dedicated to place holding, given a form of life by leeching off and linking to the mainstream media.

And yet ostensibly it's being edited by Tim Andrews, doyen of Ayn Rand devotees (ah yes, nothing like taking a little government welfare later in life, provided there's a name change to disguise the takings), but it turns out that the arduous day to day linking to the main stream media might the the responsibility of one Tim Humphries, "responsible for the day-to-day running of the website".

A couple of Tims, so come on Tims by two, let's see some proper content, of the appropriately weird kind, and not just a note from Queensland, and comedy routines you couldn't pass off on Honi Soit.

But look, the pond is here to help, and if it's links you want, why not link, Tims by two, to Lenore Taylor's tidy analysis of Tony Abbott in Tony Abbott takes a fall in the battle of the 'stunt' men:

...when Abbott says Rudd is interested in media “stunts” there’s the small pot-and-kettle problem of his own three years of almost daily picture opportunities in fluorescent vests warning of the “unimaginably” dire consequences of the aforementioned tax (which turned out to be a pretty easily imagined one-off cost of living increase of somewhere between 0.4 and 0.7%).

Oh I know we could argue for hours as to whether she's right in calling it a small pot-and-kettle problem, when it might easily be argued that it's like one of those giant-sized super duper extra large kettles they used to make tea for shearers in the shed.

But the pond can see where you're coming from with this linking thing, it's remarkably easy. You take a neat point by a writer, and quote it:

Abbott’s attack on Julia Gillard for being a “liar” worked because he could back it with the “no carbon tax under a government I lead” grab from her interview before the election, obliterating the nuanced difference between a “tax” and a floating price, which she was supporting, through the endless repetition...
...When Abbott says Rudd is too negative and focused on criticising the opposition, it's hard for voters to forget that he was the most effective and aggressively negative opposition leader in recent times, even if he did start wearing suits and talking about being kinder and gentler as we entered the election year.

By golly, you're right collective two Tims (could we call you Tim and Tam as a point of product differentiation?), this is fun and easy, and best of all, it helps kick the Fairfax/Daily Terror habit, which truly can ruin an individual's mind as much as sugar or junk ...

Now it's true that The Guardian has a long way to go to get its Australian edition feeling like an actual Australian edition - click on editorials, for example, which are ostensibly in the Australian pages, and you get Golf: is it too much to ask Muirfield to make room for women?, which is peculiarly British, when of course a more relevant question might be put to the Liberal and Labor parties and the selection of candidates: is it too much to ask both sides to make room for women? (just read Women shut out of plum seats to see what the pond means, though beware, it might cost you a Fairfax click).

But then click on Ashbygate: the great disappearing scandal about to roar back to life, and you get David Marr giving the rough Brough the sharp end of the pineapple:

Since his glory days in John Howard’s cabinet, Brough had a rough political ride. After losing his seat in the Ruddslide of 2007, he quarrelled fiercely with his Queensland colleagues over the formation of the LNP. The former army man and champion of the Northern Territory intervention then abandoned the party, politics and the state. 
Many in the Liberal party were happy to see him go. Brough is not widely liked on his side of politics. There are those who think him lazy, unlikable and arrogant, a man with his best political years behind him. But Brough has always enjoyed the support of two powerful patrons: Howard and Abbott.

Oh we could spend pleasant hour after hour arguing whether "loathed" might have been a more appropriate word than "not widely liked", and why Tony Abbott stands by the rough gruff Brough through lots of thickness and very little thin. After all:

Abbott’s loyalty to Brough also survived the Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail affair. The leader of the opposition accepted Brough’s assurances that the menu with its crude references to the prime minister’s “big red box” never came out of the kitchen.

Of course if you're seeking a light-hearted moment of comedy, you might prefer to link to a featherweight pamphlet promising real policies and real action and ... well, just like, for real, man, can ya dig it ...

Ah well, it fills in a Sunday, and the humiliation doled out to the image of Ming the Merciless, great and fearless founder, is really just too delicious to bear ...