(Above: well that's it for comedy, so make the most of it while you can, or head off for some more papal insights here).
Every so often the pond yearns to be bored, a deep, rich stultifying ennui-generating boredom that might, on a good day, be considered almost Proustian ....
Boredom is one of the least of the evils that we have to endure....
...At every moment we must choose between health and sanity on the one hand, and spiritual pleasures on the other. I have always taken the cowardly part of choosing the former. (and more Proust quotes here).
This being a languid Saturday on a meditative weekend, which reptile might best carry out the task of boring the pond into a state of mindless euphoria?
Say no more, well offered, and well chosen, reptiles of the lizard Oz.
Now the pond knows very well the hagiographic mission Kelly has been assigned.
He must discover a world-wide phenomenon, in which Australia doesn't just participate, but in which it leads the world - Ozzie, oi, oi, yadda yadda - and Turnbull might well be the fearless leader who guarantees a thousand year reptile reich ... but it needs to be gently explained to troubled conservatives that they are now in a grand national experiment, up there with David Cameron and John Key (or down there if you will).
But to discover this requires enormous endurance, a lung capacity that would take many a good thousand metres above the peak of Everest ...
The pond expects readers to drop like flies along the way, but that's the price of tedium, one plodding sentence after another until a full flowering of pompous verbosity clouds the universe ...
Now really it's far too early to offer a way station, or a refreshing drink, but the pond was shocked to discover how early that barrage of "are we there yet?" questions began to pepper the air ...
You've already had your global phenomenon, and your Pellists under siege and so froth and foam and forth, and etc, and that should be enough to get you to the next stage of this epic journey ...
Yes Queensland is so redneck it through out Campbell Ruined Them and voted in Labor, and you there, in the back row, you can spend your time after class mopping the spitballs and the chewing gum off the ceiling, and your ruler is herewith confiscated.
How about a Barners cartoon? Barners is always good for a laugh and a Moir cartoon, and more Moir here.
But now we must get back to the Conservative Identity, or the Conservative Supremacy, or the Conservative Ultimatum, or if you will, the Conservative Dilemma, and please, no spilling of the popcorn on the people in the row in front of you:
Uh hu. In case you're wondering which conservatives misjudged their strength and got on the Abbott bandwagon, how about Kelly and the rest of the reptiles, who spent a solid two years of blather sagely explaining how Abbott was the right man for the job with the right policies ... and now, a tad hastily, and with what shred of decency they can muster, they must now turn to contemplate how Turnbull might be the right man for the job with the right policies ...
What sayeth the Bolter to all this righteous blather?
Oh dear, the grieving, the grieving, the unutterable, remorseless, irreversible grief ... and at full length too ...
But stay, the Bolter has made an interminable journey even longer and more tedious, and we must return to the pompous Kelly for a final fix.
Devotees of Kelly will remember that not so longer ago, 11th July 2015 to be precise, when his former master was still in power, he wrote a long and exceptionally tedious exegesis, with much hand-wringing, about gay marriage, its implications and won't somebody think of the fundamentalists ...
There's more if gluttons for punishment care to google The same-sex marriage debate and the right to religious belief, but that's enough for the pond to contemplate the new paradigm, which it seems to involve shattering, transforming blows to shared dogmas, progressive redefinition, conservatives lacking both the educational method and the creative imagination to respond to the Turnbull experiment and ...
Well haven't things changed in reptile la la land ...
It's probably as close as Kelly and the rest of the pack of reptiles will ever get to admitting they barked up the wrong tree with the mad monk, and now they must scramble to adjust their definition of what should matter to conservatives ...
This is a matter of vast amusement to the pond, who in life and habit is devotedly conservative in many ways ... because there's nothing more conservative than the sight of the pond's gay friends shacked up in marriage and living a life of devoted monogamy ...
But what of the Bolter, some might ask, still deep in grieving?
Well there was an update to this morning's mourning, and it would be remiss not to note the ongoing agitation, the deep troubling of the dark soul ...
Well the pond promised a long and tedious journey, and look how we've arrived in the middle of nowhere with two contending blowhards blathering about the suffering of the conservatives in Australia ...
Will they be able to reconcile? Will Paul Kelly now be able to handle a PM that advocates gay marriage? Will the Bolter be able to accept a warmista? Will they fall to squabbling like reptiles in a feud to the death?
Who knows, because the point isn't the policies, it's the spectacle the reptiles are certain to offer. Claudius provides an imperial model:
At any gladiatorial show, either his own or another's, he gave orders that even those who fell accidentally should be slain, in particular the net-fighters, so that he could watch their faces as they died. When a pair of gladiators had fallen by mutually inflicted wounds, he at once had some little knives made from both their swords for his use. He took such pleasure in the combats with wild beasts and of those who fought at noonday, that he would go down to the arena at daybreak and after dismissing the people for luncheon at midday, he would keep his seat and in addition to the appointed combatants, he would for trivial and hasty reasons match others, even of the carpenters, the assistants, and men of that class, if any automatic device, or pageant, or anything else of the kind, had not worked well. He even forced one of his pages to enter the arena just as he was, in his toga. (and the rest of Suetonius's idle gossip here).
Let the reptile wars begin. Arm the reptiles with togas, and may the long absent lord honour their service as they go into battle and inflict deep wounds on each other ...
If you've made it this far, award yourself a medal, and here's a Rowe cartoon to go on with, featuring the odd stray arrow, and a couple of right royal robins, and more Rowe here at his Twitter account ...
If nothing else, you have to admire the smooth and speedy manner in which the Pontificating One manages to transfer his nose from one arsehole to another.
ReplyDeleteOh the pond does, the pond does ... he could guest star in Yes PM any day of the week ...
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