In which, for a Sunday meditation, the pond contemplates swimwear and imaginary friends ...

Oh okay, it's childish, but then this is a childish blog, and frankly the head bobbing around "up your reer" relieved the pond's sense of post-Malware ennui on The Insiders this morning (and you can have the same feeling here).

And now, as the pond had some left over business from the Saturday reptiles involving religion, it seemed like it was a good subject for a Sunday meditation ...

 

Before we start, perhaps the pond should explain its own position on certain matters.

The pond dislikes the burqa and the niqab and such like intensely, but then it thinks that Islam is a stupid religion, as stupid as all the others ...

At the same time, the pond dislikes all the other forms of self-publicising, self-promoting religious garb.

If in Rome, it's startling to see all the penguins sauntering about, acting as if it's their town, rather than the town of Fellini and fountains and sublime decadence ...

And then there are the fundamentalist Jews wearing costumes that don't have much to do with camel and goat herding days, but rather are just a form of brazen window-dressing of a most peculiar kind ...

Talk about the sights and sounds of Elwood ...

It's a bit like the mockery the pond used to reserve for men in Tamworth wearing shorts, long socks and nylon white shirts bleached yellow in the arm pits from sweat ...

But here's the thing.

In the fair dibs school of life, if you're going to ban one form of religious dress and religious provocation, you have to ban all of them ... across the board ... (and you can throw in the long socks too).

Now the pond has no time for any school of imaginary friends, but the reality is that any attempt to ban imaginary friends results in them returning stronger and madder and badder - cf Russia and the growing band of imaginary friend lovers in China ...

It's a bit like those who are provoked by churches, and smash them up or get agitated by idols and tear them apart. You know, like the forefathers of the angry Sydney Anglicans. 

But the pond is a materialist, and deplores the tearing down of all forms of ritual objects and churches of any kind, tabernacles, mosques, you name it ... that's the stuff of Daesh and the Taliban and Calvinists.

Besides, the pond is rather fond of visiting finer examples of its Catholic and Anglican tradition, and thinks that Gaudi's Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia  is one of the world's great tourist spots ...

And there are dozens of more conventional temples with appeal, while even suburban churches can provide exotic sights.

So when it comes to all this, the pond is torn. Of course the pond thinks religions of all brands, stripes and kinds are a waste of time and a pox on the world, but banning the stuff doesn't work, a bit like attempts at Prohibition ...

Governments can't fix anything, as shown by Nick Cohen's spectacularly silly bit of handwringing about the dangers of the intertubes:

An urgent, if undiscussed, reform is for governments to legislate to stop Facebook and others using their algorithms to deliver news users want to hear, rather than need to hear. (more nonsense here).

Yes, and there's an urgent need for governments to legislate to hold back the tides. Damn you moon, damn you and your interfering ways ...

And with that preamble, what does reptile Overington think of it all?

Well yes, the pond on its rare visits to the beach always dresses up in and out of the water and ensures full coverage.

That's because it's seen what skin cancer can do, especially given the freckles and the Irish genes, and remarkably - unlike some relatives and friends - the pond survived the cult of sun tans and sun burns and a crisp-chip look, and heading out into the noon day sun with mad dogs and Tamworth folk, and luckily emerged unscathed. The alternative - you know, death - can be hard to endure ...

For its pains and its unsightly coverings, the pond is routinely mocked, and yet it wasn't so long ago, Annette Kellerman - there's a swimming pool named after her just down the road from the pond - was fighting for the right to swim in modern gear and getting hauled off for her pains ...

It's all relative in the end, and as the pond has gone on in years, the tendency to full body cover like the pond's peasant grandmother has grown.

But back to Overington ...

Well yes, it's not just the angry Sydney Anglicans and their complimentary women who have used religion to tell women what to wear and what to do, and the pond's reaction has always been to tell the patriarchy to fuck off.

Not in a feminist Germaine Greer way. Just in simple, why don't you just fuck off way ...

But then they used to measure the hemlines at Catholic school in Tamworth with a ruler ...

Of course this sort of petulant defiance can lead people down the wrong path. 

The next thing you know you might be wearing a bikini and copping a load of skin cancer, while the disapproving beach inspector clucks and tuts like Norman Bates as he glowers at the female form in a peculiar mix of lust and prudery, of a kind notable in all forms of fundamentalist religion, and not just angry Sydney Anglicans wanting to tame their complimentary women ...

And so to Overington for the wrap-up:

Well yes, and sadly that's the end result. 

There are stupid women who, in order to associate with patriarchal men, adopt the dress codes required of them. And next thing you know you're in Saudi Arabia unable to drive, and with gays persecuted, and exporting fundamentalist Wahhabism around the world ...

But then there are stupid men who think that their imaginary friend requires them to wear a frock ...

Oh come on, of course the pond was going to slip in a free frock show ...

What to do? Well banning doesn't work and neither does mockery. 

Secular schooling is important, though the conservatives of Oz ruined that by insisting in the right to fund all forms of religious indoctrination, from old-fashioned Tykery through Exclusive Brethen cults to fundamentalist Islamics - here no art, here no music - to scientologists, and thereby made a mess of everything ...

And they keep doing it what with John Howard and school chaplains and Tony Abbott and ... the next thing you know, they wonder why fundamentalist Islamics are shouting 'fair dibs' across the aisle to fundamentalist Catholics and Anglicans, while agreeing on the persecution of gays, women's rights and evolution.

That's not to say that religion should be altogether banned in education, but it's best appreciated in a comparative religion course where the wide diversity of imaginary friends can be understood.

Students will still go off with their own preferred brand of imaginary friend, but at least they've been introduced to the notion of diversity, and perhaps that might help promote tolerance. Then again ... it's the business of imaginary friends to be intolerant and jealous of other imaginary friends, even when they're supposed to be one and the same ...

As for the rest, well unfortunately it simply gets too difficult to try and pick and choose in the banning of religious symbols and dresses.

If you stumble across someone who buries the forks out in the back yard, you just have to do your best and smile and conform to their weird dietary laws while breaking bread with them... though the pond knows some at least can be tempted by the wafting smell of delicious bacon.

Equally unfortunate, delusionals and their imaginary friends are always going to be with us ...

All that can be done is dress for the beach according to taste, period and your fear of skin cancer, and if you spot an eccentric on the beach, dressed in a weird and funny way, remember it's just as likely to be the pond as to be some fundie crank... and it's most unlikely to be Helen Mirren in Age of Consent  ...

Oh, and just because it will arouse unseemly lust and unimaginable conflicts in the tortured minds of devotees of fundamentalist Islam, Catholicism and angry Sydney Anglicanism, here's a couple of snaps for the gentleman reader and the feminist with sapphic tastes ...

Yes, it's not just Norman Mailer that can find the female body a source of inspiration ... and as the pond mentioned Age of Consent, we've got to keep the level of art appreciation and the clicks up ... so cop this fundies ...

Oh sheesh, didn't anyone think of the skin cancer?