Okay it's the apocalypse for a Sunday meditation about strange pleasures, but isn't watching the likes of David "piously smirking" Brooks and the Mourning Joe do public melt-downs enormously entertaining ...

With the Devine missing in action this day - Q: Could she be mortified at her recent attempts at winning the eggbeater of the month award? A: No, the Devine has no sense of shame at all, and besides she already has a cupboard full of eggbeaters and greenies hanging from lamp-posts - and only tedium on view this day in the Terror ...

Need pain relief? Why not have a drink, why not have three?

Oops, where did that hoppy toad come from? 

Never mind, with only tedium on view this day in the Terror, the pond thought it was time for a proud boast - this is, long absent lord willing, going to be a completely Olympics free site, unless a member of the reptile commentariat gets attracted to a drug scandal or the melt-down of Brazil - and also a confession to a secret, dark vice ...

You see, the pond has taken to watching the US election in much the same way as other historical figures have taken to watching major events ...

Is it wrong to find entertainment in a catastrophe, is it wrong to enjoy the sight of two trains crashing to produce a spectacular wreck?

Maybe, and every so often the pond experiences a bout of anxiety and guilt, but then the fascination, aided and abetted these days by YouTube, returns.

Now it isn't the Donald himself who beguiles the pond. He's just nasty hustler, huckster, scammer and troller straight out of reality TV. 

It's such an obvious routine ...

(And more Tom Tomorrow here)

The Donald is just the necessary given circumstances so that the pond can enjoy the real action, and that's to watch the trauma of Republicans ...

Anyone who saw the punchline in the above ad - a deep regretful sigh by Bill Orally - please, administer orally only in small doses - will understand the zeitgeist.

Take David Brooks - please someone, anyone take David Brooks. 

For years he's been the bane of the pond's life, piously pontificating away at the New York Times with that self-satisfied, urbane smirk, and ruining PBS news with his indulgent, self-celebrated political wisdom.

Now he's dangling on a spit, writhing in agony at the Donald, and the pond can't help but enjoy the spectacle.

Brooks has taken to writing about art and feel good pieces about social repair and harmony, the power of altruism, a nation of healers  - on the principle that anything is better than politics, yet with a remarkable capacity for incomprehension unimpaired...

The pond had a particular disdain for this piece of tripe about the role of artists, in full here ...

I never understand why artists want to get involved in partisanship and legislation. The real power lies in the ability to recode the mental maps people project into the world.

Yes, Picasso, don't you worry about painting a partisan Guernica. You get back to painting cows in the field.

The man has a mind as sharp as dental floss, but a good deal less useful ...

Between times, when confronted by Trump yet again doing or saying something silly, Brooks produces apocalyptic columns of doom ... with a recent one calling for a peasant's revolt ...

You can find that full column, with working links, at the NY Times as Trump's Enablers Will Finally Have To Take A Stand (careful of your access count if you're not a subscriber)...

And then there's Morning Joe, a particularly irritating loudmouth Republican dressed in on MSNBC as the token balance weirdo, who has spent the past few weeks marvelling at the way that Trump does self-destructive, crazy things ...

Luckily the Mourning Tedious Blow was away at the end of the week, and that left the mice to mount impassioned pleas and cries of pain ...

And so on, you can get the full story here, and you can of course find the Tedious Blow-hard Joe on his YouTube channel - if you pay Chairman Rupert to access him, may the long absent lord forgive you - but careful, if you join the pond in watching, you could waste your entire life ...

Is it worth the future of American politics and the world to see the likes of David Brooks and Mourning Joe writhe on the stake as the hellfires and Trump rage? Please, don't ask the pond to choose ...

Even the most wretched and contemptible have offered all sorts of pleasures. These are the lickspittle bottom feeding desperate clowns without a shred of principle or intelligence, the sort of Chris Christie lackey who go fetch because they hope they'll score a bone.

Perhaps the most contemptible of all is Hannity, at least in mainstream media (the pond draws the line at the likes of Alex Jones, there's entertainment and then there's pathological sickness, and who can get pleasure from the persecution of the inmates of the asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade?)

But the nauseating, sickening devotion of Hannity has produced some good fun ...

And so on, that story is in full here ...

Now there are some people who are taking it seriously ...

Like that Michael J. Morell CIA chap in the NY Times ...

That piece in full here ... and naturally the cartoonists were on hand to celebrate some of Trump's fine moments this last week ...

More Toles here, but the pond was reared on Dr. Strangelove ... pourquoi pas indeed ...

Now while the pond's enjoying all the fun of the circus - what a huuuggge and lavish circus it is - it occurs to the pond every so often that the tiger might escape from the cage, and full of resentment and anger, devour half the audience in the blink of an eye ...

But at least the pond will be able to go down laughing, and the whole despicable bunch of facilitators and manipulators who have ridden the Republican party in the ground since the minute Obama took office - the Brooks, the Morning Joes amongst the swill that fills Fox and the Republican establishment that thought it could ride the wave of Tea party birtherism and denialism - will have achieved everything they wished for ...

Yet if wishing for the destruction of everything is the way to define conservative, the pond will have to look for a new word to define its dull, conservative, suburban lifestyle ...

Perhaps we could avoid it by shortening any description of the GOP to the cons party ... full of cons who paved the way for a conniving, scamming clown ...

And yet, and yet, so much entertainment thanks to the clown, and you can dance with the bug here ... and a link to all the WP comics, including Doonesbury,  here ...