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 ...