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.