In which the pond breaks the silence and enjoys some strawberry moments ...

(Above: and hasn't the real papist Pope been in fine form while the pond's been away, and more papist antics here).

There have been any number of moments in recent weeks tempting the pond to break the silence.

Take the Media Watch moment, henceforth to be known as the greatest post-modern, post-ironic stuff up of all time. The pond was watching at the very moment that compere Paul Barry was berating Fairfax for sundry stuff-ups when the ABC produced its own monumental error.

Talk about glass houses. It instantly reminded the pond of all the errors introduced by the NZ subbies in to the pond over the years, even to the point of calling themselves subbies and thereby irritating a real life sub.

During the enforced lay off, the pond has been sadly watching a fair amount of 24, and what an astonishingly unique opportunity it has provided the pond to observe a parade of relatively unique abuse of the English language, dead air, primary school level typos and mis-spellings, mis-placed supers, dunderhead questions, fatuous coverage and endless examples of journalists talking to other journalists about the state of their navel. If that's the pond's ABC, can we trade it in for a new model?

But then the Twitterati began mocking Barry within seconds, and all was right with the world.

Then came the moment when Luke Foley announced that the solution to putting light rail into Sydney's CBD was to abandon it and build bus tunnels.

It reminded the pond that it was a Labor government that closed down the original Sydney tram system.

It was truly admirable how much like a stupid ning nong Foley managed to sound in one short mind-numbing sentence...

Then came the moment when the Prime Minister revealed his fascist streak.

Oh come on, you say, surely not to break the silence and then plunge right into a breach of Godwin's Law. Surely the pond has already accumulated enough in the swear jar to retire for life?

And indeed in the past the pond has usually thought of Tony Abbott as a crypto-fascist of the Opus Dei kind and left it at that.

But this has been a ripper of a moment, as recorded by Peter Hartcher in Tony Abbott rolled by his own ministers over stripping terrorists of citizenship (forced video at end of link).

As usual, the softies at the Graudian strolled around the point, and the likes of Lenore Taylor remonstrated in genteel fashion with the PM in Debacle over terrorism and citizenship is leak-based policy in its purest form.

Everybody was fascinated by the leak to the Daily Terror -   lick spittle fascist rag to a fascist government - and by the policy implications and by the dirty dog who had given the copious leak to Hartcher, and most people refused to use the "f" word.

There was much fine rhetoric about the way that perhaps, just perhaps, Australian citizens might actually be Australia's problem rather than dumping them abroad. And perhaps it was time for the Fortress Australia mentality to take a break before it became too Hansonite, and clowns stalked the street abusing the Chinese ...

But the pond was entranced by taking a time machine back to the 1930s. You can do it too. Just Google "Jews", "Nazis" and "stateless".

Yes, it was the policy of the Nazis to deal with the Jewish question/problem by making Jews stateless, and thereby making them homeless and ensuring that they would have an immense amount of trouble getting any state to accept them. Devious means, often involving false papers and documents, were required.

Decades later, Tony Abbott has decided that the solution to the Islamic question/problem is a policy torn straight from the pages of the Nazi party.

So the swear jar is safe. The "f" word is justifiable.

Not too much blame can be attached to Peter Dutton. The pond has always thought of him as a bear of very little brain, the picnic short of a sandwich, the dullest knife in the drawer, the sheep lost in the top paddock, the BBQ bereft of chop and sausage, and a time server willing to do the bidding of others, in this case the PM's office.

But the news that a majority of back benchers have got together to pen a letter in praise of Dutton and Abbott's handiwork shows just how deep the fascist streak runs in the Liberal party. What's remarkable is the way a few stood up to the fascist in cabinet, though everybody's now pretending it's just a little tiff, a jolly jape amongst chums, with Julie Bishop leading the way.

Then there's been the Irish moment and the matter of gay marriage.

The pond can't begin to count all the conservative commentators who've explained that there are bigger policy issues and bigger policy matters that are of national concern, or how it's all Bill Shorten's fault, or how it's nothing to do with the federal government and all that's needed is a little time, or how we should wait for the US Supreme Court, as if that's got anything to do with what should be happening in Australia ...

If it's a matter of overwhelming inconsequence and trivia, surely the way out is to just do it. Let gays enjoy the benefits of domestic bliss or domestic violence or whatever, and those who don't want to marry can carry on their single lifestyle, and it's done and dusted and we can move on.

The elephant in the room has been the way the luddite fascist at the head of the government has once again been caught napping and pushing back against the inevitable tide.

There is just one person standing in the way of gay marriage who has significance and consequence, and that's the PM.

But even that parade of conservative follies and Abbott's obdurate obstinacy and inflexibility didn't get the pond going enough to break the silence.

That moment came when the angry Sydney Anglicans, courtesy the dim-witted Michael Jensen, penned for The Drum I oppose same-sex marriage (and no, I'm not a bigot).

Yes, it was another of those classic, I'm not a racist but ... rants, up there with I'm not an abuser of complimentary women, but, but, you can get your docile Anglican women here, free, and we'll throw in a lifetime of oppression.

It's the Billy goat but butts moments that are guaranteed to get the pond going ...

Especially as the piece contained this monumental piece of silliness:

This is where Bill Shorten again misunderstands what marriage is. As we now understand it, marriage is not merely the expression of a love people have for each other. It is, or is intended as, a life-long union between two people who exemplify the biological duality of the human race, with the openness to welcoming children into the world. Even when children do not arrive, the differentiated twoness of marriage indicates its inherent structure. 
Now, I didn't pluck this definition from the sky, nor is it simply a piece of religious teaching. It is the meaning of marriage that emerges from all human cultures as they reflect on and experience what it is to be male and female. It is only in the last 15 years that anyone has seriously thought differently.

What a goose, what a dim wit. Only in the last 15 years? Marriage is intended as a life-long union?

Intentions smentions ...

Let's overlook the way divorce is as common as bad coffee.

Heck, let's overlook the comical attitude to marriage in the bible. Oh heck, let's not:

And Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David, The king desireth not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines.... And when his servants told David these words, it pleased David well.... Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife. -- 1 Samuel 18:25-27 (here, with a handy click through to the sceptics' bible).

And the pond can think of a hundred examples, easily matching those hundred foreskins, of the way that the concept and practice of marriage has varied and changed over hundreds of years in hundreds of societies...

It's a measure of the inherent stupidity of the angry Sydney Anglicans that they should keep thinking in simplistic Adam and Eve terms - yes, the Adam and Steve joke is never far below the surface of what they write.

Around this moment, the pond is always tempted to write, to the PM and the Anglicans and the rest of the conservative crowd, so if you share the attitudes of the Taliban and Daesh to gays, why not head off to join them? You certainly share their attitude to women. (George Brandis rejects crossbench push on extra super for women).

Want to talk about a death cult? Here's a death cult:

By golly that Crivelli was a sick puppy and a pretty sick painter too ... and look, with this death cult, you get bonus cannibalism and the chance to eat real flesh and drink real blood ...

And then came the fuss about an AFL footballer doing a little dance, and the enormous racism that lurks just beneath the surface in this country came bubbling up like a bunch of hoppy toads ...

And then there was the fuss about a game the pond only just now realises is frequently called "beautiful", which is a strange abuse of the English language when it's used to refer to a game which alternates between a festering mess of vile corruption, and exceptional tedium.

Yes the pond subscribes to the Simpsons' view of the game:



And there were other moments too. Like the Liberal government deciding to turn arts funding policy into an eighteenth century monarchist's way of getting appropriately artistic praise and high hosannahs, and the marvellous sight of Mathias Cormann blaming Bill Shorten for the budget deficits stretching into the future, as if Shorten was in government, and the ostensible government was powerless and incapable of negotiating with the cross-benchers. Which is to say that the economics girlie man lacks the resources of a Julia Gillard ...

And then there was Barners, sticking  his foot in his mouth and his beak into other people's business and copping a blast for it, and going silent like a dog in the manger.

But enough already.

There has been an upside to the month of physical nausea the pond has been experiencing ...

You see, the physical nausea got associated with the mental nausea of reading the Murdoch press, and so for the past month the pond has rarely bothered reading the reptiles of Oz.

According to the doctors the pond has consulted, it's a form of nausea transference, but it's made the pond feel like a heroine in a novel about nausea in a Jean Paul Sartre novel. Scrub that, the sublimely sexist, in a French way, Sartre didn't do heroines, but he did do nausea:

“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!” (no need to read the book, just do the quotes here).

Which reminded the pond of being intimidated by the clever girl walking around the Tamworth high school clutching a copy of Sartre's Iron in the Soul. Sartre in Tamworth! Luckily the jocks didn't know what it meant, but the pond currently lacks the iron in the soul, and so a return any time soon on a daily basis to that festering mess of hate and fear is most unlikely ...

Giving up reading the reptiles is truly is like stopping the beating of your head with a hammer, but it reminded the pond of one of its favourite koans:

Buddha told a parable in sutra: 
A man traveling across a field encountered a bunch of Murdochian commentators. He fled, the Murdochians racing after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. 
The Murdochians sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another bunch of Murdochians waited, Albrechtsen, the Bolter, Miranda the Devine, Akker Dakker and others, all waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. 
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. 
How sweet it tasted!

Oh okay, here's the original and more of the 101 koans here:

Buddha told a parable in sutra: A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. 
How sweet it tasted!

So the pond might occasionally drop by just to keep ticking the site over, but it'll be a long time before we head back into the morass on a daily basis. That nausea keeps coming back in waves, and right now we're enjoying the taste of early winter season strawberries

Instead the pond has been occasionally dropping in on First Dog here and the other cartoonists, knowing that the world of absurdity and monumental stupidity is safe in their hands.