What a most excellent, sumptuous feast and joyous menagerie this fine Saturday ...

(Above: John Shakespeare wraps up the year, and the original and more Shakespeare here).

Things are winding down - the hits are down at the pond, public servants have embarked on an endless round of Xmas parties, the inner lurking satyr in the cardigan wearers now out as they strut about in a kind of carefree satyricon, the politicians have left town, having lectured others about the importance of keeping the nose to the grindstone seven days a week, without penalty rates, and so once again it's left to Chairman Rupert and his reptiles to solve all the worlds ills ... by having a bellyache ...

Abroad Americans have woken to the news that their easy way with guns - no limitations, no restrictions, no supervision -  can be turned against them - and what a juicy array of killing instruments are on hand - and naturally the chairman is standing by to tweet the most obvious solution of all:

Isn't it grand how the chairman sets the tone and the style for his domestic publications? Isn't it remarkable he ever made a buck, let alone a billion or two? Still, senility catches up with us all ...

Naturally the dog botherer was out of his kennel quick stix:

Being in a state of dog botherer denialism - a yapping ankle biting poodle coming late to atheism is always more irritating than cute - the pond quickly moved on.

Silly dog botherer, it's simple - just keep oil prices lower.

But the pond was up for religious challenges this day, and so tried very hard to reconcile the thoughts on hand in this splash:

So they use appalling language and we should therefore stop vilifying them?

Head still spinning, the pond went searching for some semblance of sanity and found only a Shanahan:

The pond simply can't overlook that use of its copyrighted word - Shanahan apparently doesn't understand the golden rule - that only a loon may talk of loons - and thereby she establishes that quite clearly she's a Catholic loon of the first water, devoted to the urgent necessity of a breeding program for the church's Ponzi scheme ...

And naturally as the pond strolled around the menagerie, we were delighted to come across a bromancing Sheridan, flashing his reptilian finery ...

Send in the wikis, there ought to be wikis, strange, losing the walri at this time in his career ...

Then came a bizarre spectacle ...

So far as the pond can work out, if you turn into a grumpy depressive, you should sod off, but you never know, you might be Churchill or Nixon ... because everyone wants to be a Nixon ... so you should hang around ...

What a sumptuous spread, what an array of treasures and insights on offer. Oh that Chris Mitchell, he's not going out with a whimper, he's leaving with a bang ... like the rocket in that Oscar Wilde story ...

And yet, through it all, the pond decided to stay loyal, because it's always eager to learn of news of the Pellists, and what the Pellist lovers are saying, and besides, Google advised the pond that there was a sage on the scene, standing behind the arras, waiting to be heard, ready to speak in his patented prolix prattling Polonius way:

Oh yes, fair shake of the prawn in the tomato sauce bottle, as former Chairman Rudd himself might say ... but let us turn now to that tale of treachery and the fix being in, with a bonus hint of paranoia and anxiety and trepidation ...

Ah, the exemplary art of the apologist.

How diligently prattling Polonius toils ... how he sounds the alarums of unfair persecution of noble Pellists doing their very best.

Never mind that the head Pellist might be a decidedly cold and unsavoury fish, let's hear it for the Pellists ... and curse you unfair media critics for your persecution of a most wonderful man ...

And as a bonus, no doubt there is a liberal lurking somewhere who can be dumped in it, and blamed for everything ...

So what did the pond take away from all this waffle?

Well it seems that the Pellists are going to have their moment in the sun from 16th December approx., and then we will see what is to be said and discovered, and in the meantime, no amount of special pleading, blaming others, naming alternate names, equivocating or offering simpering praise and loyalty will do much good or serve any useful purpose ...

But already the pond can sense a little nervousness at the sight of the Pellists turning up with his very own legal counsel to give a couple of victims a hard time and a decent cross-examination. That should provide some excellent moments, and really establish the Pellists as caring, considerate, heart-warming folk ...

Meanwhile, is there a surreal closer for the pond, on a subject dear to its heart?

Of course there is ...

Do we have a price for this cobbled together piece of string, sealing wax, elephants' ears and nodes?

A half-arsed, ill-conceived, banana in the copper pit, inept dogsbody of a thing ...

What would be a fair price for such a useless heap of junk, with expensive copper and HFC junk, purchased at a lavish price, thrown in way below cost?

....the final sale figure is likely to be as low as $20 billion, those same trade sources say, which would effectively mean a massive loss for the government  ...

Oh most fair price. After all, fuck it up, then flog it off to mates, what a joyous thing to do.

Sayeth Clark at the end of that piece ...

As NBN enters a critical acceleration phase in its construction, management believes it can meet the 2020 deadline by increasing the size of the project's construction workforce rolling out the network through a mixture of technologies, including fixed-line, wireless and satellite. 
However, the government's developing sale plans, which are likely to be hotly opposed by the opposition, have radically changed the outlook for NBN. (here, paywall restricted)

No, no, Mr Clark, nothing has radically changed ... and to think that Kerry Packer said there was only one Bond in a lifetime ...

Why, if he were Telstra, he'd be talking about Malware and rubbing his hands with glee ...