In which the pond attempts to celebrate and rejoice and protect and embrace that most precious thing, Akker Dakker ...

They all come out at this time of the year, with their preening pomposity and their jingoistic, flag-waving patriotism and as you'd expect, Akker Dakker is at the head of the queue:

The pond is always unnerved by the sort of photos the Daily Terror uses to promote their star rightwing ranting and raving ratbag.

They always remind the pond of others in the grip of a smirk and delusions of grandeur.

Poor Bunter, how the pond routinely defames you ...

Never mind, the point of the game when reading Akker Dakker is to work out how far down the path the toughest, the most resilient reader can get, before they cry out "Red Rover" or "Pax Romana", and gives the game away.

Some faint hearts might have already given up at the point that Akker Dakker embraced that joyless dirge, I Am Australian, with its faux resemblance to an Omo commercial (or was it for Qantas, so hard to remember?).

What? Only at the second par, you faint-hearted jellyfish, and you cry "hold, enough"?

Well sterner folk will press on, to see how far they can get, and be damned to them that yield:

Now tell the truth.

Did you stop at the moment when Akker Dakker press-ganged together multiculturalists and multinationalists in a way that showed incoherence and paranoia?

Did you flinch when Akker Dakker donned the aluminium hat about international treaties, which would, it seems to the pond, make that Treaty of Versailles, done with that nasty gang of Kaiser lovers, a wretched example of a country's independent sovereignty being eroded?

How about the obligatory knee jerk wheeling out of the politically correct, when Akker Dakker has just done his best to set the fangs into half the country?

Did you manage to get past that bit about the English flag? And the bit about challenging the pesky blacks?

Were you bemused by the way Akker Dakker seems to think that the Southern Cross has been in the skies since the Big Bang began? Did you worry about the science?

Did you marvel at the "never apologise, never retreat, never surrender, never say you're sorry, just kick 'em in the balls" hearty masculinity that bestrides the portly warrior?

Surely some must have gagged at the awesome stench of hypocrisy when Ming the Merciless was wheeled out to celebrate scientific researchers and discoverers, this from a climate denialist always rabid in supporting a climate denialist government engaged in a slash and burn approach to the CSIRO, the after effects of which will resonate for decades ...

How about the luddite bit about social media, and the emptiness of the internet, and all the other existential twaddle better suited to a French philosopher, or perhaps a novel by Michel Houellebecq (oh wait maybe he's just Francophobic, outside the New Yorker paywall for the moment)?

Is just a classic example of a luddite trashing a whole world of science - the transmission of ideas to billions of people, along with the social pleasures to be found?

Perhaps it's designed to provide yet another reason for the current government to make a total hash of the NBN ...

Forget the hypocrisy of Akker Dakker adding to the soulless alienation abroad on the internet by allowing his twaddle to be broadcast on it, and instead marvel at the way the Daily Terror could - in an attempt at click baiting - publish "26 odd things about Australia" in which this item came up last, but not least:

What, you want the pond to reward the click baiting with a link?

And just what are you doing on this empty, soulless meaningless internet? Haven't you done the decent thing and shot yourself, or at least subscribed to a Murdochian publication to keep them in the lifestyle they once had and loved? You know, lifting a decent glass of red after a hard day pounding at the keyboard of prejudice and bile ...

But look, by now, we're getting down to the real heroes.

Anyone who's got the point of reading about leaners growing flabby - from a flabby man occasionally leaning on a keyboard - are real lifters, with real muscles. Treat yourself to a hit of cocaine, and remember to grow sanctimonious and righteous as you grow older ...

And there you go, if you actually reached the end, you'll have seen that the United Nations is dominated by totalitarian states and tinpot dictatorships, and so you have final word on the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Yes, China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, we're all tired of your totalitarian, tinpot ways. Akker Dakker has spoken, or at least scribbled, like a forlorn wandering spider caught out by an inkwell ... and as for Australia briefly sitting in that lustrous group, say no more ....

Now sadly the pond has to report that there are cynics amongst us, of the kind that Akker Dakker so nobly and valiantly predicted, and they could be found in the first cab off the rank in the comments section:

Hmm, Rene ... kinda funny sounding name, isn't it? Not like "Piers" ...

Never mind, to anyone who's made it this far, you're the sort of muscled lifter this country needs ... so as the pond catches up with a backlog of lifters, here's a couple of Moir cartoons (and more Moir here).