The pond heads off to balmy, sunny Melbourne ...

(Above: from Portlandia, episode 2 season 2, One More Episode)

The pond is off to sunny, balmy Melbourne ...

Say what? Sunny, balmy Melbourne in late May?

What happened to the wearing of the black, and to existential emotional crises in Brunswick street? (Smith street if you were poor like the pond).

Of course it's balmy in Sydney too:

On the upside, everyone is in T shirts and shorts and blouses, and on the downside the mosquitoes remain on the prowl, bringing Ross river and Dengue fever and such like further south.

Mossies in late May! Of course the pond just zaps them and never mind the neuro-toxins ...

As always, thanks to the stern advice of the world's leading climate scientist - strangely employed as a blogger by News Corp, but still at the heart of observation and empirical evidence and thrusting theoretical vigour - the pond never links one off, exceptional and extraordinary weather events to global warming.

That would be wrong, and scientific heresy. Sssh, don't mention climate science.

Except of course when it's climate scientists getting stuck on a ship heading to the Antarctic.

Then it's exceptionally funny, even hilarious, and extremely scientific.

Speaking of fun, it's likely to be a great weekend of goofs and stuff ups, courtesy of Tony Abbott and his goofball government, and the pond will miss it all.

Already we have a bold and brave contender. Barners the brave!

So now the budget is fighting Adolf Hitler and the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis ...

Is there nothing this budget and Tony Abbott can't do?

Oh we'll miss it, the ceaseless stream of comedy routines ....

The pond has nothing to do except dine and brawl with the extended family, and await the season finale, episode 8, of Silicon Valley (HBO is slow to load), which has, after a rough start, turned into a winner, and has been renewed for a second season (what a pity Christopher Evan Welch died after only completing the first five episodes).

Of course the comedy stylings of geeks in a start up aren't in the race when compared with the screwball comedy of a start up Abbott government, but the pond will have to give it a break this weekend.

Otherwise it'd be like the binge-watching that became the fashion amongst young people in 2013, a habit and a word which earned its place in dictionaries (binge-watch):

This viewing pattern is parodied in Portlandia’s “One More Episode,” when a couple takes binge-watching to an extreme (even if their method of binge-watching is via old-fashioned DVDs). 
The term binge-watch originates from the term binge, which in some English dialects meant “to soak a wooden vessel to prevent it from leaking.” 
By the mid-1800s, binge could be used metaphorically to describe a drinking spree, which led to the term binge drinking about a hundred years later. While binge drinker was the first use of binge- in a compound, other terms soon followed. 
Binge eating came along in the late 1950s, and has soared in usage since the 1980s. 
Binge-Abbotting has soared in usage since Tony Abbott came to power and refers to an unhealthy fascination with a blunderer who makes Sheldon seem like a part of mainstream society. There's the bizarre cackle, the winking, the nudging, the budgies, the MAMIL gear, all the staples of a sitcom ... and then there's his krazy kaper colleagues like Barners, a funny foil full of quips and jokes of a Churchillian kind ...
Binge-watching and Binge-Abbotting aren’t the only terms to describe new media and raving ratbag pollie consumption habits. 
There’s power-streaming, which refers specifically to the streaming of videos about Tony Abbott online. 
Additionally, there’s marathoning, or watching Tony Abbott and his krazy kaper gang on endless rotation, marathon-style. Starting in the late 1940s, TV marathons existed, but they were usually call-in charity drives. 
By the late ’70s and early ’80s, people could binge-watch TV and movie marathons, though viewers had no power over the programming, and even less power over Tony Abbott when it came to millennial marathons. 
One Netflix executive told the Wall Street Journal that he doesn’t like the term binge because of its negative connotations of excess - frankly a day watching Tony Abbott can lead to a kind of vapid intoxication, then insanity, then death.
Instead he prefers marathon, which, to him “sounds more celebratory”, because anyone who can do a day watching Tony Abbott and his krazy kaper gang can survive anything the world has to offer ... call 'em Churchillian, call them heroes like John F. Kennedy, heck just call 'em survivors ...

Oh dear, how did that bit of wiki vandalism get in to a useful definition of strange behaviour?

Never mind, it'll be back to normal business for the pond in a few days time, though with Tony Abbott at the helm, will anything ever be normal again?

Enjoy the balmy weekend, and if it isn't balmy in your neck of the woods, why break out the black (remember hipsters love hats, and if you can't grow a beard, go and get a tat in a discrete place) and have a coffee or three ... but please, don't overindulge in Tony Abbott.

Sure, it's a fascinating, compelling sitcom, and the jokes come thick and fast, but it could be fatal ...

(Below: a few New Yorker cartoons and covers)

And here's a golden oldie Addams for Tony Abbott watchers.