In which an Oreo-deprived pond makes do with a Taplin and a hole in Henry's bucket ...

The pond faced a serious problem.

There didn't seem to be any tasty Oreo snack in the reptile rag this day - oh the horror, the horror - but maybe the reptiles will redeem themselves tomorrow ...

The result was that choice between the two dullards at the top of the digital opinion page was agonising ... and perversely the pond decided to go with a standard whine and moan about the suffering of Americans ...

At least Jonathan Taplin would give the pond a chance to joke about being in the clutches of logarithms, the devious perverted Facebook and YouTube mathematics which surely explain the Donald's rise to power ...

And there'd be a chance to complain about being made to watch Oliver Stone's hagiographic, beatific version of Snowden's life. too ... 

For this Taplin thinks we should pay money? Oh and vey to that ...

Stone was always a wildly erratic film-maker, but now he's turned to tedium and unlikely Rubik's cube gimmicks ... and naturally it sent fact-checkers into a frenzy, while the pond just nodded off ...

It's a bit like all that faux outrage about Lenovo last week, featuring that prize doofus and fool Peter Jennings (ABC here) when any fool would know that Lenovo already supplies all the clunky, useless secure personal computers designed to keep Australian public service secrets safe from the world ... this is a standard joke amongst the outraged public servants forced to use the ghastly things ...

Never mind, the pond looked at the Stone movie, and wondered what it would be like to have paid to watch the clunker in an actual cinemah ... surely the damage to the seating would have exceeded the cost of a little piracy ...

Anyway, the pond could write Taplin's copy in its sleep - possibly did in some report some time piously rabbiting on about Australian content, as if anyone in the real world United States gave an actual flying fuck about Australian content, as opposed to their insatiable desire for territorial restrictions and limitations as a way of keeping the always giving golden goose egg under strict control ...

These scribblers never mention that high end Australian content is paid for by taxpayer money, by government, federal, state funding bodies, by government funded bodies like the ABC and SBS and tormented NITV, or by the public, watching television commercials, or by the public paying for pay TV and watching television commercials anyway, because who doesn't like to pay to watch commercials?

It's a bit rich to be suddenly talking of the need to pay through the nose when punters have paid through the tax dollar nose to fund the high end product... but Taplin will do it anyway right at the end of his pitch ...

The problem with this of course, is the need to pretend that major Hollywood studios give a flying fuck about the rights of creators as they go on milking, in House of Mouse style, copyright protections for an unseemly eternity, or at least a hundred years, whatever will keep the Mouse safe for the House.

But that's the way it is for the mafia and oligopolists, so long as the rackets can be made to endure, let them carry on ... oh, and now we need to make mention of long suffering Australian content ...

Sorry Mr Taplin, the real disaster for Australian film-makers would be if federal and state governments were to take away their funding of feature films and TV shows, or strip the ABC and SBS of the small amounts available for production. As for journalists, they're in their own disaster zone, but that's called News Corp, and Fairfax, so it's very hard for the pond to care ...

As for musicians, that tide ran out long ago, and actual musicians realised there was still good money to be made performing - because they had the skill set - and that online was a useful advertising adjunct, and that kept them out of the huge goliaths that have abused and misused humble musos for decades ...

Don't come crying to the pond about the way that Sony loves musicians.

And puhlease,  don't go on pretending that maintaining American monopolies is all about shedding crocodile tears for Australian artists ...

Besides, the pond is now well and truly in the grip of the logarithms, and the net effect of that is the way it can provide alternatives to watching tedious crap like Stone doing Snowden as if he was the virgin Mary ...

But wait, this is all very tedious navel-gazing fluff, not nearly as good as a snack on a succulent Oreo, and then the pond thought, 'why stop there? We can have it all. We can get an answer to the compelling question: does 'Hole in the bucket' Henry provide a desiccated coconut compelling alternative to the Ore3o?

Well that splash header about Trump's policies being likely to backfire is hardly original. There seems to be a lot of backfiring in the wind, or car farting, as the pond's uncle used to call it ...

So much car-farting, so little time. Could we change the header Henry, thanks be unto content devourer Google?

Why yes, that's much better and so, Taplin permitting, it's on with the read, and a Henry who doesn't sound a bit like an Oreo but actually sounds a bit scared ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, will the final apocalypse and the rapture be so tedious?

Should the pond return to poor Taplin's problem?

Here's your solution. Treat your customers as your enemy, trick them, subvert them, mislead them ...

Yes, sell them a shitty box, use territorial locks for out of date discs, apply geolocks to content to cater to the old players, use FUD to keep your customers with you ... and more FUD ideas here ...

We've seen and heard them all, but there's a bloody big hole in that bucket now ...


Now it's back to dear old hole in the bucket Henry making ready for the apocalypse ...

It's going to get uglier? But Henry, dear Henry, News Corp has been making it uglier for years ...

What now, Henry, now that all your scribbling for the reptiles and dutiful tugging of forelock to the neo-cons has come to this beast slouching towards the Treasury?

Dammit, there's a hole in all our buckets ... but it simply wasn't the same as a delicious Oreo snak on a Monday, uplifting and morally certain, which is why the pond is suggesting a little singalong.

Now before Jonathan gets on his high horse and rides furiously out of town, the pond is simply doing what bloggers like the Bolter from way back when, and little Timmie Bleach do, which is ... fill up the content consuming space by putting up a link to Youtube ....

Please Jonathan, go talk to the hand or to the head of Fox, Chairman Rupert ...

And now, to the tune of "Bring back the Oreo. Make the reptile rag GREAT AGAIN!", a little Harry Belafonte and Odetta ...