In which the reptiles engage in a death roll tussle, in the filthy, grey green, greasy, muddy waters of Murdoch la la land ...

(Above: and more New Yorker cartoons from that issue here).

The pond long ago determined that it would never mention Fifty Shades, the barely literate book, or the movie spin off.

The pond once read a page, and decided the author put together sentences the way east Germany designed the Trabant (contrast The Story of O for starters).

Not that the pond has anything against the whiff of leather, or sadistic jokes involving Canadians or New Zealanders ...

The leather gang trooped past quite nicely on the night, along with an assortment of bears, and the pond was blessed to be standing only a short distance away from the spectacular POOF DOOF float when it went up with a spectacular POOF ... better luck and wiring next year guys ...

But the pond just has to celebrate Anthony Lane's review of the movie Fifty Shades, which luckily is outside the paywall at The New Yorker here.

It turns out that the pond got it wrong. The book and the movie are just a chance for a comedy outing:

If the figures are correct, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as “He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,” had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside. 

And:

Check out the Red Room: rack upon rack of cutting-edge bullwhips, a variety of high-end ass paddles, and more restraining cuffs than you can shake a stick at. And how much of this kit gets used? A mere fraction, and even then Christian, supposedly the maestro of pain, can do little more than brush his cat-o’-nine-tails over Ana’s flesh with a feathery backhand. He looks like Roger Federer, practicing gentle cross-court lobs at the net. 

And:

He spends half the time badgering her about a contract that has been drawn up, in which she—“the Submissive”—must consent to his supremacy. Clauses and subsections are haggled over in such detail that one feels bound to ask: How much of a sex film can this be, given that the people most likely to be turned on by it are lawyers?

And so on.

It turns out that there's comedy everywhere, and as a pond correspondent noted, none better than that veteran comedy stylist Fred Nile, down there with Bob Hope (speaking of Hope and as it's a meditative Sunday, the pond notes that Frank Rich's How He Captured America is currently outside the NRYB paywall).

Fred issued a press release before Mardi Gras, and right now is probably claiming credit for the POOF DOOF catastrophe:

Sadly for Fred, his god abandoned him on the night, and there was no storm. 

Yes Fred used to pray for rain - apparently as early as 1986 if you accept the memory here - confirming, as if anyone doubted, what a tedious, killjoy, spoilsport, curmudgeonish, tedious old fart he's always been ...

These days it seems Fred yearns for those good old days:

In the lead up to Sydney’s world famous Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras celebrations, New South Wales Christian Democrats MLC Fred Nile has blasted the festival for being “nowhere near as good as it used to be.” 
Reached for comment, the outspoken parliamentarian blasted the “absolute degeneracy” of the parade. “It used to be about the lifestyle, the people,” he said. “Now it’s just an excuse for straight people to come along and get smashed – the beauty and radicalism of the subculture is basically gone.”

Oh wait, that's just a bit of SBS satire here.

Never mind, on the night, there was a bit of wind, but clearly She was in the mood for a party.

But thanks to Fred, Michael Koziol, here, managed to get a number of tweets off:

But that's enough of silly old farts, because the pond is honour bound to give equal quality time to stupid women, and frankly they don't come much stupider or tone deaf than Gabrielle McMullin, as the world can read about in Senior surgeon Gabrielle McMullin stands by advice for female doctors to stay silent on sex abuse.

"Her career was ruined by this one guy asking for sex on this night. And, realistically, she would have been much better to have given him a blow job on that night," Dr McMullin said. 
"What I tell my trainees is that, if you are approached for sex, probably the safest thing to do in terms of your career is to comply with the request; the worst thing you can possibly do is to complain to the supervising body because then, as in Caroline's position, you can be sure that you will never be appointed to a major public hospital."

The pond is looking forward to Dr McMullin's (she's a surgeon, should she claim the honorific?) advice to school students:

What I tell my school students is, that if a teacher approaches you for sex, probably the safest things to do in terms of a good HSC mark, is to comply with the request. Give them a blow job, heck, go all the way if it guarantees you a good assessment ...

There, now you're ready to attend Knox or any decent Catholic school for boys ...

Of course McMullin tried to walk back by claiming that there needed to be a better system and laws and support, and so on and so forth, without the first clue as to how she might be empowering current obnoxious behaviour ...

Never mind, this is a light meditative Sunday, and the pond is fatigued by hours of staring at the back of a crowd of heads, as in the dim distance, figures seemed to bob up and down, and floats exploded ...

So instead of brooding about the woes of the world - too many to count - the pond wants to enjoy the spectacle of reptile on reptile, a grudge match to the death.

It involves that spectacularly light weight reptile from the lizard Oz, James Jeffrey:

Strewth. He was right before, so he must be right again!

Well the Bolter wasn't going to take that lying down:

The pond just loves the spectacle of reptiles clutching tightly to each other, as they perform death rolls, thrashing about in the dirty, filthy muddy water ...

What's even better is the way the reptiles of Oz decided to leave ponce Jeffrey's piece outside the paywall, here.

As a result, they have also exposed to the world how they became victims to a hearty dose of Bolter trolling, of this kind:

I would expect this crap from the ABC or the SMH. I'm concerned that the Oz is becoming a joke if they are trying to defend the indefensible.

It's hugely funny to see a set of paranoid right wing ratbags being attacked for not being Bolterish enough:

The ABC, Fauxfax, and now the Oz. There's no media we can turn to these days is there?

That's what happens when you feed the readership unlimited doses of kool aid Bolter, a brew far more heady than the standard stuff fed to the feral right wing ratbags of Oz.

Suddenly the readership can become unhinged and turn on their own kind, and the resulting cannibalism makes for splendid reading.

I will take Bolt's word any day over anyone in the ABC or who once worked for the ABC. Enough said.

Yes, enough said Reg, it's good to see the one eye is still working, but have you thought you might function better without either of them?

It seems Chris Mitchell is now a dangerous leftie:

Is this article a reflection of the current editor's thinking and does this reflect a permanent change in direction for The Australian's reporting ethics? I sincerely hope not.

The Australian has reporting ethics?

So once again the reptiles of Oz confirm that they're the next best thing to having to pay for Comedy Central ... (remember, there's always spoofing, but with Stewart and Colbert gone, but what's the point?)

Suffice to say that there were some 120 comments at the time the pond visited, and almost all were uniformly negative and against the paper and Lyons, and most had the tinge of the Bolter herd set loose for one of their famous swarming hive mind intertubes assaults ...

Of course none of them got within a bee's whisker of important matters.

While the Bolter quibbled in a pedantic way about the use of the word 'unilateral', his supporters just went feral, like pit bulls on heat ...

For a letter to the editor concerned with deeper truths, you have to look elsewhere:

Indeed, indeed Mr Holesgrove, but this is a meditative Sunday, and so watching the reptiles in a death roll tussle is a relief and a distraction ...

You might be listening to Frank Stacey explain on Ockham's Razor that We live in a greenhouse with no vents:

...the present rate at which carbon dioxide is produced by fossil fuel burning and cement production is more than 100 times the rate of release by volcanos. There is no way that natural processes can accommodate that increase. The excess will remain in the atmosphere-ocean system indefinitely and the consequences will last just as long. Moreover, with a warmer Earth, the oceans will hold a reduced share, enhancing the atmospheric content and consequent greenhouse warming. The anthropogenic greenhouse effect is essentially permanent, adding a temperature increment to whatever changes occur naturally. The next ice age that might have been anticipated has already been prevented and possibly also the following one. The hope that the temperature rise can be restricted to 2 degrees appears forlorn.

But all that means is that we've failed to pay attention to the world's greatest climate scientist, the hugely qualified, research orientated Bolter ...

Not to worry, the feuding of the reptiles as they marched closer to extinction - down there with Raquel Welch in One Million BC - brought to mind that other New Yorker cartoon of recent vintage:

Of course, with a bit of luck, both of them could be left wondering if things might have been settled differently, but it's probably asking a little too much of the long absent lord for Her to strike down both the Bolter and the reptiles of Oz in a duelling match ... better just to party like it's 1999.