In which the pond celebrates girlies with the Terror and sheds tears for the huge suffering in Toorak and Higgins with Dame Slap ...

Yes, the reptiles are in a state of high agitation today. Not just in the tree killer edition but in the digital edition too ...

Needless to say, the pond was shocked to its core.

Girls banned?! It was outrageous, it had simply gone too far ...

Humans?! Womyn? Wom*n? Fie, gadzooks, the pond spits on the words, the very notions ...

Never fear, the pond was on hand, thanks to the Terror, to remind us all that girls are girls ...

It was around this point that Miranda the Devine got into the game, perhaps because all Mirandas are alike in the dark, and it happened that Tim Blair and the pond agreed, proving that a stopped clock will also agree with the pond twice a day ...

It was around this point that the pond felt like asking how much proof does Miranda the Devine need that the Terror is really about enforcing a radical sexual ideology on innocent men, women and children, without parental or any other kind of consent, except the click-bait trolling one of voyeuristic display ...

Well the pond hadn't finished with its naked and blatant attempt to encourage traffic, thanks unto the Terror, hitting us with all the hard core insights it could muster ...

All the news you want, whenever and wherever and however you want it. The pond and the chairman are one ...

Thank the long absent lord page three has gone, so it can become pages one to a hundred and counting.

But enough of the pond's feeble attempts to drive traffic.

Up against the Terrorists the pond is a rank amateur, all the more so now that we must turn to contemplate and ponder the enormous, endless suffering of the rich, thanks to this being Dame Slap day.

Right from the outset, the pond found the Dame's splash provided a piquant juxtaposition ...

Indeed, indeed, and perhaps that talk of home ownership will resonate a little further down the page.

Meanwhile, the pond could sense it was about to be moved to tears and perhaps to a deep, abiding sense of anger at the injustice of it all ...

It was outrageous, the pond was shocked to the core.

The pond could well remember the outraged howls when John Howard varied the superannuation in favour of the rich, willy nilly, and absolutely without regard to the way people had relied on a superannuation charter, if you will, that had explained how things were fixed for life. Wasn't there enough suffering in the world already?

Indeed, indeed, it was around this time that the pond began weeping tears of blood ... wait, what's that you say?

Read more? Oh okay, if you insist, the pond is always moved to tears at the suffering in Toorak.

Having once been a resident of that fine suburb and endured battles with the Rollers in the supermarket car park for supremacy and a space, the pond knows about survival of the fittest, and let the strongest bumper win, and is always primed for tales of woe ...

So much suffering, so little time. Of course the pond has no idea of the John McMurrick who so poignantly appears in the Dame Slap story is the same one who appears in these tragic tales of Toorak and Melbourne business, but if indeed there are two John McMurricks, this is surely evidence of how widespread the suffering is in that unhappy town.

Right, around this time, it seems appropriate to return to Dame Slap for a final gobbet of suffering, and heroic endurance in the face of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ...

By the way if anyone's wondering about the electoral division of Higgins, the AEC has a profile here.

It is perhaps one of the most tragic gulags of hapless poverty and suffering the pond has come across in its time in Melbourne, the pond having lived in Fitzroy, Windsor, Toorak and Prahran in its day (on that side of the river, let's not boast about the other side), and been shattered by the sight of the victims of government forced to scrounge for daily survival in Toorak village.

And now, knowing everyone has already enjoyed Colbert opening the convention, the pond looks forward in anticipation to the crowning of teh Donald, and his opening words ... thanks to Horsey in the LA Times here.

Oh and while the pond isn't usually a big fan of Seth Meyers - there's something in the delivery that's a bit unsettling - as it's raining in Sydney, and so the intertubes have slowed to a crawl, The Optus The, or if you will in German, Die Optus Die, and this is all the pond can bear to attempt to upload this day, the pond offers this instead of another post  ...

This one even passed the rigorous scrutiny of the pond's unfailingly grumpy partner ...

Remember, the only pleasure left in the face of the impending apocalypse is laughter ... now to go play Nebraska again ...