Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the most mendacious of all ...

Of course the pond this day is calling for a frank and open debate on the relationship between Christianity and two world wars, and war mongering MPs declaring war on Islam in the guise of a 'war hero' ...

And wondering whether this sort of ongoing campaign might lead to this ...

Or to this sort of confusion ...

It's frustrating because the pond would have liked to have asked today whether Greg Hunt is the most artfully mendacious of them all...

Of course Malware deserves exceptional credit for his role in the ruination of the NBN, but Hunt is a figure of tremendous awe at the pond for the exceptional way he's managed to turn on a penny, downplay coal, and embrace renewable energy, as you can read for the moment outside the AFR paywall in Clean coal unlikely in Australia, says Hunt.

And there on the box this morning was his dissembling visage assuring all that Australia and Canada had been selected for praise for their exceptional and diligent work ... as if Australia's exceptional work as supplier of coal, coal, coal to the world counted for nothing ... and Greg Hunt's service to Tony "king of the coal chocolate cake" Abbott had been forgiven and forgotten ...

Never mind, let us bear in mind that clarion call for Islam to change, making just one little detour ...

Actually common sense would tell us that there's no point in capitalising Common Sense, since that's little better than blathering about COMMON SENSE, and if there's one thing common sense tells the pond, common sense is under-stated, whereas Common Sense is ineffably stupid ...

But let us not waste more time with a Ruddster urging us all to vote for a Common Sense Party - common sense suggests it's a complete waste of time - because we must get on with the urgent business of issuing a clarion call for Christianity, Catholicism and the Murdochians to change ...

And instead what do we get?

Yes, it's the usual aggregation of saucy doubts and fears ...

Now there's an exceptional way to frame your opinion, with blather about "same-sex romp" as your attention getter ... as once more we blather on about wider religious freedoms ... and note how quickly we can turn from having an anxiety attack about Islam to having an anxiety attack about Christianity under vicious assault by teh gays ...

Yes, of course, it's all the fault of devout Muslims, this infernal and wretched debate ... ssssh, don't mention the Australian Catholic University ...

Now the pond loves this sort of phrasing ...

"Respectful proponents", "sincerely believe", "as much as they love their gay brothers and sisters, marriage for them must be between a man and a woman ..."

Which of course is excellent sheeps' clothing for the usual cant, and the standard bigotry and hate ... as if by words or deeds, Christians in the past or the present have shown a deep love for their gay brothers and sisters ...

Unless you think calling for the filthy, vile sinners to rot and burn in hell for all eternity a sign of deep love ...

It also makes a wonderful juxtaposition, as the savaging of Islam continues, while Catholics of the Craven kind, continue to call for the right of fundamentalists to be fundamentalist ...

Naturally the confusion extends to the reptile editorialist ...

The pond has long marvelled how the reptiles, like starlings in the sky, can manage to whirl and turn together in a wonderful display of symmetry and synchronicity, and once again the editorialist manages the feat today by displaying a capacity for a Craven turn of phrase ...

Of course any kind of reader with a relatively short memory will  still manage to remember this magical, oft-repeated reptile formula:

The Australian, in supporting personal freedom, does not oppose same-sex marriage.

Could wording get any more mealy-mouthed, faint-hearted and devious?

Are the reptiles intent on giving Greg Hunt a run for his money?

After all, the point, after a little blather about a genuinely pluralist secular democracy is to endorse fundamentalist Catholicism, and the Pellist-approved Anthony Fisher talking about a secularist caliphate.

A secularist fucking caliphate, because, it goes without saying, in the world of Pellists and reptiles, secularism and jihad and the caliphate are inseparable ...

Well, the pond makes a prediction - that there will be more and more of this hysteria as eventually Malware gets around to arranging a plebiscite ...

Some might think that talk of a "secularist caliphate" is a moderate and reasonable way of talking about the simple notion of gay marriage, which has done nothing to introduce an apocalypse or even a secularist caliphate wherever it is available ...

Instead, in short order, we get references to the "thought police", "calculated assault",  "aggressive secularism" and a secularist fucking caliphate, all dressed up as "legitimate debate" and "rational argument" ...

Well let's just note that there's sure to be a sub-section of Godwin's Law that confirms that talk of the thought police is not a rational fucking argument ...

Oh dear, the pond seems to have got carried away, as if there's something wrong with fucking ... when it is after all, one of the great pastimes, though much penalised by god's religious thought police in the past ...

Which brings the pond to a theological nicety, thanks to Corinthians ...

But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn ...

Ah, the pond gets it. The Catholics and the reptiles would prefer teh gays to burn ... in hell ... until the twelfth of never ...

And then call that legitimate debate and rational argument ... 

Speaking of smart moves ...

Amazingly, after all that gentle Dr Ben has said and done of late, Chairman Rupert is still jonesing for the pyramids man to become POTUS ...

Meanwhile, cartoonists make hay ...

The full cartoon at the Boston Globe here ...

And and on they go ...

It's led the pond to construct a thesis ... that Chairman Rupert's love of Dr Ben is only matched by his commentariat's fear and loathing for Malcolm Turnbull...

Yes, it's all been an elaborate cue to introduce Akker Dakker's weekend rant.

Now some might not know how to decode the fat owl of the remove's tuck shop follies, but this should give a clue ...

Oh okay that's the Bolter, found on twitter, but that's the clue.

You see anything and everything Malware does - with the possible exception of his fucking up the intertubes as required by Chairman Rupert and admired by the Chairman's commentariat - is a matter for whining and moaning and much carping and carry-on amongst the hard core of Rupert's little helpers.

Like this:

Now there's the second clue.

When Akker remarks about the wider party remarking on that which has gone unremarked in the media, he actually means a couple of dissident ne'er-do-wells.

It takes a while to get there, but by end of journey, Akker Dakker unveils the company he likes to keep.

It will be remembered of course that Akker Dakker isn't yearning for his student days - by his wiki's account he was expelled and didn't complete his exams - nor does he seem to be yearning for his court-laden harassing days, but rather the bold, brave days of the wall-thumping chocolate cake man, ready to stand alongside Franco and Adolf to battle the leftists who gave B.A. such a hard time in his youth. Oh how the bells on the church electrified the world:

In the famous Melbourne University debate about the Spanish Civil War, he declared: "When the bullets of the atheists struck the statue of Christ outside the cathedral in Madrid, for some that was just steel striking brass. But for me, those bullets were piecing the heart of Christ the King." 
He could engender a thrill in the heart that was part patriotism, part Christian idealism and part "fighting the good fight". (here)

Thanks chocolate cake man and please, send over those planes Adolf and teach those damned atheists a lesson ...

But enough of Godwin's Law and thrills in the heart, because we have a current crisis, and it's all the fault of the man featured in the photo:

Oh shame, shame, the perfidy, the outage, but surely there were heroes, brave souls, prepared to stand up against the infamy:

Ah, the filthy bien pensant lefties, with their Hanoi loving, white powder sniffing ways.

There's a breathless hush in the Senate to-night.
Two to vote and a bill to defeat
A bumping Malware and a blinding gaggle of bien pensants
An hour to play and the last two men in
And it's not for the sake of a libertarian coat
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame
But Cory's hand on Eric's shoulder smote
Let's play up, play up, and play the game ...

The sand of the senate is sodden red
Red with the reck of the square the student lefties broke
Cory's Gatling's jammed and Eric's cake has melted
And the senate's blind with dust and smoke
The river of cowardly senators has brimmed its banks
And truth and honour has fled to Tasmania and South Australia
But the voices of Cory and Eric and Akker still rallies the ranks
Play up, play up and play the game.

This is the word that year by year
While in the deviant unis the lefties are set
Every Liberal son (not you daughter) must hear
And none that hears it dares forget
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through wall-thumpings like a thrill of the heart
Carrying a vibrant B. A.  torch in flame
And falling, fling to the barking mad right behind
Play up, play up and play the game ...

Oh okay, it no longer scans and Sir Henry has rolled in his grave, but now, suitably primed, can we have a photo of these two brave heroes, and an exhortation to all to follow their brave lead ...

By journey's end, the pond was almost moved to tears at the tragedy of it all, and the thought of all those greenies carrying on about the state of the planet, but strangely perked up by being shown a Le Lievre cartoon that had absolutely nothing to do with anything at all above, except perhaps the ideological rigidity and stupidity of the cake man's faithful followers (and more Le Lievre here).

Calling Chairman Rupert, calling Dr. Ben ... should we be building pyramids so we can store the grain all over again?

In lieu of a meditative Sunday ... a way to kill an hour, which is infinitely better than killing people ...

After the great Optus melt-down yesterday - which happened to coincide with the pond intending to upload a substantial amount of data - the pond went about the house doing system checks, and came across a long forgotten gem ...

This is just as well, because watching conventional news services is likely to lead to news of Donald Trump's latest extravagant racist outburst, or the latest fundamentalist psycho killer raging through a clinic killing people ...

The pond might also have begun to brood again about that AFR story, outside the paywall here ...

Make no mistake, the purchase of Optus' aging network has been shown to be a costly error, made necessary by the need to realise the vision of Turnbull's MTM NBN. Whereas the $800 million Optus was getting from the former Labor government was an undoubtedly hefty price to pay for retiring a network and getting its customers onto Labor's fibre, the idea of over-building the network now to make it fit for purpose smacks of throwing more good money after bad. 
NBN and the former NBN Co has paid top dollar for a clapped out old Datsun, and is now going to pay to put in a brand new engine and probably add some shiny mag wheels as well. 
The rollout will be delayed as a result of the necessary upgrades, and some consumers on Optus' HFC will have the cold comfort of knowing they are simply waiting to hitch a ride to the digital future on board a tricked up second hand bomb. 
It is worth posing the question of whether the government was ever misled by Optus and should be demanding some money back for its shoddy network. If this is not the case, it means that the government knew the HFC network couldn't be used and ploughed on with its plan regardless, or simply didn't do its due diligence properly before agreeing the new deal. 
What is clear is that this leaves the NBN in a depressing place. The documents also showed that a switch to the old Labor plan and upgrading to the fastest fibre-to-the-premise technology would cost an extra $600 million in peak funding. 
So we are seemingly locked into the plan of incremental upgrade of old technology, which is a million miles away from the grand idea when the NBN first emerged as a concept. 
The government is talking a great game on innovation policy and plotting a tech future for Australia, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that these plans are being built on shaky infrastructure foundations.

There's a limit to the humour that fundamentalists can generate on a meditative Sunday, or even the clapped out Datsun 120Y the Optus the, though the latter truly is a cosmic joke.

Fortunately the pond's latest, much beloved toy, the Nividia Shield, has a bar which selects random popular audio visual treats and presents them as ducks in a row for delectation ...

Purely to check that the system, the pond clicked on one about Life of Brian and was swept back in time as if caught up in a Back to the Future sequel ...

First a little background for those who have never heard of the ineffably pompous Malcolm Muggeridge.

He has his own wiki here, and back in the 1960s and 1970s, he became an insufferable Christian bore, doing much to promote the piety of Mother Teresa, along with many other follies ... such as getting together with that other wonderful period clown, Mary Whitehouse, to produce the Festival of Light movement ... ah Cliff, what a tormented and tragic figure you became ...

Now the pond hasn't thought of Muggeridge in many years - by the time of his senior, senile years, he had become a figure of comedy and an irrelevance, a bit like others who shifted from socialism to fundamentalism thinking of a different kind. A bit like Christopher Pearson, another name the pond has largely forgotten ...

Next we need a tragic figure ... an Anglican Bishop of Southwark, one Arthur Mervyn Stockwood, willing to make a fool of himself in public ...

For Greg Hunters, he too has a wiki here, but it's best to see Stockwood in action.  His contradictions and his situation are then immediately apparent, though many will only see a stock Anglican figure of a pompous kind, a man who might settle down to a cheese and cucumber sandwich in a BBC sitcom ... though even Arthur Lowe might face challenges playing him ... and Derek Nimmo was far too modern ...

Now we need a TV show that only the BBC could invent, Friday Night Saturday Morning ... hosted by the extremely unlikely, some would say preposterous Tim Rice ...

Throw in a couple of Pythons and mix it altogether and the result kept the pond up until well after midnight.

Now lest it be argued that the pond, as a secular atheist, saw Life of Brian as an anti-Christ romp, can the pond just say in its own, and the film's defence, that its favourite moments involve the Romans and Latin, and a discussion of splitters, which applies much more to Bill Shorten and the comrades than a few mild jokes about the cheesemakers being blessed ...

Anyhoo, in lieu of a Sunday meditation, here's a way to waste an hour ... for those who never saw it, or who, like the pond, only ever knew it as a matter of brief notoriety, before it and its characters were swept away by time ...

At the end, an irony will be apparent. All that Muggeridge and Stockwood said and did has been relegated to the dustbin of history ... Muggeridge is these days virtually unknown, and largely forgotten. The pond has several of his books in the house, unreferenced and unloved, but then the pond also has several books by Frank Sheed in the house ... while out in the wider world, Life of Brian still has a cult following and many pages devoted to it on the full to overflowing intertubes, and if Muggeridge and Stockwood are likely to be remembered, it is in the reflected glow of their television appearance to discuss the film ...

Such are the rich ironies of life and time, or as Ned might have said, such is life ... and such is Tim's preposterous gear ...

The Optus the, and after that, viens voler avec moi Malware ...

They paid $800 million for this?

The pond has a harbour bridge to sell to them ... only slightly rusty and a lifetime of maintenance required. But they knew that about the HFC cables, so why would that be a problem ...

Now before the pond was so rudely interrupted by brigands, cut purses, usurers, robbers and thieves ...

(Above: and more proper 4:3 Rowe and his colouring-in book at his Twitter account here. Colouring in gorgeous George? And you thought the pond was twisted, sick and weird?)

Only latter day members of the 300 Spartans, the toughest of the tough, are wont to visit the terrarium at the heart of the Oz reptiles empire, wherein the queen bee editorialist resides ...

But that's enough of mixed metaphors, because we also have the strange spectacle of reptiles feuding and fussing amongst themselves.

It will be recalled this very day that certain of the reptiles remain fixated on Malware and the chocolate cake man.

Which way will the queen bee swing, like an octopus in a tipping competition? Will it be towards the oscillating fan, or towards prattling Polonius?

Well it seems the reptiles are telling Polonius it's time to move on. Abbott won't cut Turnbull's lunch. And what's more, so desperate is the desire for attention to be paid, that the reptiles decided to strip the editorial of the gold bar.

Yes, this rampant, wanton abuse of prattling Polonius is available for free.

Oh wait, that was a far too hasty reading. It's all the fault of Farifax. Why didn't the pond realise?

So there Polonius, and your glib attempt to pretend that Tony has only been speaking his mind as Malware once did under the chocolate cake man. Malware was seeking to undermine his king, and there's little doubt that a delusional Abbott was sniping away to see how things might shake down.

You see, happily Malware is just like the chocolate cake man, only a better salesman:

But why are the reptiles so disdainful of Abbott's cut lunch? Why are they so on side with Malware?

Well a second reptile editorial this day - also gold bar deprived and free to peruse, so desperate are they that attention be paid - gives a clue.

As outlined above, the reptiles are insistent that, in essence, and in every good way, and especially in relation to climate science, Malware remains Tony Abbott ...

That last line is a reptile classic, up there with 'nothing is but what is not ...'

Much in climate policy is not what it seems ...

The pond had an image of a penny lizard, a skink if you will, emerging to mutter paranoid, mystical thoughts, with undertones of sinister conspiracies and esther overtones of United Nations world government ...

But yes, due credit to Annabel, who could parrot all the right lines that were fed to her, so that the reptiles could in turn editorialise on them as if everything she wrote featured sacrosanct facts, and nary a hint of old coal and such like protecting their diminishing turf ....

No doubt about it. The crow eaters are rooned, and so in time will everyone who doesn't sing the siren song of coal, coal, coal for the world.

And so to a change of pace, and a different brand of reptiles, the Optus the permitting ...

Confronted with the world's many pressing issues, the pond yesterday followed an old bookmark to Huffington Post, expecting to see what penetrating sights and news the site downunder had to offer.
Instead we went straight through to the main American site. Today the link leads to the dismal Australian front page. Why?

Forget that useless question. If ever there was a hopeless site, these two top of the page efforts over the last couple of days summarise it:

Pathetic. Just give it away, or at least give the forced re-direct away ... losers and dropkicks.

And who's to blame? Yep, it's that old Puncher still punching on, Tory Maguire ...

So that's what happens to old News Corp journos ... which leads the pond to ask ... is this a elaborate conspiracy to make News Corp and even the Daily Mail look good?

Pssst, Tory about a story you could call Cool Runnings, dudes who duel with Optus and are met with incomprehension at the digital robo-shop of life ...

Talking of issues without precedent in Australian democracy ... or should that be Kelly blathering ...

The infallible Pope is right of course - climate science is in the 'du pain' air - and more infallible Pope here, but the pond has other fish, and reefs, to fry ...

Today, as always, there is a blather of reptiles, a convocation of creatures paired in twos. Look at the seemly parade of scaly thinkers ...

So much choice, such a cornucopia. Who needs a chocolate cake, or even the icing on the cake? (The pond always loved hundreds and thousands in true vulgar Tamworth style).

On and on the parade went:

Oh that one's tempting. The dog botherer alienated!? What a bonus. And is there a prattling Polonius in our midst and a bromancer infatuated with his new school chum? Why it seems so:

Oh decisions, decisions. So hard to pick one, and so unfair.

But given the perversity of taking an interest in any of them, naturally the pond likes to push perversity to the limits.

Perhaps it came from reading about the latest examinations of the Salem witch trials. Sadly the NYRB outing, John Demos's Satan in Salem, is sadly behind the paywall, though the role of Satan is summarised in this par about Benjamin C. Ray's book:

Not surprisingly for a professor of religious studies, Ray gives full credit - or blame - to the force of Puritan belief. Fear of Satan and fear of God too, lay at the heart of New England culture. Ray sees Reverend Parris as "a dedicated agent for the prosecution whose "foreboding sermons had created the perfect climate" for witch-hunting. "We are either Saints, or Devils," Parris affirmed - a binary distinction that could only sharpen antagonisms. Further in the background, but still of much importance, loomed religious controversy. Parris strongly opposed the so-called Halfway Covenant, a liberalizing tendency that had already overtaken many Puritan churches and was approved by some of his own congregation.

 Bear in mind "foreboding sermon", as it will come in handy down the track, but first allow the pond to pause to note that one of Demos's subjects, Stacy Schiff, is outside the paywall at The New Yorker - for the moment at least - with The Witches of Salem, Diabolical doings in a Puritan village, which concludes this way with talk of Cotton Mather and his strange ways and cases:

Mather devoted thirty-eight pages to the initial case but left them unpublished. Given the tenor of the times, he wrote, “No man in his wits would fully expose his thoughts unto them, till the charms which enrage the people are a little better dissipated.” He did not care in 1693 to cultivate what, centuries later, would be termed the paranoid strain in American politics, with its “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” Political stability remained paramount. Mather did, however, retail the teen-ager’s report that Frenchmen and Indians—“horrid sorcerers and hellish conjurers”—had colluded in Salem witchcraft. He insisted on it for years. 
“There is no public calamity,” Mather noted, in “Wonders,” “but some ill people will serve themselves of the sad providence, and make use of it for their own ends, as thieves when a house or town is on fire, will steal what they can.” Twenty-eight years later, a smallpox epidemic raged through Boston. Cotton Mather faced down the entire medical establishment to advocate something that seemed every bit as dubious as spectral evidence: inoculation. He had studied medicine at Harvard. Over the decades, he had come better to understand infectious disease. Moving from imps and witches to germs and viruses, he at last located the devils we inhale with every breath. The battle turned so vitriolic that it dragged Salem out of hiding; Mather was bludgeoned for lunacy on two counts. Yet again, Massachusetts seemed to be in the grip of distemper. The people talked, he huffed in his diary, “not only like idiots but also like fanaticks.” He remained as steadfast on the subject of inoculation as he had been equivocal on witchcraft. In November, 1721, a homemade bomb came sailing in his window at 3 A.M. His reputation never recovered.

Bear in mind the talk of fanaticks, indulging in foreboding sermons. It will come in handy.

It might also be handy to read friendly guides to Catholic thinking, such as this one here:

Lot attempts to quell the mob by offering them his two virgin daughters, suspecting that because these men were homosexuals they would refuse. The entire account revolves around a single sin: homosexuality. While it's true that later Old Testament prophets pointed out other sins the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of (Is. 1:9-20, 3:9, Ezek. 16:46-51, Jer. 23:14), it's clear that the primary sin, the sin which provoked God's wrath, was homosexuality. 
If you examine the Old Testament passages in which God outlines the sins which would merit the death penalty under the Mosaic Law (Lev. 20:27, 24:10-23; Deut. 13:5-10, 21:18-21, 22:21-24), you'll see that homosexuality was condemned alongside such crimes as murder, idolatry, and blasphemy (Lev. 20:13). 

The death penalty! Now you might think that was an ancient note, but the blithe assurance that hanging's too good for 'em came in 1992 ...

And at last, so informed about a form of religious thinking as weird as Puritanism, as anti-semitic as a good Nazi, and as offensive as Islamic fundamentalism, we are fully armed and able to confront the blatherer Kelly, determined to represent the Catholic church as the last bastion and foundation stone of free thinking democracy.

The pond apologises. We should have noted that Kelly is at all times a terminal bore, who stoppeth one of three readers and grinds them into dust, then smotes them with the tears of their pain.

There is something strange about this, the image of some biblical bigot ranting, railing, in best Charlton Heston style against the wickedness of aggressive secularism.

Once upon a time, such ranting would have been directed against the use of words like "denialism" for the way that evoked the Holocaust, but in these troubled times, nuance and subtlety are like the yellowing snow, coloured by the words of old codgers shouting - or is it pissing? - at the clouds:

Now all this paranoia and carry-on will feel very familiar to those who have perused the latest effort at bigotry by the Church, still available on line in pdf format here:

That use of the image of a child - the Helen Lovejoy gambit - is particularly offensive, given what the church has done to the children who suffered to come unto them - but the rest of it in that text, explicit and implied, is profoundly offensive.

All the more so that it's been prepared by men who have forsaken marriage and fertility for a life of solitary uselessness, turning themselves into eunuchs in the hive so that they can drone on about the sex life of others.

Speaking of ennui, let us return to the tedious Kelly.

What's the bet he will label a complainant as "transgender", while failing to label the protesting priests as solitary unmarried men who only get a chance to legitimately spill their seed in unplanned nocturnal emissions (unless a child is handy)?

Well yes, and there's a lot more fear and hysteria-mongering in this little effort:

The Church simply can't let go of the notion that teh gays are wicked and evil, possibly even the spawn of Satan. These days talk of the death penalty for their crimes is muted, now it's all about the suffering of the bigoted church, with the possibility that they might not be allowed to sound so routinely bigoted in the future.

Kelly is of the same stripe. In reality gay marriage, where it has been introduced, hasn't resulted in apocalyptic changes to the world. Ireland and Britain, for example, haven't shattered and fallen apart, though the willingness to be generous and liberal and embracing has compounded the church's difficulties in finding an audience. 

Where gay marriage has found difficulty being accepted, it is more likely to be in Rome, with angry Sydney Anglicans and their ilk, and the servants of Daesh, and certain Wahhabist fundamentalist cults.

Yet Kelly is determined to shape the debate as undermining democracy, threatening the very foundations of society:

... which brings us neatly back to Salem and the notion of witchcraft that bedevilled the church for centuries, along with a fierce anti-semitism and a hatred of gays ...

Let us hope that the church can one day put away its old ways, and for the sake of the gay priest in the pond's extended family - still practising as a priest - the church can put away its old bigoted ways of hate and fear and loathing, and instead join Burt Lancaster, Elmer Gantry if you will and say:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a bigoted, superstitious child: but when I became a man, or even a woman, since these days we may speak of women in the same sentence, I put away bigoted, superstitious childish things. 

Meanwhile, talking of signals of issues with many precedents for our democracy being put on the table ...

Such a cornucopia of reptile blather this day ...

To know who rules over you, simply find the stupidest politician ... or media baron ...

What to do? What to do?

The minute that the pond demotes Cory from the banner and puts up George, Cory scores a couple of tremendous winners by breaking the golden rule of never twittering, at least if you have a third rate mind with a taste for fourth rate memes:

If only Cory was a post-modernist who spelled Playdough this way as a post-ironic comment on the way that modern education has failed hipsters ...

But the pond fears not, because there also came this one ...

And so on, and it set off a twitter storm, as you can see by heading off here for as long as the tweet lasts ...

The pond particularly loved this one, celebrated by the Fairfaxians here ...

That's a beautiful double whammy ...

Of course when the Fairfaxians wrote it up as a giggle, they went with the good old-fashioned Abe Lincoln meme about the internet being the best place to find a quote ...

But the pond has great respect for Cory's predilections, so surely the only meme to go with involves a death-defying breach of Godwin's Law:

But what to do, what to do?

Was it wrong to strip Cory of his rightful place?

And what if a bigger player comes along and snatches the trophy away from him yet again?

And so on ...

Ah well, it's a first world problem ...

In which a chocolate cake turns into a "get thee gone from the reptiles' sight" magic pudding ...

The pond had to marvel at this illustration. The Murdochians just can't get enough of monkeys ...

... though it has to be said that some bend over backwards to be a fitter target than others ...

... which brings us to the coda for this Friday ...

... which happens to feature the way the reptiles' new job description seems to involve faithfully transcribing that which came to pass on the ABC the night before.

Oh bouffant one, has it come to this?

So that's the new business policy. Sack the reptiles and recycle the ABC in their place, with a video excerpt and a faithful reproduction of the contents of an interview anyone else could watch for themselves on iView.

Oh bouffant one, has it come to that?

But what of that illustration that lurked above?

Well it came at the start of a David Crowe rant, and isn't it remarkable how certain reptiles have swung in the breeze.:

Now there's a relief and a comfort. It seems the cabinet is still leaking to the reptiles and what mischief that might produce - of a monkey kind - in the future.

Oh dear, shouldn't that have been "The reptiles learned too late that newspaper readers do not buy newspapers so Chris Mitchell and Boris and Chairman Rupert might wage ideological warfare?"

But it's time to head to the inevitable conclusion, which the pond hastens to add, has nothing to do with the reptiles losing out to Fairfax and Probyn on the matter of the conspiratorial plotters monkey lunch and the landlady's chocolate cake:

So it's come to this. The hounds are now baying for the macho man's departure.

So where's the delusion in all this? Well surely Tony should go, it would be a great relief to all but him.

But there it was in that line "There are conservative MPs whose careers would improve with Abbott gone."

As if Abbott going would turn Dutton from mutton into lamb. As if Cory or gorgeous George or any of the other bunch of eccentric right wing fruit loops would ever come to be regarded as mainstream ...

A more interesting question is why there are so many seeking to snatch away Akker Dakker's title as the new Billy Bunter, fat owl of the remove ...

Look, marvel at the resemblance ...

No wonder the hanging politician has been snatched from the tuck shop and elevated to the pond's hall of fame.

And so to a Rowe cartoon ... because nobody can get enough of that chocolate cake - why it's better than a magic pudding - and remember, correctly framed if a little late-breaking Rowe is available at his Twitter feed here.