(Above: the pond rarely strays from the Davids, but this Leahy caught the eye, and for anyone interested in cartooning, Mike Bowers' Talking Pictures tweets presents a tidy and diverse sample).
It being a meditative Sunday, the pond will in due course get down and dirty with moaning, whining, whinging Catholics, but surely there's time to note why ABC 24 represents the decline and fall of civilisation as the pond once knew it ...
First came a reference to the "unsung heroes" of world war II, presumably on the basis that a $70 million Hollywood movie starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett and John Goodman isn't decent singing. Perhaps it was a subtle and nuanced joke about The Monuments Men stiffing at the box office ... but if that's unsung, then stay tuned for "Loon Pond The Movie".
But then came a reference to a mare winning one of his best races. The pond couldn't believe it had heard what it heard - senility is always impending - but there was an independent witness in the room who guaranteed that the imbecility lay elsewhere ...
What else? Yep, the pond will do anything to avoid moaning, whining whinging Catholics:
Ah, now there's a good and responsible and civic-mined Catholic going about his business ... naturally it reminded the pond of the immortal Boccaccio and his Decameron - available free at Gutenberg but a more modern translation will be worth the money - and the tales ,where there's much talk of food and drink, with the drink seen as an exemplary way to ward off the plague, and there is much talk of the sins of lust and virginity and ...
After this he asked him if he had ever offended against God in the sin of gluttony; whereto Master Ciappelletto answered, sighing, Ay had he, and that many a time; for that, albeit, over and above the Lenten fasts that are yearly observed of the devout, he had been wont to fast on bread and water three days at the least in every week,—he had oftentimes (and especially when as he had endured any fatigue, either praying or going a-pilgrimage) drunken the water with as much appetite and as keen a relish as great drinkers do wine. And many a time he had longed to have such homely salads of potherbs as women make when they go into the country; and whiles eating had given him more pleasure than him seemed it should do to one who fasteth for devotion, as did he. 'My son,' said the friar, 'these sins are natural and very slight and I would not therefore have thee burden thy conscience withal more than behoveth. It happeneth to every man, how devout soever he be, that, after long fasting, meat seemeth good to him, and after travail, drink.'
'Alack, father mine,' rejoined Ciappelletto, 'tell me not this to comfort me; you must know I know that things done for the service of God should be done sincerely and with an ungrudging mind; and whoso doth otherwise sinneth.'
Indeed, indeed, time to smash another marble table, but thus fortified, the pond can now move on to the main course in the feast:
Oh pity the poor suffering Christians and the persecuted, crucified Catholics.
After a couple of thousand years consigning assorted souls to hell - and giving them hell in their time in earth - it just isn't fair. And meanwhile, imams who vent their hatred, fear and loathing of gays and women rarely make any appearance at human rights tribunals.
It just isn't fair, right or just, giving these imams a free kick and allowing them to be bigots and fundamentalist ratbags, allowed to air their prejudices and inflammatory notions, when Catholics are denied the right to be vile bigots and trot out their ancient inflammatory prejudices ...
And with Halloween just around the corner, we all know that witches will be out with their cats ...
Oh the shameless, shameful, wicked hussies.
People, the freedom to persecute and be a bigot is under threat!
And where's the harm? If you go a little too far, you can always confess your sins ...
Oh dear, but we must stay the course, and finish the Shanahan and celebrate the pious Erica:
Of course, of course, how shocking of the medievalists to berate the church for their medieval ways.
Why, the pond believes that the appointment of a second female Pope is just around the corner ... so free thinking and female friendly is the church ... and if you believe that, the pond has got a good second hand case of transubstantiation to sell you, and you may indulge in an extended bout of flesh eating and blood drinking that any vampire, or Boccaccio hero would admire ...
And of course it's shocking that the mad monk should be asked whether he believed in evolution. No wonder he was mystified as everyone knows that belief and science are not words that can be usefully juxtaposed. Accept the evidence, perhaps, in the way that Tony "climate science is crap" Abbott accepted the evidence of the climate scientists, but belief? Why certainly not ...
Naturally the pond blames all this insidious stuff on rabid feminists with their ideological fixations, which it has to be said, is completely unlike the rabid theological fundamentalist ratbaggery of a church and its adherents ... who manage, on certain subjects, to sound like a member of the Taliban or the Daesh on a bad hair day ...
How shocking it is to learn that anti-discrimination is out and about talking peace and harmony and love, when it's the business of fundamentalist Christians and Islamics to spout bigotry, hatred and bile!
Well there endeth the lesson for the day. Go off to church and pray that your god may smote mightily gays, women, liberals and women who rush off to abortion laughing with glee ... because every woman just loves to kill things ...
And so on and so forth, and so to a complete segue just to round things off with another pond fixation.
Of late, the Labor party has been trying to lay a glove on big Mal for his woeful incompetence in totally and comprehensively fucking up the NBN ...
Indeed, indeed, and quadruple that if you want to get to the level of the pond's indignation when it comes to Malware and the NBN.
The trouble is, at the same time, the pond keeps remembering the old days and Stephen Conroy and his great big filter, of a kind that only Opus Dei and Angela Shanahan could dream about...
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