Yet another distraction experienced while evading a ticket inspector on the train of life ...

Distractions, endless distractions. Is there no peace this holiday season?

The pond has to blame readers, dropping by and insisting that attention should be paid ...

Attention? To whom? Why Gary Johns:

A fierce argument immediately broke out in the pond household.

Should Johns be entered in the 'most racist diatribe of the year' contest, or should he simply be awarded the Adolf Hitler memorial plaque for eugenicist of the year?

Having been trained by Greg Hunt in the fine art of walri detection and wiki hunting, it was a no brainer for the pond, as we raced off to Nazi eugenics here:

Nazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's racially based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race or Germanic "Übermenschen" master race through eugenics at the center of Nazi ideology. Those humans were targeted who were identified as "life unworthy of life" (German: Lebensunwertes Leben), including but not limited to the criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, and the weak, for elimination from the chain of heredity. More than 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, while 275,000 were killed under Action T4, a "euthanasia" program.

Lebensunwertes Lebe! By golly that rolls off the tongue, and it really fits Johns' theme:

Compulsory contraception!

Or as it's now known around the house, CC!


And better yet, governments can't fix it, so governments must fix it with CC!

Well played Mr Johns, the fatuous contradiction in a racist diatribe award is also yours, and the pond is well on its way to funding a genuine holiday break with yet another contribution to the Godwin's Law swear jar.

Meanwhile, the comedy continues apace.

Today the restless Dame Slap is busy erecting a shrine to John Howard, or burnishing and feverishly polishing the old one, or perhaps she just stole the rice wine from the reptile display case and then pounded on the keyboard.

Here's how it starts, with an unnerving, decadent, old, ancien régime European touch:

And here's the payoff to the intro, in what purports to be a moral lesson about life:

A little boy boards a train headed for Budapest. The train conductor asks the boy for his ticket. The boy says he doesn’t have one. The inspector marches the boy off the train at the next stop, leaving him on the platform. Except the boy runs to the end of the train, jumps on the landing and climbs back inside the train to Budapest. The inspector comes across the boy: “Where is your ticket, boy?” The boy says he doesn’t have one. The inspector kicks the boy up the backside at the next stop, dispatching him once again on a platform. The same happens all over again. The boy is getting closer to Budapest but he’s not quite there. An old lady sitting in a carriage, sees the young boy getting a boot up the backside for a third time, leans out the window and says to him, “Do you really think you will get to Budapest this way?” The boy turns to her and says: “Yes, if my arse can take it.”

Hang on, hang on, the thieving rascal, the little scoundrel, doesn't have a ticket?

The little ratbag, the indolent, defiant thief is bludging off the public purse?

The outrageous little rapscallion doesn't learn his lesson, but persists in his outrageous law-breaking?

And we're meant to admire this sort of anti-social behaviour, of the kind which should encourage massive fines, a few weeks in jail, contraception for the masses, and if necessary mass sterilisation?

The rest of the piece is just a piece of doddering Howard worship of a most peculiar and intensely uxorial kind (well that might be a misuse of the word, but you catch the drift).

Of all the dumb anecdotes to illustrate character behaviour a member of the Oz commentariat has to use one that celebrates anti-social behaviour, and compares Howard's career in politics to a thief on a train?

Oi vey, it really is the holiday season for distractions ...

Look, if you want to do stupid uplifting moral stories for the new year, there are dozens around without a hint of law-breaking and criminal activity and anti-social behaviour involved. Like these:

The moral for Dame Slap's story?

Life is a cheat. Steal and thieve your way to Budapest, or to the top of Australian politics. If anyone points out the thieving, and the lawbreaking, double down and do it again, and again, and again, and never give up, like a Newtown anarchist, and then you're sure to be King Rat.

Yes, as Dame Slap so rightly points out, to create a ticket evader, make tickets and hire a train conductor ... so fuck that for a joke, hitch a free ride ...

Ah those Newtown anarchists. So sweet, and who'd have thought Dame Slap and John Howard were solid with them?

Oh if only the the conservatives at Tamworth High had come out with that sort of truth telling, instead of telling the pond the sort of fuckwitted crow and donkey stories the pond used to cop in its youth ...

Where were the uplifting tales celebrating anti-social, law breaking and leeching off the public purse behaviour, of the kind that any other day of the week would send the likes of Gary Johns into a contraceptive, eugenics frenzy ...?

Poor Dame Slap. So it's come to this sort of petulant anarchism.

With Tony Abbott such a rat's nest of despair, all she can do is retreat into doddering memories of John Howard, and never mind when she was calling for him to listen to the conductor, stand down and piss off...

Cue Bill Shorten, who is guest cartooning in the absence of David Pope today, though you can get more real Pope by heading off here:

Which in turn immediately reminded the pond of Spartacus.

Surely there's room for a satirical show this year running a sketch with lots of slaves standing up one after the other, and shouting "I might be Spartacus, but damned if I'm Tony Abbott".



It's about time this bloody holiday season of endless distractions bloody well ended ... it's just getting too silly for words ...