Ahoy, sound the alarum, it's the shocking Terror, Abbott, Brandis and pirates hoving into view ...

Pathetic and useless.

Yes, the pond always found the Daily Terror coarse when it came to it serving as toilet paper in the outdoors dunny, and right at the moment, in its death spiral to match up to the perceived threat of the Daily Mail, it's reached new lows in fear mongering.

You know the form. In the pond's day, when such matters were given front page "EXCLUSIVE" alarmist treatment, it was comics, or the Saturday matinee serial, or movies in general, or television, or rock music, or the radio, or filthy, vile perverted dancing where the sickos willingly danced far apart ...

Now the punters who waste two bucks - oh hold steady beating heart, less you faint at the thought, two bloody whole bucks - on their fish and chip wrappings, cop this sort of beat up at the latest bit of technology doing the rounds (and you may click to enlarge if you don't fear your brain going suddenly dead like a battery in mid-winter):

Inevitably there's a facilitator for this sort of beat up, and in this case it's one Dr Jane Hunter (and you may click to enlarge if you want to experience excessive alarm):

You will note a couple of things in the report:

(a) an absence of actual research data, useful statistics and carefully calibrated evidence;
(b) a fine flurry of "tips for parents", efficacy and meaning and implications completely unproven;
(c) a vague reference to a UK study.

You will also note that the pond hasn't provided a link to the story, but there's a reason.

If you pay attention to recalcitrant children and their wilful misdeeds, it often eggs them on to do worse. Send them up to the attic, the pond says, with a good beating, and a couple of hours to meditate on their naughtiness, though you can if you like find Dr Jane Hunter here.

But only if you've turned off your technology for a decent time and wandered free and wild in the sun ...

Yes, for all the Murdochian righteous indignation about the Daily Mail stealing stories, all the Daily Terror was doing was referencing a beat up which had appeared in the UK Terror back in July 2013:

Yes, if you read that report, iPad generation will have smaller vocabulary, study claims, you will discover that alarmism can be produced by announcing generalities based on a survey of ... 27 volunteers.

27! Such an astonishingly broad and far-reaching smaple.

Well here's the pond's news about the iPad roll out on Qantas 767s, the latest survey conducted this Friday.

It's fucked. Children are perfectly safe to clamber about and annoy the heck out of nearby passengers, because there's no chance they'll be able to use the iPads in the seat pocket in front of them ...

Actually, there is one further irony in that Terror story.

Drum roll please, trumpets sound the alarum.

Yes, the UK Terror picked up its story from ... gasp, the Daily Mail, while inserting a useless link.

Daughters of Satan - sons if you like - not the filthy Daily Mail ...

It was left to the intrepid investigative pond to discover iPad generation 'will learn fewer words' as oral tradition of passing on knowledge is dying out ...

And so on.

But fear not, there's an upside. You see the pond used to visit the Daily Terror to catch up on the rogue ratbag commentariat - the Devines, the Bleaghs, the Akker Dakkers -  but now they're virtually invisible online, so devoted is the Terror to matching the Daily Mail in the vulgar digital gutter.

And in another upside, the pond hasn't had to think about Tony Abbott. According to Abbott, Abbott's grand tour has been a resounding success and who can argue with an Abbott's perception of an Abbott's astonishing grandness.

What's that you say? Look, there, while sounding the alarums about tablets, the Terror was also blowing the lid on a shocking Abbott error?

Steady, as the pond has noted before,  the Terror is currently on a relentless march into the deepest and darkest parts of the gutter - astonishing really when you consider that the Terror has always been deep in the gutter - and it might yet find the source of the Amazon.

Yes, the Terror has  begun to adopt all sorts of click bait trolling ways - what you might call Huff Post-isms or Mail-isms. Like this:

Shocking?

Now the pond loathes Tony Abbott as much as the next average person, but shocking?

shock·ing (shkng) adj. 
1. Highly disturbing emotionally. 
2. Highly offensive; indecent or distasteful. 
3. Very vivid or intense in tone: shocking pink. shocking·ly adv. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 
shocking (ˈʃɒkɪŋ) adj 
1. causing shock, horror, or disgust 
2. (Colours) shocking pink a vivid or garish shade of pink 
3. very bad or terrible: shocking weather. (here)

What's shocking is the shocking abuse of the word shocking, which put the pond into a comatose state so shocked was it ...

So here's the real problem, children. Gather around and listen to the pond.

You see, right now, the real danger to the English language and your understanding of it, and your ability to use words in the ancient way they were once meant to mean, is that at some point you're likely to encounter a Murdoch rag duelling with a Daily Mail duelling with a Huff Post headline, and even worse, you're likely to find it via an app on a tablet, and at that point, you're completely and comprehensively fucked, now and far into the future ...

Which just leaves one last moment to note another beat up, this time from George "let's dispute the bookcases and the books but let's not deem them occupied" Brandis, as recorded in World's worst pirates and their parents face walking the plank.

Gather around children and listen to the pond.

Explain to your parents that they need to get you a VPN. It's very cheap and it's easy to use ...

Failing that, explain to them that they need to explain to the pre-occupied George, that it's time for the old territorial restrictions that applied to content to end.

In the good old days, the US conglomerates could milk one territory, before moving on to milk another. Australia was often the last at the end of that queue.

Which is why, children, you can have the pleasure of listening to Louis CK opine on YouTube, for free:

The whole country pirates there. [In the US] weirdos pirate things, but in Australia, moms and dads pirate video, because we’re not letting them buy it. We’re keeping it from them,” he said. 
“Everybody in the world is like ‘take my fucking credit card’ and just let me have the thing, and I’ll pay. But if you’re going to be a pain in the ass, fuck you! I can steal all of it!” (the link to YouTube is here at Gizmodo).

Which seems as good a way as any on a meditative Sunday, cursin' and cussin'

Fuck you, Murdochians, fuck you George Brandis ... and now children, stop bothering the pond, here's some content for you to watch on your tablet.

Sssh, don't talk about where the content came from, it's a secret just between us ...

Just remember children, everything old can, or has been, digitised, and circulating it is like recycling old Murdoch rags full of beat-ups and alarums into fish and chip wrappings ...