And so this is Xmas, another year over ...

It's that time of year when the pond travels, like a loon, to Melbourne, and walks amongst Victorians, not knowing if they're aliens, Thetans, zombies, or the living dead. 

It's a perilous journey and all that provides a sense of safety is the garlic water we carry at all times.

Yes, for the moment, it's time to give the game away, though wonders never cease, and loonishness will continue rampant.

Last night for example the pond witnessed an ABC news service on the main channel at 7 pm which was astonishing, and vastly comic. 

Cues were routinely off, stories misplaced (yes that story about the cricket wasn't a story about the Sudan or Clive Palmer or even the ghost who walks), inserts weren't trimmed, there was dead air, dead vision, a hopeless mash-up that even an eleventh eleven on a concrete wicket would consider an epic failure (the pond is studying cricket in detail. It remains a bizarre, mysterious and inexplicable ritual, but some things are sticking, like a sticky wicket, so that cricketing metaphors can continue in the new year). 

This was the national broadcaster in prime time, and what a sorry sight it was, yet the pond wouldn't exchange Aunty with all its foibles and flops for a lifetime subscription to Foxtel and every Murdoch rag in the land...

The hapless presenter had the decency to look embarrassed, but it wasn't her fault, it was the fact that they'd put a set of loons in charge of the computers that was the real problem ...

It was beyond satire, beyond irony, and the pond now profoundly regrets not running the PVR over it. We could have taken it down and given it a play whenever gloom or depression threatened.

So the loonishness will go on, but without the pond, lost in the wilds of Victoria.

All that's left is to round up a few resident loons to wish loonish readers with a love of loonery a merry Xmas, a happy Xmas, joyous holydays, or just plain common or garden happy holidays. Whatever lights your crazy religious wick or floats your secular boat ...

And if you happen to be working this Xmas, well done. Somebody has to take care of the country, what with Tony Abbott in France and the Bolter bludging in Tasmania scoffing down ponce pistachio rose water meringues ...

Pistachio fucking rose water meringues! 

Remember that the next time he has a go at the sandal or the cardigan wearers, or the hippies or the luvvies or the greenies or the ponces or the inner urban elites, or pretends to be a man of the people, rather than an opera loving Grange drinker, or spews out all the rest of the Murdochian cant and bullshit about how he's at one with your average Joe or Josephine Blow. Like the rest of the reptiles bunkered down in Sydney and Melbourne ...

With a bit of luck, the pond will return in the New Year, providing Victorian roads don't do the dirty on us - there's short odds on that one - and in the interim remember to have a drink on the pond, but always drink in moderation, unless you really want to get pissed as a parrot and forget for a moment that you live in Chairman Rupert's and the Bolter's and Tony Abbott's Australia.

As for the New Year, it doesn't - of course - fall when foolish gweilo think it does, so let's all go shopping in the right sort of supermarket in the new year. 

Well it has to be better than reading the crony commentariat for fun, but someone has to do it, and so next year we look forward to reading the tea leaves, checking the entrails, casting the runes and coming to understand the intricacies of hagiography as a highly developed form of art ...

Because next year will be a time for more laughs and games: