Day 40, and never mind the Chinese being alienated, it's the Japanese alienated too ...

(Above: and more Rowe here).

The pond knows it should pay attention to the Mutton Dutton but truth to tell, it would get the pond in such a state of agitation and stress that it's better to move on to other things.

And fortunately the bromancer has come up with a ripping beneath the sea story of woe and pain this day ...

Yes, it's the saga of the sous-marin subs, and the pond simply can't get enough of it.

Now it will be remembered that Australia has just offended the Chinese by refusing to approve the latest land grab. 

But this is clearly just window dressing to hide the way that the devious Malware has pandered to the bullying Chinese by favouring the French in sous-marin matters ...

The pond was mortified. There seems to be only one solution. Despite his claims that he was over the hill, just another elder statesman trying to help the Bolter attract attention to his new TV show, the wall punching onion eater must be brought back at once. 

Let's face it, we can't go on without the mad monk, because a friend of Japan is a friend of Abbott, and a friend of Abbott is a friend of Japan, and let no Malware interloper ruin this deep bonding. Or if they do, they must deeply pause for most serious reflection.

Now the rest is a very long read, and the pond has already established at nauseating length the contradictions embedded in the bromancer's assorted positions ...

Let us start with a flashback. Iris in please, maestro ...

Ah yes, the good old days ...

But back to the present and the yearning for the onion muncher ...

And now Malware, via ScoMo, has refused to sell off the farm to the devious Chinese! Would it be possible to find clearer evidence of an international conspiracy of the first water?

And then it occurred to the pond that it could indeed get worse. 

We could have the bromancer roaming around Japan talking up his man love for the onion eater to the dangerous 'leets ...

A soulmate! A brother in a band of brothers ...

It goes without saying that the pond was shocked to the core. Not the WSJ! Why it's likely that Fox News was also agitated and upset ... oh how the legacy of a wonderful onion eater has been so cruelly trashed. 

The pond hopes everyone passed quickly over the bromancer's own saucy doubts and fears and the epic stupidity of the wall puncher's behaviour in making a captain's pick giving the gig to Japan without a nanosecond's thought about the processes or the consequences ... yet another benighted knighting as it were ...

And indeed, there's the kicker. Unless Australia dumps Malware and brings back the onion eater, all will be lost!

Never mind that he started the fuck-up, a fuck-up graphically recorded by the bromancer in his own saucy doubts and fears words ...

Nope, now there's now more mischief to be made talking up the discord with Japan.

The lesson? The bromancer and the onion muncher will do their level best to keep on fucking with the minds of the Japanese. 

Now these perceptions may be unfair, but they are widespread. This whole sorry messed-up episode started with the wall puncher - even the bromancer at one point thought he'd mucked it up - but now there's more mischief to be made ... and don't be fooled for a minute by the onion muncher's denials on the Bolter's show into thinking that none of this matters. We might be in the third act, and Hamlet might be dithering, but there's still at least two acts to go ...

So it matters deeply, especially to the onion muncher and the bromancer ...

Never mind, here's a couple more cartoons in lieu of a commentary (more Rowe as above, and more Moir here)... and lo, behold Malcolm Abbott ... (with forced video)

Day 40 - is it day 40 already - can 50 be just around the corner - and the pond surveys the mood of the reptiles this day ...

(Above: and more Popery here).

At last the pond's idea of a VFT linking Newtown to Woollahra is coming to fruition. Provided we use copper for the tracks, the pond can see itself zooming over to Bondi Beach for a coffee and a surf. As for that defamatory portrait of the pond looking at its watch in a cloud of cobwebs, the pond warns Pope he's on very thin ice. The pond never wears a watch ... that way disappointment would be continually confirmed ...

Sorry advocates of the Hornsby to Penrith line, wait your turn. As for advocates of the Bedford Park to Largs Bay, and Dandenong to Footscray lines, you do realise there's no need to visit any of these suburbs at any time?

But sotto voce, there are serious matters to discuss this day, as the reptiles turn their thoughts to the future.

The reptile efforts can be divided into the three broad camps this day. There's the utterly predictable ...

... well yes, it's to the undying shame of clap happy Mark Scott that he never gave prattling Polonius his own show ...and yet he's such an exemplary talent, so full of dry wit, such an engaging personality for the cameras, and surely for discerning viewers, who would be hypnotically entranced by seeing him in full flowering flight ... much as the pond remembers being beguiled by BA Santamaria. Now there was a towering televisual talent.

Then there's the reptiles in team coaching mode ... how to mould the base, disreputable clay of the Turnbull government and get them back into power ...

The oscillating fan is particularly excited by the prospect of Mark Textor returning to do his thing, and indeed, so is the pond. 

Indeed, indeed, about time. Where else, how else, would we get such exciting thoughts as these?

Ah yes, Mark Textor quits Twitter after death threats, and  Mark Textor's racist Twitter rant, and what about 'Bigger than Ben Hur': Mark Textor and Lynton Crosby's Twitter defamation case against former Federal Labor MP Mike Kelly?

The pond's well into the unofficially official campaign and the boredom factor is high. Forty days and it's still officially unofficial even as we go about the official business of the campaign.

As for the dog botherer, he's in half-time mode. The much-loved Manly - Collingwood if you will - football team is in trouble, but the coach is at hand, and all that's needed is someone ready and willing to take the ball up the guts. None of this fiddle faddle on the edges! Up the guts!

Frankly there wasn't a dry eye at the pond after reading the dog botherer's exhortations and anyone wanting the full coaching manual can just google the text. Feel the onion eater, be the onion eater ...the more they whinge, the more they squeal, the more Malware can be certain he's channeling Abbott.

But then there was a third camp, the doubters and the worriers and the agitators and the provocateurs ...

The controversy even attracted the reptile editorialist:

Now the pond was shocked.

If we can't sell off the farm, what's the point? Does this mean Barners and the agrarian socialists have won and soon enough we'll be paying a hundred dollars for a lamb roast?

Heck, what's one or two per cent of the country? The pond has long advocated a lease back deal with the Chinese which would see us sell off the entire country, make everyone millionaires in the process, and then lease it back at a peppercorn rate ... talk about sorting out the debt, and avoiding paying taxes, as any decent multinational like News Corp is wont to do ...

Yes, the rest of the reptile editorial was more of the usual same, with a bit of alarmist fear and hysteria and paranoia thrown in for good measure ...

Indeed, indeed ... and if the GOP goes with teh Donald - the ultimate fruition and flowering of conservative and tea party endeavours - we'll all want to join News Corp and Malware in setting up international accounts and companies on remote islands ...

Okay, okay, it isn't Moorice, but the pond can only hope for one Moorice a week.

Day 39, and everything's rooned said Moorice ...

Ah that's better, nothing like starting the day with a Pope and a horse's head in the bed, and you can do the same by bookmarking Pope's gallery here ...

Friday's usually a slow day for the pond, as the reptiles slumber on their hot rocks and the pond begins wrapping up the week, getting ready for the big weekend edition, and the soon to follow budget.

Oh sure, there's Tony Abbott yammering away in the background, drawing attention to himself yet again - it's all about moi, moi, moi - but the pond would usually try a little filler, such as  John Boehner's bon mot about Ted Cruz: "Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."  (gather more moss here).

But this Friday is momentous because there are some days when a giant gets down from his position as a world famous climate scientist and proud, preeminent holder of the premiere prominent position on the pond's banner, to walk in disguise amongst ordinary men, drinking milk and upholding ordinary decent picket fence values with a voice that freezes the blood of the wicked:

(And more Wilson McCoy at his very own web page here).

Yes, drum roll maestro, trumpet blast, and perhaps a burst of the mighty organ Richard Georg Strauss, if you please, let it linger a little before it dies away completely, because today the pond is graced by the presence of the mighty Moorice ...

Now the pond knows what a few cynics might be thinking. 

In this day and age, as Liberal and Labor state governments do deals with developers and conspire to pack the rats into the big cities in towering apartment blocks, talk of white picket fences is beyond the valley of the delusional... unless you count the pickets for the balcony on the penthouse floor, dressed in as a post-modernist, post-ironic, reflexive gesture.

But that's our Moorice, and that's why the pond always listens with deep awe and respect to what maestro Moorice has to say. And what joy that sometimes he leaves aside his position as the world's greatest climate scientist to sort out all the social evils that beset ordinary folk ...

Ah, the pond realises it was wrong to use that Phantom metaphor. Sure, Moorice moves amongst the ordinary folk, shouting imprecations and dire warnings, but doesn't this evoke his mind set better?

By golly, they're everywhere, these leftist cards, flying through the air, rooning everything, just as Hanrahan and Moorice say ...

Let us continue with the attack of the cards ...

What a cathartic cleansing, what an heroic shouting at clouds. Now feminists and leftists, please line up for your punishment ...

Oh indeed, indeed ... ow ow ...

Truly, the pond rarely gets great days like these, and especially on a Friday. The pond owes the reptiles and Moorice a deep debt of gratitude.

What's more, the pond rarely gets a chance to run one of the most venerable memes on the full to overflowing intertubes with absolute righteousness, fairness and a sense of truth and insight ... and yes, poetic justice ...

Meanwhile, over there in the real world, what's that the pond sees? Why it's a Rowe cartoon, portraying a fine exponent of the art of the picket fence (and more Rowe here).

Day 38, and the pond is distracted by those world famous climate scientists, the Bolter and the Pellist ...

Further things and stories the pond hasn't looked at, though the giving, cornucopian reptiles offer them up this day...

 

No, no, silly, that's not the roadmap with no idea of the toll ... you know, the one that might involve the climate doing over the planet ...

Some roadmap, some big bloody toll ... but don't expect Lloydy to count the cost, expect a fail to count the cost on that one, because that's Lloydy doing his only slightly covert denialist thing ... along with the newly reformed and chastised Malware denouncing his own past verbiage...

Well, that might interest the BOMsters and the poor buggers still left standing in a closet at the CSIRO - let them all congregate in Hobart and read the pond, the pond says - but the pond was looking for a lunchtime treat ...

Oh sure, there's the impending budget, and already the hand-wringing has begun amongst the reptiles ...

 

By golly, that snap of ScoMo looks like an up-angle flashlight shot out of a zombie or a psycho movie, but it's only a few days until we can all unwrap the prezzies and have a fine old time ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, someone kept a vintage mesh stocking from the 1950s, didn't open it up and plunder the treasures therein?

Xmas in early May?

Hmm, well, it's unseasonably warm. Settle, BOMsters, settle ...

Who knows what's in the May stocking, but there's only a few more sleeps, so the pond's happy to let Savva and Shannas toss and turn, savaged by their nightmares as they sweat in the late summer heat ...

And meanwhile the pond still steadfastly refuses to think about the gulags ... which somehow have transmogrified into the Tampa ... and a Tampa test ...

Oh Stalin himself would be pleased with that level of spin ...

With all these offerings, it takes an almost extreme act of perversity to turn to the Bolter and celebrate the Bolter celebrating the Pellists ... but if the pond can't be about supreme acts of perversity, what's the point?

The pond is routinely captivated by the way the Bolter is enraptured by the Pellist.

Perhaps it's because they're both amongst the world's leading climate scientists ...

Perhaps it's simpler. Perhaps it's because they're both barking mad fundamentalists.

Of course the Bolter's sanctimonious humbug and righteous hagiographic claptrap has to overlook a few recent and salient matters, as outlined in Cardinal Pell's credibility is on the line as Catholic church strikes back ...

And so on, there's more at the link, as meanwhile the Bolter goes about his hagiographic duty, presenting his fellow world-famous climate scientist as an heroic crime fighter ...

Well if the Pellist is fighting Vatican crime the way the Pellist fought to get rid of Searson, the Vatican is even more fucked than the pond suspected ...

As for philosophical and theological matters, the pond has absolutely no understanding what any of this might have to do with Jesus Christ and what he actually said and did ...

Oh wait, didn't he say, "suffer little children, suffer"?

That's right, and apparently teh Jesus was also an enthusiastic supporter of gulags ...

Now is there some way to bring all the themes of the day together? (And you can find more Rowe here).

Day 38, and it's periscopes up the Bolter and the Bromancer ...

The pond was traumatised yesterday. Well the pond is traumatised every day, as it keeps the company of sociopathic, rambling reptiles, but yesterday was special.

You see the broken clock known as Dame Slap told the time correctly in relation to Channel 9. Should the pond run a reptile sounding sensible? 

No, no, it runs against the spirit of the enterprise.

Besides, it's just as easy to link to a First Dog cartoon, Tonight on 60 Minutes we present a story so shocking you will be really really shocked, which has the virtue of pictures ... and doesn't carry on in the Dame Slap way about the good old days of 60 Minutes ... when for the life of it, the pond couldn't remember any ... just the over-dramatised, over-wrought ticking clock of commercial television ...

And then there was the matter of Miranda the Devine carrying on like a goose in her usual way ...

Oh sure after resorting to Paul McHugh and the like, there were the usual hysterical Devine bon mots ...

This is the new morality of identity. Anything goes. Tolerance has stretched into a permissiveness which threatens to destroy social norms and the boundaries of commonsense.

Because transubstantiation, invisible friends and water into wine constitutes common sense for your average fundamentalist barking mad Catholic ...

But what need of the pond, when the Bolter has taken it as his mission to ravage the Devine?

Sheesh, he even makes a Devine joke.

Anyone wanting the Devine blathering on in a way to send the Bolter into a frenzy can head off to YouTube here - are you sure you have no meaningful or useful life? - and anyone worried about that last link, relax, it just hooks up with the Devine in her Joanie of the Ark pose ...

It's a reminder to the pond of the ultimate tragedy. There's so much loonacy abroad in reptile HQ, so many signs of the end times as the reptiles devour each other, that the pond simply can't cover it all.

The Bolter is a classic case. The dear, sweet red wine-swilling, opera-loving Scarpia is in quite a tizz, a state of crisis, of late ...

Now some might marvel at the way it's taken a foreign court to show some sense of justice and humanity - in a country routinely mocked as lacking even the basics of civilised behaviour.

Fancy these judicial wretches pointing out the Stalinist gulag elements in the emperor's finely woven clothes ... and daring to mention basic justice, and how problematic it is to lock up indefinitely people whose major crime is that they've been certified as genuine refugees ...

Naturally the Terrorists decided it was all the fault of former chairpersons ...

Because the Mutton Dutton has never been a lover of the gulags, and absolutely abhors the detention centres set up by the Ruddster ...

Sorry, the pond should avoid Irony 101 ...

But it wasn't the the gulags that got the Bolter going this day, even if the Stalinists love their gulags and how tragic it is that the gulags are revealed to be ... gulags, and the work of both the major parties ...

No, it was the subs, and so there was a perfect concordance between the Bolter and the Bromancer.

Now the pond has already given much space to the matter of the subs, but it's such a piquant topic, and it exposes the infinite follies of the reptiles, that the pond happily fronted up for a return dive in Das Boot ...

You see, the reptiles are mortified by the outcome, rewarding as it does, the fiendish, diabolical orientals ...

And there was much else to hand wring about ...

Now it's clear enough where the Bolter is coming from.

The Bolter has a Malware axe to grind, and any chance to grind it, he will, and so the subs matter provided the perfect axe for the grinding ...

Indeed, indeed.

The most important thing of all is to spend a huge amount of money on subs ... so that we might then be well-positioned to defend the unemployed and the wretches attracting the ire of the Bolter for being dole bludgers and welfare frauds ...

Why the very notion of giving Australians work is repugnant. Let them join the navy and become submariners if they want work ... after all, there's terrible trouble getting anyone to turn up and person the Collins subs ...

But the bromancer was more nuanced, if just as tortured ...

Of course, reading the bromancer requires a strong constitution or a rich Treasure of Sierra Madre capacity for ironic laughter.

Presumably the pompous commentators he denounces must include himself, because the bromancer wrote about the wonderful Kev Andrews and his excellent procedure just after Andrews' departure ...

...He had rebuilt trust and respect between the government and the defence organisation, put a proper process in place to choose the new submarines, established a contin­uous build policy for future surface ships, brought forward the building of the future frigates and the offshore patrol vessels.

Indeed, the reptiles have routinely celebrated Andrews and his process, just as way back in September 2015, Andrews himself highlighted the splendid attractions of the French bid ...

In what amounts to a significant change by the Coalition, Mr Andrews talked up a pitch by French submarine builder DCNS under which about three-quarters of the building work – which will cost at least $20 billion – would be done in South Australia. His enthusiasm corresponds with a widely held view in Coalition circles, including among previously nervous South Australian Liberal MPs, that Mr Turnbull is far more inclined than his predecessor Tony Abbott to build the replacement fleet for the Collins Class submarines onshore. (google the text for source).

But then as noted the other day in the pond, the bromancer has been all over the shop in relation to the Japanese bid.

One day it was a match made in heaven, the next extremely problematic ...

But the sight of the confused bromancer disappearing up his profoundly confused fundament, shouldn't distract us from the undiluted pleasure of the Bolter in full frothing and foaming flight ...

Indeed, indeed, if only we could magically excise - perhaps exorcise - the crow eaters from the Commonwealth, how much stronger the country would be ...

But the Bolter in full frothing and foaming flight shouldn't distract us from the pleasure of the hand-wringing, cavilling, moaning and whining bromancer in full distracted whinge mode ...

Indeed, indeed, who could possibly counter these weighty considerations and arguments?

You see, there's nothing for the pond to do, but watch the Bolter devour the Devine as she tries to devour the Bolter, and the bromancer devour himself and his own arguments, and the Bolter and the Bromancer do their very best to undermine Malware while shedding a tear for the lost days of the onion eater ...

It explains why the reptiles and Monty Python are the pond's favourite form of distraction, along with reeling and writhing of course, and the different branches of arithmetic - ambition, distraction, uglification and derision ..

Well, to be fair, we should include the last gobbet of the reeling and writhing Sheridan ...

Hear hear, and the further the periscopes go up the Bolter, the bromancer and the reptiles, the more entertainment for all who read them ...

And so to a Moir cartoon that elegantly captures this spirit, and more Moir - formatted outside the wretched cropping Fairfax gallery format - here ...

And while we're at it, here's a bonus Pope cartoon, and more Pope here ...