In which Savva scribbles, Malware and the onion muncher stand in front of signs, and the pond enjoys a warm shower ...

(Above: talk about delectable, and more delightful Rowe here, and no wonder some people are worried about same sex political marriage and its consequences in the bedroom of life).

When things went wrong with the pond's toilet recently, it set the pond to brooding.

Forget all that twaddle about Judeo-Christian values being the foundation of western civilisation. The real foundation is the 'loo and the sewer.

Ever since the pond once trudged across dark, eerie land to the outback dunny to keep the company of brown and red bellied black snakes and red backs, and squat over a smelly hole in the ground, the pond has treasured the indoor flushing toilet. 

Oh sure you can refine it all, and argue, like Gargantua as to the proper use of a goose's neck (goose away here) but the fundamental pleasure is in the toilet, and that's not due to the camel and the goat herders, but to the likes of the pagan, multiple-god worshipping Minoans and the Romans ...

The Romans didn't quite get the notion of garbage collection, but the role that garbos play (displacing the night carters) is the pond's second great underpinning of western civilisation. Bless their bin-pounding socks, the pond loves them, and in Tamworth, each Xmas the ritual was to leave out bottles of beer to placate these sometimes angry gods.

And the third great underpinning for the pond is the shower. Now some might like to dunk themselves in a bath and writhe in the soiled water, but the pond's great delight is a long, nicely warmed shower. 

The pleasure is enhanced by dire memories of an ancient gas heater which used to light with a whoosh and a roar that hinted at an impending explosion. And many did explode, killing, burning and maiming people.

Working class people made do - only ponces could afford fangled electric heating - but it made each shower a nightmare of cringing anticipation. As for the chip heater that preceded the gas heater, the pond has repressed all memory, cleansed by the bountiful flow of many a hot shower since ...

Mention any of this to young people and they look at you strangely.

Throw in electricity - kicked along by the pragmatic deist atheism of Benjamin Franklin and pantheist atheists of the Thomas Edison kind - and there you have lights, hot showers and the whole damn thing ...

To hell with the camel and goat herders and their primitive superstitions and threats of hell.

What set the pond off on all this? Well apart from the toilet going down, the pond was confronted with the need for a lunchtime meditation, and yet David Rowe had already said it all in one potent image ...

What need of a Savva sausage when there's a cartooning savant?

Never mind, for a brief moment Savva was top of the reptile digital page and so earned the pond's devoted attention. Such a tortured soul and such hopes for Malware ...

There's nothing like brooding about the internal ructions of the Libs and Nats to help the pond enjoy its time meditating on the toilet ...

The pond felt a verse of "only the lonely" coming on, but decided to settle for this evocative snap - unfortunately the source has disappeared into the vast unknowing intertubes, but what a handy capturing of a moment in aspic ...

He really does know how to position himself perfectly in relation to signs ...

But while the pond might throw rubbish in the bin and the garbos will take care of it - did the pond mention how pleased it is not to get a 'rejected' sticker on the recyclables bin? - some mouldy fruit manages to avoid being dumped in the compost heap...

And so the mouldy ghost of Abbott haunts Malware and Savva ...

There's a problem here, and a rich irony, in that it's the very reptiles that Savva works for that celebrate, support and lavish headlines on every move that the wall-bashing onion muncher makes ...

There's such an abundance of riches that the pond will settle for a recent masthead which had Bob Carr - master of NSW infrastructure - cheering on the onion muncher, while the story below followed the onion muncher line ...

Up against all this, Savva's squawkings are pitiful ... especially as it's all about the way the wets are determined to punch themselves out of their soggy brown paper bag, or perhaps slap someone with a warm lettuce leaf, after fortifying themselves with a cream-puffed lamington ...

And so it goes.

Well it's more entertaining than watching a cage match - unlike the Romans, the Xian and Daesh crusaders, the pond has no appetite for blood, so this is as close to a Colosseum grudge match as it cares to get.

But thanks to those ancient Romans,  it has to be said that it doesn't get anywhere near a good crap, a proper flushing and a warm shower ...

Now speaking as we were of spineless people who stand in front of signs ...