In which the pond plumps for a headline and cartoon-led recovery ...

Well it'd be funny if it wasn't true, and more social realism from David Pope here.

By the way, Pope is doing a little fund-raising, details at Twitter here for anyone who wants a little social realism on their walls, up there with van Gogh's portraits of potato eaters.

Well that mouth looks a bit like a potato, so the pond rests its case ...

Speaking of budgie smuggler patriotism, this also caught the pond's eye:

And that, Virginia, is how you move from a rogue terrorist state into a valuable ally in a nanosecond, and Australia gets on board with the Shia as part of the civil war raging in the region. Guaranteed to sort things out ...

What else? Well it's a headline sort of day:

What indeed?

He's such a splendid visionary (and more Moir here):

Perhaps the most plaintive of the delusional visionaries at the 2015 summit - only five more years Virginia and you can join in the 2020 summit - was that cockroach of the airwaves Kate Carnell doing her bit for futurism:

So what do small businesses need? ...
They need adequate broadband speeds to market and sell their goods and services globally. We know digitally engaged companies grow faster and employ more staff. Just look at Birdsnest, the fashion business featuring on the front of The Australian, which is doing great things online. Technology, even disruptive technology, must be facilitated.

Could there be a deeper, profounder irony?

Yes, the company, the man, and the newspapers that have campaigned relentlessly against decent broadband - and have scored their expensive, confused conflation of copper-based multiple technologies - are still busy posing as the home of reform, and the embracers of disruptive technology.

And their facilitators lurk in the shadows, at least if you believe Rowe, and more Rowe here:

Ah well at least it'll be a republican back alley ... by 2050 ...

Meanwhile, roll on 2020 in the land of copper-engaged, satellite-lagging, HFC-wired, multi-useless technology companies, and here's to a cartoon-led recovery ...

As part of that recovery, we should just note that Moir also had a few images to say about the budgie warrior, that campaigner for coal, and his warrior plans:

Meanwhile, the pond was pleased to see that Freedom Boy was out and about wringing his hands, and moping:

In the very same tabloid, the result of its fearless campaigning was also plastered at the top of the digital page:

Freedom boy's plea for the rights of the heterosexual majority almost brought a tear to the eyes of the pond, but he stepped across the line when he suggested attention should be paid to minorities.

Crikey had it right:

 

And speaking of bigotry, the pond was mightily impressed by this never-ending story:

Could there be a better example of a barking mad obsessive who just can't let things go and move on, as the rest of the world has done?

Is there a solitary person left in Australia who doesn't understand the Bolter is obsessed by race, and riven by his relentless fixation with Adam Goodes?

Hmm, news a bit slow today, must dust off Adam Goodes and give him another shake ...

It's all the usual stuff about hypocrisy and Goodes, Goodes, Goodes, and that's how the race game works and so on and so tediously and endlessly forth ...

Meanwhile, the pond was startled, shocked, dismayed, to see the warrior coal man seemingly encouraging actual indigenous dances with a warrior tinge...

Shouldn't he be flinching in fear at this aggressive assault on his sensibilities?

Why it's likely the Bolter would have fallen to the ground in a dead faint, and only been revived by an aria and the sniff of a good red ...

You can find the coal lover giving it a good go here, but oh dear, where's the Bolter when he's needed?

Perhaps someone in News Corp will belatedly realise that when the Bolter scribbles about Goodes and race, he shows all the signs of a demented, obsessed, obsessive compulsive racist, and perhaps someone should just reach out and tap him on the shoulder and say, no, Andrew, not again, not today, give it a rest, give the world a break, leave it alone, go away ...

Enough already. The pond is feeling seriously fatigued, so for a closing snifter - as the pond's Tamworth uncle used to say when deep in a schooner of sweet sherry - we decided to drop in on the Chairman.

It's deeply perplexing to the pond that the Chairman still tweets. He's routinely trolled, and respondents rarely have a kind word.

Take that nonsense about the reef. That resulted in an extensive trolling:

And then after his initial gambit on the NBN, as noted above, he tried to roll it back a little, with a more recent tweet.

But at least that brings the pond back in the third act to that bleating Kate Carnell and the chairman seeded earlier in the piece - the pond is Godardian, and likes a tidy dramatic structure, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and in that order. 

So let's watch the pernicious fraud line up for another trolling:

It reminds the pond of the chairman's other attempts to get the digital world.

What a pity none of the tweeters at the top of the page mentioned Myspace, purchased for US$580 million, driven into the ground, and sold in 2012 for US$35 million.

Now there's a company that really understands the intertubiethingie visionary thing ... and that's why it's coal, coal, coal for Australia and the woorrld, and bombs for Syria, and Iran's our new bestest ally, and that headline and cartoon-led recovery seems to be receding ...

Well at least, Virginia until Heydongate turns up tomorrow, and we all get to kick that Canning can a little further down the road ...