2015 already? Must be time for some fuckwitted, simplistic slogans ...

This is why the Abbott government has got problems.

Mealy mouthed, simple minded slogans and dumbed down simplistic rhetoric, all left over from the time in opposition, and now reheated and spread out like a patient etherized upon a table.

Now admittedly it seems to have been specifically dumbed down for Daily Terror readers, and the long absent lord knows, that means you have to do Dumb and Dumber To.

But even the Terror didn't seem to care. After all it's not like the Queen on Xmas day. The post is dated to 12.00 am, January 1st, but it was up hours before that.

You can just imagine the poor bugger staying behind, looking at the damned copy and thinking 'oh bugger this, what's a few hours, I'm out of here, it's party time, because no one but an insane lunatic at loon pond will pay the slightest bit of attention ..."

But back to the blather and the rhetoric.

Lordy lordy, who wrote this thing?

Was it Abbott himself?

Or some pitiful hack, hacking away over the Christmas break?

Or a hack, who was then hacked by the chief hacker?

Uh huh. But if this is the best he can do, to pacify and placate the punters, for how much longer?

Look at the presentation. It's pitiful:

A small man in a box, with small dreams and small understandings, and an endless capacity and taste for slogans as a substitute for considered policy and managerial skills ...

Well David Pope caught the moment a little bit better (and more Pope here):

Ah yes, party like it's 1959, and you've won the lottery of life:

Never mind, the pond is out of here.

But if anyone else suggests putting their best foot forward, like a Tamworth High School teacher in long lost days of yore, they can shove it where the sun don't shine, or where they've stored all the stupid cliched cries of Team Australia ...

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 ...

A rout? What happened to a quiet holiday devoid of distractions?

Compassionate strategy?

What, shovel money down the throat of a Western Australian government that couldn't predict the obvious, and spent like a drunken sailor on mineral steroids, and now wants other states to pick up the tab for its foolish over-indulgence?

What, like this?

It seems the news of the rout has brought out the very best cartooning skills in Malcolm Turnbull, who likes to work on a computer with one of those fangled pens:

Oh it seems amusing, and after a hard day's work wrecking the NBN, one must have one's fun:

So now, thanks to David Pope going on leave, and more Pope here before big Mal took over, we now know Malcolm Turnbull's favourite cartoonist:

Yes, it's Calvin and Hobbes:

Well, it helps explain the fate of the intertubes:

Oh that big Mal. How he identifies with Calvin's dad ...

Will there be no end to these endless distractions? The pond keeps trying to have a peaceful time before the new year ...

But there's Akker Dakker gone wild like a feral abacus ... and news of routs ... and now big Mal turns into a gifted cartoonist.

Where will the madness end?

Rupert adrift, gone Buddhist?

Thank the long absent lord, a harmless billionaire won't wreck a Buddhist country with idle tourism.

Not when there's Australia to wreck ...

Roll on 2015.

Meanwhile, here's a cartoon. Oh sure it's about a peace party, the Copperheads, in the great civil war, but somehow it seems as relevant to Peta and Tony as big Mal's rip off of Calvin and Hobbes:

Please, no more distractions ...

Dammit, the pond is taking a break ... why must the News Corp zombies keep putting petrol in the Kombi?

Oh dear, the pompous, posing, preening, portentous, pretentious prat of an Akker Dakker is in a fierce feral funk:

Travelling in a fried-out Kombi 
On the News Corp trail, 
Head full of zombie 
I met a strange Credlin lady, 
She made me nervous 
She took me in and gave me breakfast 
And she said: "Do you come from a land down under? 
Where women glow and Tony Abbott plunders?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder? 
You better run, you better take cover." 
Buying columns from a man in Surry Hills 
He was soft like dough and full of venom
I said, "Do you speak-a my language?" 
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich
Give this black-looking thing to Peta, he said,
She'll understand the language 
And then he said: "I come from a Surry Hills gulag down under 
Where beer does flow and men digitally chunder 
Can't you hear, can't you hear me thunder? 
You better run, you better take cover." 
Lying in a den in Newtown
With a slack Xmas jaw, and not much to say 
I said to the man, "Are you trying to tempt me? 
Because I come from the land of plenty?" 
And he said: "Oh! Do you come from a land down under? 
(Oh yeah yeah) 
Where women ruin everything and Tony Abbott plunders? 
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover."

Back to Akker Dakker:

Happily the pond has an abundance of left-over signs, still in storage and in good condition after their initial deployment.

The pond is happy to make the signs available to Akker Dakker, and anyone else at News Corp in urgent need of them:

It was lucky that at the time, the pond didn't see the signs, and in any case, if having seen them, certainly didn't endorse their contents, and would have urged their removal, if they had been seen.

Remember, proximity is no reason to doubt professional blindness. Never look around, never look back!

Back to Akker Dakker:

Oh dear. What does it mean?

Or perhaps there will be blood ...

Dammit. will these News Corp hounds stop titillating the pond with wondrous thoughts of a most entertaining year to come?

In which the pond is distracted from its holiday by frolicking pigs ...

(More of the story here).

“Gentlemen,” concluded George, “I will give you the same toast as before, but in a different form. Fill your glasses to the brim. Gentlemen, here is my toast: To the prosperity of Team Australia and the y'artz!” 
There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. After all they'd consumed three bottles of 2010 vintage Tyrrell's Semillon-Sauvignon, and swigged on a bottle of upmarket Italian Vin Santo del Chianti Bonacchi dessert wine, as well as glasses of Laurent-Perrier Champagne. And they were celebrating the y'artz after all with most excellent senior British arts representatives in attendance. 
But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? The pond's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their copies of James Joyce and continued the reading that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away. 
But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that George Brandis and a senior British y'artz representative had violently disagreed on the significance of Joyce, that Irish ruffian and rapscallion. 
Four or five voices were shouting in anger - it was a most elite company - and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. (with apologies to Orwell, whose work can be found in full for free here).

Now practitioners of y'artz in Australia.

Pull in your belts, don socks and stockings with holes. Don't worry about others pissing money against the wall on piss, enough for a handy grant.

Times are tuff and we must all pull together by making mutual sacrifices. Though it should be understood that some sacrifices are more equal than others ...

And this was supposed to be a holiday. So many distractions, so little time ...

(Below: spot the minister, as opposed to the y'artz representatives, and win a grant)

In which the wretched reptiles distract the pond from the business of seasonal lolling with idle 'leet chatter about Cook and Abbott ...

The pond made the fatal mistake of getting distracted by the reptiles.

Poor things, doing the hard yards, taking the ball up the middle, down in the boiler room, shovelling coal into the steam engine, sweat on the brow, a thousand more acres to plough before tea.

And look at the result. It's going to be a hard year, all hands on deck, steady Team, wait 'till you see the whites of their eyes, form the square, unjam the Gatling, and so on.

And sure enough, there was a lone Ancient Mariner, toiling in the vineyard while the pond lolled at leisure:

But what's this?

Say what? Joseph Cook? The pond had to look again:

The hapless reptiles are so desperate they'd celebrate Abbott overtaking Cook? Surely there's irony at work here?

Yep, it was a set-up:

The old double dissolution shibboleth still lurks in the heart of the reptiles.

As if the man who'd sell anything but his arse for power would take the risk... ever desperate to cling to the precioussss ...

But there's still something astonishingly rich in the reptiles comparing Abbott to Joseph Cook.

Cook was one of the most confused and useless politicians ever to grace the Australian political stage.

The ADB has a tidy summary here,  and while others can speak in his favour, the pond will, in its usual selective and biased way, merely quote one sentence:

A harsh critic might say that when in office Cook saved the taxpayers' money at the expense of the class from which he had risen, and when in opposition he was an unprincipled opportunist.

Tony Abbott and Joseph Cook ... unprincipled opportunists together, and the pond owes that holiday thought to the reptiles ...

Well it's back to lolling, but not before noting that the wondrous David Pope has also stayed at the helm over the break, in a bid to become the pond's official national treasure of 2015. And more Pope here, and don't miss the one with the Santa sleigh ...

So that was Christmas ...

Yes, the pond has seen "The Interview" ...

Please don't ask how, or especially why ...

Yes, it was a miserable Christmas, but the pond watched it to the bitter end.

Proof? Poor Digby ...

So this is where American cinema has landed. Poo and pee jokes, anal humour, buttholes, the butt of parody, homosexual fear, buddie land against the world ... and as funny as a fart wafting in the breeze ...

As comedians, Seth Rogen and James Franco are as subtle as an elephant squatting on a pit ...

But everyone knew that already.

Now the real questions have to be asked.

Up until the viewing, the pond was inclined to blame the dastardly North Koreans.

And it's true that the sheltered Northerners might be too dumb and insular to see what a devastating blow against American culture The Interview represents ...

They might think the feeble thrusts and barbs in the film might carry some weight, of the kind Charles Chaplin managed when he provoked Hitler with The Great Dictator ...

But hey, reality check.

The only way Sony was going to get attention paid to this scatological, humorless film - oh, how the pond yearned for a dose of Rabelais - was to make it a scandal du jour about freedom ...

So in the end, it's the fault of whoever greenlit the show in Sony. And while we're at it, Sony, which has been relentlessly stupid when it comes to intellectual property rights, thanks to its relentlessly stupid lawyers, achieved another relentlessly stupid summit yesterday, as noted in The Verge here.

Meanwhile, everyone who had a miserable Christmas has felt the need to share the news with everyone else.

Cue the pond. You can take the person away from the Catholic guilt, but you can't take the Catholic guilt out of the person.

Amongst the many wags and pundits who took a view, this one struck a note with the pond:

When the sage said it’s not the high ground democracy needs to protect, it’s the low-hanging fruit, The Interview is what he had in mind. (and the rest here).

Provided you construe low-hanging fruit as the corpse of American cinema comedy, and every great American cinema comedian, from the days of Keaton and Chaplin on ...

So that was an American Christmas ...

Well now it's back to silence. The holiday season can only get better ...

Goodbye to all that ... hello to all that ...

Professor Edgeworth, of All Souls', avoided conversational English, persistently using words and phrases that one expects to meet only in books. 
One evening, Lawrence returned from a visit to London, and Edgeworth met him at the gate. "Was it very caliginous in the metropolis?"
"Somewhat caliginous, but not altogether inspissated," Lawrence replied gravely. (Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That)

Speaking of the caliginous and the inspissated, as the pond does all the time, with the pond in meditative retreat, here's an invitation for readers - for the seven days the comments stay open - to nominate their favourite government politician of 2014, celebrate their most fabulous achievements and sayings of the year, and predict where they'll be in 2015.

The pond had thought of a similar competition for reptiles, stewing in their own paranoid hysteria and excess, but as that would result in Murdochians 1, 2 and 3, all the way to 20, with magic water man Sheehan limping along behind, it would be a pretty dull race.

There's no rewards, just the pleasures of an exorcism, or being proven right, and the pond offers a few clues and nominations:

Will he nominate more dames and knights in 2015?

How will the fairness man, and his trusty companion Tonto go?

And how will Tonto's trusty companion, HAL 9000, go?

Will there be any money left in the foreign aid budget?

Phew, survived:

Well is he?

Why a smile in front of empty shelving?

Ah,  filled to the brim, and so cheap too. Now to get on with the intrusions ...

Is there a man who's going to bring the right attitude to social services?

Job done. The pond hears that already they're pouring the concrete for a pensioner, student and unemployed gulag.

So what joy at pissing millions against the wall on nineteenth century copper wire technology?

But at least the Chairman got a plug ...

Who is this pale faced man?

Why he's the front line man for Australia ...

Any resemblance to a rabbit in a headlight?

No, no, sleep soundly at night.

Is this man imitating the Riddler?

Is there some room for bumbling rustic comedy, Ken G. Hall Dad and Dave style?

What about famous deeds, sayings and observations? 

More than you can count:

Oops, sorry, a couple of late scratchings:

But wait, there's some replacements coming up on the rail, running hard.

Does he have the humble attitude needed to serve the country? The humility? The willingness to be shorn like sheep in sympathy with the rest of the country?

Seems like it ...

And remember, keep the water cooler and the bottle full of kool aid. It never goes astray, especially when ushering the brand new musical that hits the road in 2015, the all singing, all dancing Tony Abbott Follies, which did a sneak Canberra run on the Sunday before Christmas, when everyone was snoozing,  but which will soon be hitting Broadway.

A toast: