Goodbye to all that for the moment ...

The pond is unwell.

It might be the cumulative effect of constant exposure to the toxic sludge of the commentariat over the years.

If the pond may misquote playwright Keith Waterhouse farewelling Jeffrey Bernard at the UK Terror here, the pond was introduced at an early age to the rabid ratbag rightwing commentariat, and "from then on, I was never to look forward."

But there's a limit to the capacity for looking backwards, especially when not well. There's a simple test. If you look at the Bolter and laugh, everything's right with the world; if you look at the Bolter and cry, it might be time for a little R and R.

For the moment, this means the pond is on leave, the extent of the leave contingent on the time needed to find a cure for current ailments. Alas, the prognosis isn't good. Apparently the bile and noxious abuse is absorbed into the nervous system, and is hard to eradicate.

This has implications for the pond.

When jolly Joe goes around celebrating the new interest rate, all the pond can do is heave and sigh.

There are others around who will be able to recollect the fatuous fraud as recently as the 6th August 2013 going on to Lateline to say:

(To Joe Hockey): Joe Hockey, John Howard and Peter Costello told us for years that low interest rates were a good thing, a sign of their great economic management. You today have turned that on its head. Are you really telling Australians now that they shouldn't celebrate when interest rates are low? 
JOE HOCKEY, SHADOW TREASURER: Well, we should celebrate when interest rates are sustainably low. It was Kevin Rudd on four November 2009 that said three per cent cash rate was an emergency level. Today they've gone to 2.5 per cent. And Leigh, they're not cutting interest rates because the economy is doing well. Interest rates are being cut to 50 year lows because the economy is struggling. (here)

Yes indeed, and on and on he went, proving that he's in the business of arguing black is white, except when it's the business of proving white is black.

JOE HOCKEY: Well Leigh, you know what? You can't pay your mortgage if you haven't got a job. And the fact is we now have rising unemployment in Australia going up to 800,000 Australians unemployed. So if your argument is that the lower the interest rates the better the economy, go and ask the British or the Americans or the Europeans that have interest rates at zero how their economies are going because I tell you what, we are now beyond emergency levels. That's the definition provided by the Labor Party, not by us, and if anyone thinks that the Reserve Bank acted today because the economy is doing really well, and Labor's doing a terrific job running the economy, they'd be deluding themselves.

Well there's serious delusion, and then there's jolly Joe.

The pond knows one thing, and that's the way Sydney's housing market is currently in the grip of a serious bubble, and if there's one thing history affirms, bubbles burst and this particular bubble, cemented by the desperate attempt to lower the dollar, an attempt failing at the moment, is going to burst in a very hard way ...

But the pond is unwell, and so for the moment, certain lyrics must be obeyed:

Make believe 
That you don't see the tears 
Just let me grieve 
In private 'cause each time I see you jolly Joe 
I break down and cry 
And walk on by (don't stop) 
And walk on by (don't stop) 
And walk on by 

The pond now has to practise the art of walking on by ... which it has to be said, sometimes requires an inordinate amount of strength.

The pond has, in the past few days, almost been tempted to leave the sick bed, to express the outrage and the horror and the nausea induced by the ABC.

Oh sure, to some it might be nothing, but really, Foreign Correspondent bombarded the airwaves with this line:

... a place of stunning natural beauty and home to some of the world's most unique wildlife ... (yes, at time of writing, you could still find that trailer on the ABC's site here).

Most unique wildlife?

Why you most unique twits, you might be somebody's ABC, the kind favoured by illiterates, but you are certainly not the pond's ABC.

Sssh, be still beating heart, walk on by ...

So what will the pond say to news that the Northern Territory's bid to establish the apparatus of a fascist state is at last going to be challenged (High Court challenge to NT arrest powers).

Sssh, be still beating heart, walk on by ...

And all this before the pond even turns to contemplating the never-ending chatter machine known as the Surry Hills 'leet machine of pontificating prats ...

But there's one observable truth in all of that. You need strength to be able to confront the chattering classes in their ivory Murdochian towers, and you need lightness and a certain frivolity and a bubbling up of disbelieving hilarity ... as you'd expect when confronted by a Murdoch press trying to explain how the current interest rates are for the best in the best of all possible worlds ... and that's hard to bring to the table when you're feeling as crook as a Tamworth dog that unwisely munched on a bit of snail killer ...

So for the moment the pond is walking on by in silence, knowing that others will be walking on by laughing, gawking and admiring the enormous stupidities paraded daily for the amusement of all ...

Have fun, and with a bit of luck, the pond will be back in due course.

And so to a few Pope cartoons, since where would the pond have been without the blessings of this particular Papist? (And as always more Pope here)