And with plenty of burley in the water this day ...

Hmm, a busy day for the pond, so what a relief that the immortal Pope should provide a classic cartoon - more Pope here - as the sharks gather in the water, thrashing about at the thought of blood, and thereby remove any need for the pond to comment further...

... though the pond was reminded of the recent indignation at unions doing a little shaving on deals on the way through, which makes the adoration for Mike Baird proposing a regressive tax and some balancing compensation on the great taxation whirlygig roundabout of life curious, some might think bizarre ...

But speaking of sharks and loons, the reptiles at the lizard Oz had yet another reliable entry:

It turns out that Fred Pawle calls himself a surf writer for the reptiles - he has a profile here.

Fred's trolling produced a few results on his Twitter feed here but it didn't beguile the pond enough to actually read the piece - though perhaps Fred would consider joining the pond's campaign to first kill all the surfers.

After all, sharks are paying with their lives as a result of people thinking surfers are more important than sharks. Has admiration of surfing bludgers riding waves and disturbing sharks - when they could be doing an honest day's work - gone too far?

And that's probably the first and last time the pond will pawn Pawle, but peaking of waves, the Bronnie tidal wave is now receding a little.

Oh there are still stories out and about ...

The love of flights story is here, with forced video, and being taken for a ride here,  with forced video, and the Graudian does its charter flights here.

Nostalgia freaks will now have to settle for the sublime sight of prattling Polonius defending Bronnie last Sunday on the Insiders here.

Some might think that a rort is a rort is a rort, in much the same way that a rose, as alleged by Gertrude Stein, is a rose, but Polonius knows sometimes a rort can be a rose by any other name ...

It won't go away of course. Every day when parliament resumes there'll be a chance for a fresh joke, and it'll get fresh legs, just like Slipperwinegate did, and without the help of the Murdochians, who are determined to leave their Photoshop on the shelf.

Meanwhile, the reptiles have once again dropped Bronnie from the front page with a huge sigh of relief ...

And have taken up reporting on important public issues of great moment ...

WTF? What happened to that ban on Q and A? We can understand the Fairfaxian leftists reporting on the show - after all they're all part of the sinister UN world government greenie alliance - but the reptiles now think regurgitating the contents of a TV show is journalism?

We keed, we keed, as the tree killer edition shows, the real game is to stir the ALP pot once again, double bubble, toil and trouble, and this excerpt shows how it's done:

Oh okay, the pond just wanted to mock the EXCLUSIVE nonsense one more time.

And then there was this:

Is it wrong for the pond to dream of a day when the editorialist scribbles Murdoch power helps nobody and then commits ritual seppuku in inner Sydney hipster Surry Hills?

But all this has just been a delaying tactic, a whetting of the appetite for the succulent burley (berley if you must, but not Berlei for heaven's sake) that always gets the sharks wildly excited.

Yes, it's Caterist day, and the standing challenge the pond offers readers is to spot when the Caterist first wheels in a mention of Bob Menzies!

Oh bugger it, that's not a game, that's no fun at all. The fatuous humbug is such a doofus, such a useless spoilsport, he can't help ruining the game ...

It's beyond the valley of the pathetic.

Okay, a new challenge.

First of all let us remember that the sheep lost in the top paddock works for an institute heavily subsidised by the Australian taxpayer. He is, in short and not to put too fine a point on it, a welfare bludger, living off Australian tax dollars.

This makes his theme all the more piquant, like a really dumb but rich habanero chilli sauce that brings tears to the eyes ...

So here's the challenge. Can anyone spot any evidence at all that Cater has spent any time at all, living and working, in remote areas, such as Hermannsburg?

Nope, there's no sign there. The twit somehow thinks that Jeparit is directly comparable to Hermannsburg. But the 'Burg is some 25 hours to Sydney, a humble 2,380 km, via the Stuart Highway, while Jeparit is a mere four hours 15 mins, or 373 clicks way, or so google says.

Does the Caterist have the first clue what this means?

Nope, and there's not the first clue that if you spend any time in a town like Alice Springs, the first thing you discover is that heavy consumption of alcohol recognises no colour - it's just that whites can get away with it.

The second thing you discover is that the entire Northern Territory is heavily dependent on federal government subsidy as a lifestyle choice.

Yes, yes, the pond could make fun of every NT government that's ever been, and go through all the usual statistics - the way the NT currently receives 15 times more GST than say Western Australia, or the way some 80 per cent  of the NT's budget comes from federal coffers and GST revenue makes up about half its total budget, and the way that welfare in the deep north is colour blind, and the way the Abbott government is intending to splash even more cash up north as it replicates great pioneering schemes like growing rice in Humpty Doo.

Oh okay we only threw that in so we could run a shot of a croc, to remind punters there's more to life than sharks:

But back to the challenge.

There are no doubt some snivelling weaklings who are now tugging and straining at their leashes, asking if they really have to read the rest, but if you want to get to the end, you do ...

Yes, there's the punchline. The man in receipt of welfare grants ...

... is using his welfare grant to research and write about welfare reform.

Which leads the pond to a grand idea for the development of the dead heart.

Let everyone up there put in to Canberra for a welfare grant so that they can write extensively and intensively about welfare reform... on condition that they can't move to Canberra to spend the cash. Brr... too cold, Darwinians ...

No doubt the reptiles of the lizard Oz would be only too anxious to run the results ...

No doubt Ming the merciless - the pond just had to work Ming into the story - would approve, being a dab hand at carpet bagging and pork barreling himself ...

And so, thank the long absent lord, that's the end of the welfare Caterists this week and it's on to a couple of Bronnie jokes ... (and more of the Fairfax cartoonists here).