From canaries to harsegroppers, it's all the fun of the advanced digital media platform fair, thanks to the reptiles of Oz ...

The pond always feels better starting the weekend with a Pope cartoon - there's a gallery of papal humour here -  and if you want to relax more, you can always "please clap", and watch another episode of The Unblackening here with Larry Wilmore.

Other more dedicated folk must be the canaries sent down into the reptile Oz coalmine to check on the state of things, and the pond was delighted to discover that the chief stenographer who replaced the chief stenographer is doing his manly duty ...

Oh you winsome, beguiling hagiographer you ... a shot in the arm, as opposed to a shot in the toe.

Meanwhile, the old fogies are tremendously excited at having found some young fogies ... 

Problem of idle chatter about the republic solved ... you see, nothing to do with boring farts of the Paul Kelly/Tony Abbott school. It's them young fogies what killed the dream ...

Meanwhile, the voices in the cave still chant in unison as they stare at the light flickering on the cave paintings, and dream of smiting their enemies mightily, without mollycoddlers getting in their way ...

Long gone are the days when public servants, aka political candidates, kept their traps shut. Short are the days when they might chirrup in unison with Dame Slap ...

And then there were other typical ventures ...

Yes, the barking mad yammering about welfare will always have a home amongst the reptiles of Oz. It's part of the business plan ...

Then the other great matter of the hour, the running of the gulags, was sorted ...

Naturally the dog botherer was ready at the head of the opinion pages to chip in ...

Nauru? Why the reptiles holyday there each year ...

But the pond was most entranced by this offering, which broke yesterday as the editor rushed into the bunker, and yelled "halt the presses" in a screeching voice, "we must put this top of the page":

Now on the face of it, all it does is show that Polonius is in an advanced state of senility. And we all knew that. So what's the angle, where's the news?

Just think. Gerard Henderson, good old prattling Polonius, is a commentator who carries no responsibility for the consequences of his advocacy in the media. Not even the way that the lizard Oz rag loses a motza for the chairman. 

Substitute any name you like. Dame Slap, Paul Kelly, Dennis Shanahan, the bromancer, the dog botherer, they're all commentators who carry no responsibility for the consequences of their advocacy in their media. Not even the way that their rag loses a motza for the chairman.

Heck, come to think of it, the pond doesn't bear any consequences for its advocacy that the lizard Oz should cost the chairman a losing squillion or two ... you can help by not giving the reptiles a centime, a sou, a franc, a dime, a yuan, a yen or a ha'penny.

And yet today there's the same argument in a different splash ...

Naturally the pond bit, because the pond was intrigued to see how prattling Polonius would come up with an alternative to the running of gulags of the most awful kind ...

Silly pond. It turns out it was just a short posting in Polonius's dog bothering media watch column - the reptiles must now be really desperate to get attention paid to the dark 'Mr Hyde' side of Polonius, full of ill-mannered bitching and preening, which is supposed to pass as caustic and witty, but actually comes across as sadly desperate, pathetic and angry ... oh so angry, and with so little to explain the anger, though it does allow the pond to marvel yet again at the way old fogies shout at clouds ...

Indeed, indeed, and so the whole business of the running of the gulags is solved in a stroke by that master diplomat, prattling Polonius ... what a clever old fogie he is ...

It's strange of course that in his rant about the rant, he doesn't mention the Iraq war or George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or a thousand other matters, or George Pell being too sick to travel, for that matter, but that's just part of the infinite mystery of transubstantiation and the wisdom of Polonius ...

The pond routinely never bothers with Polonius when he imagines he's a dog of the nose-biting kind, and so it returned to the work of Darren Davidson.

Yes, this involved by-passing so many splendid offerings that portend that surely this week the lizard Oz will return to profit with a leap and a bound - so many freedom boi Dame Slap temptations, so little time - but that's the sort of sacrifice the pond routinely makes ...

Splendid stuff. All those old fogies and farts marvelled at above will open up new avenues with young fogies and farts, and all will be well in this modern media age.

How captivating to learn that the resilient established media outlets aren't being defeatist, how tremendous that they will continue to piss money against the wall on powerful platforms that will highlight ...

Prattling Polonius, Dame Slap, Paul 'the bromide' Kelly, Dennis "the bouffant one" Shanahan, the dog botherer, and so on and so forth ...

Because print lives, what a powerful platform - let's give it away at airports and anywhere else it can run wild and free - and so does the LP, and the eight track, and the Phillips compact cassette, and what was wrong with VHS anyway ...?

In Malware's agile Australia, with its third rate broadband, tree killing will still rool the roost ...

Please, do go on, the pond is captivated ...

 

The enduring value of our prestigious brands ... like, you know, the dog botherer, Dame Slap, the bromancer, prattling Polonius, the whole bunch of old farts and fogies producing the sound logicrequired for the reptile Oz's digital strategy to take over the world ...

As for the world itself?

Sorry, that story was so yesterday, here ...

The world's going to hell in a handbasket, and there won't be scientists to notice?

Yes, but what about 18C and Waleed Aly boring the socks off RN listener with that pompous prat Scott Stephens?

And so to a Rowe cartoon, which features prattling Polonius accepting the consequences for his advocacy in the media. Or maybe it was the dog botherer. Or some other reptile in the lizard Oz.

Look, you can see them standing proudly, chins held high, accepting the consequences... (and more Rowe here, in proper format) ...

Oh sorry, the pond needs new glasses. That was the Napoleonic figure of Malware ...

If you follow that link to Rowe, you can also access a bonus story ...

Yes there are others fascinated by the business plan of the reptiles of Oz, but that's a cap, the hot link is here, and while we're at it, here's a bonus Rowe, just so the pond can tidy away that other matter in the air in recent times ...