Day 77 of MUC and day 30 of MOC, and the usual guff resumes, thanks to John Roskam and the bromancer ...

(Above: ah Melbourne, Melbourne, or should that be oh Fitzroy, oh Fitzroy?)

The pond returned to broken broadband and a sodden city, and suddenly the poignant tale of A tale of two broadbands resonated even more loudly ...

Thanks to the propensity of the newspapers to give away their tree-killer product, the pond was inundated with acres of newsprint on the weekend, consisting of the usual guff - Peta ravaging the PM, the bromancer yearning for robust Christianity, and so on ...

But perhaps the pond's favourite moment came from John Roskam in Friday's AFR (they want four bucks for this? Och Donald, where's me trowsers):

What he said confounds all the stereotypes of capitalism and free markets. He talked about a particular cliché that is constantly repeated, but wrong. He said that in fact people should not "Live each day as if it were your last." And he went on to explain:
"The best way to take this advice is to do exactly the opposite. Live each day as if you will live forever. That means, first and foremost, that you should treat the people around you as if they too will be around for a very long time to come. The choices that you make today matter, because their consequences will grow greater and greater. That is what Einstein was getting at when he supposedly said that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. This isn't just about finance or money, but it's about the idea that you'll get the best returns in life from investing your time in building durable friendships."
In those few sentences Thiel summed up the essence of capitalism and the free markets.

In those few words, John Roskam, channeling one Peter Thiel, summed up ... the enormous stupidity of John Roskam, as if somehow other systems than capitalism didn't develop, cultivate, rely on and exploit peer group friendships ...for good and ill.

 That means, first and foremost, that you should treat the people around you as if they too will be around for a very long time to come in the party comrade. The choices that you make today matter, because their consequences will grow greater and greater, especially if it's Stalin or Adolf. That is what Einstein was getting at when he supposedly said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, an idea he adapted from Abe Lincoln, who first picked it up when reading Sun-Tzu before publishing it on the intertubes for all to understand. 
This isn't just about finance or money, but it's about the idea that you'll get the best returns in life from investing your time in building durable friendships with your comrades and their guns...
In those few sentences, the pond summed up the essence of communism and fascism and the constrained market ....

As for the Einstein quote, you can find more on it here, but Roskam really should have had his logline as "Human relationships flourish in societies where freely silly quotations prevail in ways that would make even preachers quail ..."

And so it's back to the mundane real world, and it's a measure of Turnbull's, and the reptiles' increasing desperation that this should be the front page of the day ...

Now the pond heard a little about this dispute and saw the protestors gathered outside Spencer street (damn you Melburnians, that's it's name, not some faux patriotic rip off involving the southern constellation, and what makes you think that Swanston street is a mall, you deluded, street-art-loving geese?), and irrespective of the notion of the volunteers using their government-funded cars and government-paid petrol to attend the demo, the question seemed to revolve around whether you should send two units to a fire in a bin, when one might attend and advise a second unit whether it might be useful to turn up, as opposed to doing useful station duties like bullying the intern ...

Only in Melbourne, and only Malware would think it a useful leg up, a parochial, state-based issue in which the federal government has no standing or capacity for action, unless they re-write the constitution, while broadband, where Malware could have done something useful, is plucked, stuffed, in a word, fucked ...

Meanwhile, the pond really has nothing to do, because the anti-Malware forces keep doing it for the pond.

Oh sure there's the odd breakout moment, when the reptiles are astonished that someone could diverge from the straight, warrior true and narrow path ...

You'll notice the byline of course, it's the bromancer, who also in his Xian piece on the weekend, carried on about SSM, and the need for the churches to fold, while at the same time, urging church leaders to riot in the streets, or at least, get masculine and show some balls ...

With help like that, church leaders might be better off with Einstein for a friend.

But since that is now old news, and the pond lives only for the moment, we must turn to more recent complaints about Malware ...

Oh okay, we should at least allow a taste of day-old Bolter ...

Well that's only so we can head off to the latest work by the bromancer, which is yet another moan about Malware ...

If they keep moaning this way, someone might think there's something wrong ...

Of course it's all there in just one line ... No Liberal expects Turnbull to channel Tony Abbott on terrorism, much less to overpoliticise arrests ...

Out of the mouth of a bromancing babe ... because that's exactly what he wants.

On and on he went in the usual reptile way, yearning for the return of the hard man and the warrior ... doing a grotesque variation on Peta ...

The PM ... welcoming home the coffins would have been very powerful ...

Coffin power! Load up on your coffin power now, before it the winter sale exhausts the stock (oh Myer, Myer, no front now).

Yes, that's as low and as pathetic as it gets, mendacity of the most hideous kind, alive and in pants and in print.

Poor old John Roskam. Where does that leave his Einstein nonsense?

Never mind, we should finish up with the rest of the bromancer ...

Clearly there's much worrying and hand wringing going on at reptile HQ, and yet the more the bromancer, the Bolter and others berate Malware, the more the sirens sound and people rush to panic stations and try to turn a three year old state negotiation into a bigger issue ...eek, it's a fire in a bin ...

Desperate times, and there was the pond blithely out of it, and instead admiring the street art of Fitzroy, though not having a clue what it all meant ...

Perhaps it's some kind of metaphor explaining why anyone would spend so much of their time looking at the reptiles scuttling about in their herpetarium ... when there's a real world out there ...