Confirmed this Sunday ... no sign of wit or life under the Polonius tree, just another shaggy dog joke running wild and free ...

So what's new this Sunday?

Oh okay Devine's imitation of a screeching harridan, fresh from the Jacqui Lambie school of deportment, isn't news, it's so stale even the pigeons would turn up their noses at the crumbs.

The funny thing is, the pond doesn't have the slightest interest in Australia Day, Australian of the Year, David Morrison or all the rest arising from the gathering of gazebos, yet it's possible to have a faint twinge of sympathy for the lad, because once the Devine gets the smell of blood in the nose, it's like watching a rabid hyena go to work ...

Naturally the pond sought refuge in nostalgia ...

Ah, a Ming the Merciless cartoon.

That can mean only one thing ... the pond is catching up with the deep thinking of prattling Polonius, and what's the odds he'll be wandering back in time to a golden era, where men were men and banyan trees were banyan trees ...

As usual, the google splash misses the point ...

Because, the point, as usual, will turn out to be a shaggy dog story, wherein the shaggy dog offers advice with absolutely no expectation it will be followed or that it might succeed.

Here's the reptile splash, which offers the dream ...

There, google, that's the way your logarithms should be working ...

Yep, Polonius's algorithmic piece is all about Malcolm Turnbull setting up a thousand year Reich, or at least a Reich running long enough to resemble the long reign of Ming "the banyan tree" Menzies.

Would such a prospect tempt Malware? Can we listen in as the snake charmer dangles the unguent near the ear, as the pond understands once happened in Hamlet, in which our very own prattling Polonius played such a significant role lurking behind the arras?

Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, 
My custom always of the afternoon, 
The NBN being slow that hour of day,
And slow at other times, come what may,
Upon my secure hour thy Oz blatherer stole, 
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, 
And many fancy words of Ming the vile,
And in the porches of my ears did pour 
The leperous distilment; whose effect 
Holds such an enmity with blood of man 
That swift as quicksilver it courses through 
The natural gates and alleys of the body, 
And with a sudden vigour doth posset 
And curd, like eager droppings into milk, 
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine; 
And a most instant tetter bark'd about, 
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, 
Mine curdled ear did whey to hear,
A double dissolution call at once thou must ...

Uh huh, uh huh, but how did it end? The pond's got to know. Was it as long and tedious as the latest Tarantino movie?

Thus was I, sleeping, by a reptile's hand 
Of life, of crown, of Canberra, at once dispatch'd: 
Cut off even in the blossoms of my broadband sin, 
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd, 
No reckoning made, but sent to my account 
With all my imperfections on my head: 
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible! 
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; 
Let not the royal bed of Malware become
A couch for copper and damned King Tony II.

Phew, with that kind of introduction, who could resist? Bring it on, prattling Polonius, explain how Malware might come into his kingdom ...

Oh indeed, worthy Polonius, what a tremendous setting forth of the bleeding obvious.

Does Malware have a view on this ponderous pontificating?

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! 

I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune. 
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger. 
Leave wringing of your hands. 
Peace! sit you down 
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall 
If it be made of penetrable stuff; 
If damned custom have not braz'd it so 
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

Ouch, a tad severe, yet there is more wise counsel to be had, and an invocation of the god Ming ...

Pray, set to, Polonius, and explain how all might be made well, before ducking behind the arras ...

Now it is true that it is true that it there is no need for bluster blather, there being a need for manly men to strut their hour upon the stage, and it is true that the ploy worked in 1951, and it is true that 2016 is almost exactly, eerily the same as 1951, and the parallels are astonishing in their exactness, and it is true that a wise man would not draw attention to the result of the 1983 double dissolution, it being astonishing how unlike 1983 is to 2016, and it is true that it is most unlikely that Turnbull would dare to do a Ming ... preferring to keep his trousers rolled and perhaps scuttle on the seabed like a crab measuring his life in coffee spoons...

And it is also true that in consequence, reading this piece in its entirety has been a singular and utterly debilitating waste of time, and yet it is true that the ploy of abusing and misusing reader attention spans is always worth the serious consideration of a prattling Polonius, especially if it might lead in circular fashion to a completely pedantic play on the notion of assuaging disillusionment ... especially as the double disillusion joke has been around for yonks, as in A double disillusion election, when King Tony I was peddling the unguent, and others used exactly the same joke as a lead-in, as in No double disillusion in our democratic neighbour Indonesia ...

And long absent lord, Mungo MacCallum used it as a joke in the title for his book about the 2010 election ...

No, there's nothing wrong with running a joke as old and as stale and as wearying as Ming himself, but what of the stuff of the man into the ear of whom prattling Polonius has poured his distilled essence of his infinite, yet most unlikely, wisdom?

Why indeed, it's so EXCLUSIVE, you can read it in another currish Snail in another state altogether ...

Now there's the man to lead the charge across the Rubicon ...

Oh okay, the entire exercise was simply to shed some nostalgic tears over Ming the Merciless cartoons ...