How to fetche an heretike ouer the coles, or at least make a fuss over a tie ...

The Sunday Terrorists are all agush and aglow this day, and who can blame them? Such happy days, such a glowing, gushing couple ...

The pond felt a rush of affection almost as deep as Rowe's (and more Rowe here):

Being of an age, you won't find the pond joining in any cheap shots at the elderly.

There's something deeply romantic about a man so infatuated that he would foreswear and abjure twitter, leaving us with just a few final thoughts ...

Ten whole days at least! And yes, he's a Trump man now, so that the wall paid for by Mexicans and a ban on all perfidious Islamics, and sundry forms of torture might flourish in the land.

And happily the Sunday Terrorists were in peak wedding party form ...

That effort by the Bunter of the Terror, dwelling in the Terror vale of idiocy and demanding that Mal man up and stop the Chinese, somehow reminded the pond of the movies ...

Though perhaps it should have been called the white powder that roared.

The pond is eagerly awaiting an Akker Dakker call for a dinkum, world-leading full-on trade embargo to stop the Chinese. Man up Akker Dakker, what have you got to lose, except your two dollar store shopping.

Meanwhile, the essence of Devine bile used a most pathetic, ill-formed phrase. No, no, no, glass houses simply isn't good enough.

The correct terminology must feature "witch", as in "witch hunt", because, as everyone knows, Pell is something of a transubstantive witch ...

The dog botherer showed his intimate acquaintance with the correct wording yesterday, and improved upon it with "media witch trial" ...

But enough of Pell, because the pond was still in the after-glow of the raking over of old coals.

The pond was reminded yet again what a stout-hearted Catholic medievalist the wall puncher has always been ...

"Ressortir une vieille histoire de derrière les fagots" - as the French struggle to transcribe the concept - is listed by the OED as first being used in 1565:

"S. Augustine, that knewe best how to fetche an heretike ouer the coles." (OED). From the practice of dragging or raking heretics over coals performed by the Catholic Church as a form of torture.

It reminded the pond of the wall puncher's deep affection for, and emotional affiliation with, coal, that dark, beautiful source of diamonds ...

Old English col "charcoal, live coal," from Proto-Germanic *kula(n) (cf. OldFrisian kole, Middle Dutch cole, Dutch kool, Old High German chol, German Kohle, Old Norse kol), from PIE root *g(e)u-lo- "live coal" (cf. Irish gual"coal"). 
Meaning "mineral consisting of fossilized carbon" is from mid-13c. First mentioned (370 B.C.E.) by Theophrastus in his treatise "On Stones" under the name lithos anthrakos (see anthrax). Traditionally good luck, coal was given as a New Year's gift in England, said to guarantee a warm hearth for the coming year. The phrase drag (or rake) over the coals was a reference to the treatment meted out to heretics by Christians. To carry coals "do dirty work," also "submit to insult" is from 1520s. To carry coals to Newcastle (c.1600) Anglicizes Greek glauk eis Athenas "owls to Athens."

The pond got quite carried away with thoughts of owls and coals.

It turns out that, as with dinosaurs and many other things, the camel herders and fisher folk who constructed the bible didn't have much of a clue about real coal, and tended to blather on about the coals of fire:

It is by no means certain that the Hebrews were acquainted with mineral coal, although it is found in Syria. Their common fuel was dried dung of animals and wood charcoal. Two different words are found in Hebrew to denote coal, both occurring in Prov. 26:21, "As coal [Heb. peham; i.e.,"black coal"] is to burning coal [Heb. gehalim]." The latter of these words is used in Job 41:21; Prov. 6:28; Isa. 44:19. The words "live coal" in Isa.6:6 are more correctly "glowing stone." In Lam. 4:8 the expression"blacker than a coal" is literally rendered in the margin of the RevisedVersion "darker than blackness." "Coals of fire" (2 Sam. 22:9, 13; Ps.18:8, 12, 13, etc.) is an expression used metaphorically for lightning proceeding from God. A false tongue is compared to "coals of juniper" (Ps.120:4; James 3:6). "Heaping coals of fire on the head" symbolizes overcoming evil with good. The words of Paul (Rom. 12:20) are equivalent to saying, "By charity and kindness thou shalt soften down his enmity assurely as heaping coals on the fire fuses the metal in the crucible." (here)

So let us have no talk of rising seas, or the land growing hot (Climate change: February smashes global temperature records to become the warmest month since records began), coals it is as the meme of the day ...

But enough of the Sunday meditation, because the pond would like to revert to said coal raking.

Within a very short time of the damp squib Savva hitting the top of the reptile digital page, the reptiles diligently re-phrased everything she said and put that out too ...

It went on and on and on, but suffice to note that there wasn't a single original insight or new bit of information to be seen ... instead it was more like a primer, of the kind now found everywhere on the intertubes for schoolkids anxious to cheat in their exams.

It should have properly been titled Stefanie Balogh's Niki Savva for Dummies or cheapstakes too tight to lash out on the book even if we have knocked off 35% RRP for reptile lovers ...

But even though the pond knew it was being had, it couldn't resist another Balogh raking over of the coals ...

Now in these ritualised re-tellings, a couple of things emerge.

First the reptiles can't get enough of the shots of the witch Credlin balefully hectoring men.

This is where their anxieties about witches and witch trials and witch hunts comes from, an anxiety started by that baleful, hectoring Juliar ...

And the trivial way that Abbott allowed his government to be run now produces an insane level of trivial detail ...

And there you go, blue ties, red and white black ties, and a doofus so dumb he didn't even know the shares he held ... and while the world and his government was going to hell in a handbasket, the ruling elite were worried, not about cake for the mob, but about ties for the boss ...

Is there a Freudian phallic trouser snake in the house?

Well there's nothing else to say this Sunday, except to note that for once Annabel Crabb hits the right apocalyptic, Bob Ellis-tie-stained-with-tomato-sauce-and-pie note in The end of the world is nigh:

Andrew Bolt Agrees With Twitter. Forget locust plagues, or sinister horsemen, or the sun turning black like sackcloth made of goat hair; the recent spectacle of Twitter and News Corp's in-house Prophet Of Unrepentance being on the same page is the most-terrifying-yet hint that the Reckoning is indeed at hand. For several hours on Wednesday, after the Prophet published a column intimating that Cardinal Pell was a heartless liar after all, an appreciable chunk of the Twittersphere fell to reflecting that perhaps Bolt wasn't so bad and you certainly had to (grudgingly) admire someone who knew how to admit he was wrong and so on. A miracle they did not have to wait long to see repeated. Mr Bolt soon recanted, inexplicably citing some poetry he had written as a teenager and declaring that it was all a bit of a mistake and he felt dreadful about the column, and owed the Cardinal an apology. Stand by for his forthcoming book: Still Not Sorry (Apart From That One Time In Rome). 
Cory Bernardi To The United Nations: Announced on Tuesday; a three-month posting to New York for the Senate's greatest critic of the UN. Fairly sure this was in Nostradamus somewhere. A mighty oarsman, as the universe's shadows grow long, shall cross two continents and two vast oceans to attend the great and fallible council of the modern world, against whom he has railed mightily. He shall smite those who abjure the flesh of the unblessed oxen, yea, and sprinkle pork crackling into the luncheon buffet, and possibly poison the minds of the diplo-bureaucracy against Kevin Rudd. 

And so on ... yes the pond was aware that Cory was off to join the UN world government, as a way of undermining its use of climate science to achieve its nefarious ends - brave warrior, noble selfless crusader - and awaits developments with much anticipation.

Meanwhile, First Dog provided everyone with a game that could be played while waiting for the apocalypse. You can get the board here, and remember you'll need these cards to get to the bottom. 

First prize is a coal-stained tie, essential for any professional inquisitor in their daily work, and a brazier full of glowing coals for raking of heretics therewith ...