Speaking of Narcissus ... g'day gorgeous reptiles, let's maintain the rage ...

The pond is a lover of matters aesthetic. The golden mean, the golden ratio, the proper structure of drama, the resonance of dramatic irony, the plastic y'artz, David Rowe ...

And more Rowe here ...

The problem of course with the current plotting is that we've only reached the end of the first act.

Oh sure, it was excellent that the man who was dumped should return to dump the dumper, but if we're to follow the classical structure in plotting, the second act should see the dumped return to dump the dumper (as in that most excellent and melancholy tale, The Usurper Usurped, The tragedie of Chairman Rudde), followed by the dumper confronting the Australian electorate, only to be dumped by a massive wave back on to the desolate sands of life ... (remember that moving sequel, The Leaker Sprung, The dumpling of Chairman Rudde).

Does Abbott have it in him? He certainly has been acknowledged as a dramatist with great potential ... as in Phillip Coorey's Tony Abbott's guerilla campaign would make Kevin Rudd blush (paywalled, you'll need to find it online).

Dramatist Abbott's work thus far in building the second act is seen by David Pope as being somewhere between Rambo plotting a return to 'Nam and Lt Col Kilgore welcoming the smell of napalm in the morning:

And more Pope here.

Maybe it's a reference to a third rate third world guerilla terrorist leader, but the pond will always revert to the classics ...

Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink liberal Point Piper body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like ...  [sniffing, pondering] ...victory. Someday this Point Piper toff Turnbull's gonna end...

But as always, the pond lets its imagination run away with itself.

Oh sure, the Bolter is almost hysterical with rage. In just the few most recent posts:

The Pope could soon be banned and jailed under our police state of the Left (that's the police state run by the Leftist Turnbull).

We have lost if this government no longer dares call the Islamic State a "death cult" (that's Malware wanting to avoid blunt and divisive language)

Turnbull betrays Liberal base: taxes to rise on the "rich" (in which the filthy rich devours the filthy rich in a way that evokes Goya).

It turns out Turnbull is even responsible for American decisions:

US commits us to an accelerated war without asking Malcolm Turnbull first.

And as for the sickening sight of Point Piper toffs gathered for confabs, Yes, but what will they actually do? And let's not forget Julie Bishop signs us up for a sick circus ...

But that's the Bolter, always on the verge of hysterics ...

In such dire emergencies, the pond always turns to the reptiles of Oz for guidance,  that febrile media outlet that sounded the constant drumbeat of the need for economic reform, then faltered and turned greenie leftie when it mattered most ...

Or so Narcissus says ...

At first the signs seemed good for Malware:

And the comically titled Strewth discreetly overlooked Narcissus's indiscretion in mentioning the reptiles as a bunch of cowardly turncoats, gutless wonders when it mattered:

See. Not a mention ...

Mr Abbott revived his complaints about the media but broadened his criticisms to include the conservative broadsheet The Australian, which he accused of failing to strongly back his first budget. He said this contradicted the paper's "constant drumbeat" for economic deregulation. (here, with forced video)

Oh you cowardly, craven reptiles, deserting the field in time of battle.

But sooth, some reptiles have stayed loyal, and you don't have to look far for visible contempt, lurking on the surface, in plain sight:

Yes, the bromancer is outraged. Sure big Mal might win the next election, but it's meaningless stuff.

It is, the bromancer astutely notes, a tale told by an idiot and signifying nothing:

Prospero:
You do look, my son, in a moved sort, 
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir. 
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air: 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd; 
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled: 
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity: 
If you be pleased, retire into my cell 
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk, 
To still my beating mind.

Indeed, Bill, the stuff of dreams, and if only the bromancer had much of a beating mind to still, but lets hear it for the y'artz, to think that old Bill could still resonate centuries later, and turn up in the headline for the mindless, meandering musings of the bromancer:

Ah the stuff of the ABC and the Fairfax press, and nary a mention of how the treacherous turncoat reptiles sold out their fearless leader and his most excellent 2014 budget.

And so to dealing with that master of fluff, that man who dudded the nation with Fraudband, deploying savage whimsy and terribly clever irony ...

How good was it when Abbott was in charge, and now how grievous are the Point Piper toff's symbolic gestures, devoid of substance (well they're certainly devoid of decent bandwidth in the outback, and the pond will certainly be looking at the suffering of deprived communities this weekend on Landline):

And there surely, in the whimsy and the satire and the irony, is a sign for optimism and hope.

Narcissus still has his supporters and they are bitter and snarky and inclined to make jokes about Mars and moonbeams ...

It gives the pond hope in its yearning for a classical dramatic structure which the wonderful Bill could spin out into five acts on a gossamer thread of dancing moonbeam delusions ...

More strange than true: I never may believe 
These antic fables, nor these fairy toys. 
Lovers and bromancers and madmen have such seething brains, 
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend 
More than cool reason ever comprehends. 
The lunatic, the lover the bromancer and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, 
That is, the Malware madman: the lover, all as frantic, 
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Abbottian Pharaoh Egypt: 
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; 
And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name. 
The ABC and Fairfax!
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy, 
It comprehends some bringer of that joy; 
Or in the night, imagining some fear, 
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
And the ABC and Fairfax
Supposed a bear to fear ...

Or some such thing. As Rowe has apologised to Caravaggio, the pond must apologise to Bill, and now we live in hope for the next outburst of bitterness, bile and resentment ... because thus far it's all been going so terribly well ...

Damn you Fairfax and ABC, damn you to hell. Just when did you do that takeover of UK media, including The Times?