In which the pond does its Caterist duty for the day ...

The loons are early this year, dear, and their calling cry sounds even sillier. Does it signify that climate change is accelerating and having an impact on the creatures?

What you need, dear, is a goodly dose of the Caterist. A Caterist will always fix what ails ya ...

Oh okay, if the pond is up for that, however reluctantly, however much it would like to dodge the task, the pond can tackle the Caterists, though the tackling now has taken on the well-worn ritual of a slow-moving Noh play ...

Uh huh. Of course somewhere in the Caterist routine, the pond will always slip in a mention of the Caterists scoring cash in the paw taxpayer-funded government grants, and perhaps propose that handing even more money to the Menzies Research Centre is hardly the answer ...

Best to get it out of the way early, though the way the cardigan wearers dress up the pissing of taxpayer money against the wall with bureaucratic gobbledegook always inspires the pond ...

Objects set out in the constitution, activities noted, roundtables, development, research, dissemination, general expenses of a sundry kind ...

It all sounds quite grand, until you realise that the Caterists spend their spare time scribbling abuse for the reptiles ... and how kind of the taxpayer to relieve the Caterists of fund-raising duties so that the time is spare ...

Say what? How did the immortal Duffster, the man who started the pond on blogging, get into the mix?

Never mind, there's sure to be an answer, and there's only so much distraction before the pond has to take the ball up the middle, do the hard yards, mingle with bikies and boofheads and Caterists ...

Oh it was that Duffster. Wasn't he happy doing the racing and arranging for mug punters to do their dough? Wasn't that enough of a contribution to civilisation and the happiness of humanity?

Now anyone who's read the pond knows the routine, and possibly could do it in their sleep, in much the same way that the pond does ...

You know, just transcribe everything the Caterist scribbles to make use of the post-modernist irony on offer ...

"These moral crusaders at the Menzies Research Centre should face the axe ..."

"There is no easy fix. The MRC was a bad idea to begin with and it has only got worse. It will continue on its unjust, illiberal braying path until it meets a minister or a bureaucrat brave enough to stand up to the Caterists and withdraw its funding. In other words it should be abolished, or at least left to the Liberal party to fund, without recourse to humiliated, long-suffering taxpayers ..."

And so on ...

Okay, around this point, the pond expects others to do the hard yards.

You know, make up jokes about the Caterists spitting chips while pocketing an annual stipend from the taxpayer ...

Or perhaps suggest giving the Caterists a dust up or a touch up, because that's the manly response when confronted by an idle fool ...

Or perhaps it's best just to get through the last few lines and have done with it, and then run wild through the streets shouting "I'm free, free at last ..."

It has to be said, with the best will in the world, what an odious, sanctimonious, righteous, totally up himself, prick, jerk, and wanker the Caterist is ...like many of the other notorious cures that have done the rounds ...

Put it another way:

Abolishing funding to the MRC may not be the recommendation the Malware government is looking for. But if it is hoping for a more easily digestible solution, it is bound to be disappointed ...

And now, since mockery of the disabled is just the sort of thing we need in the world of the Caterists, the pond wants to acknowledge the stupendous contribution this day of the Overington ...

Of course you might just as well scribble "Stupid columns by reptiles of Oz and an entire Fox network of beavering Murdochians why Trump won?", but still the penetrating insight of the Overington must be acknowledged.

Now the pond will acknowledge that Streep isn't its favourite actress - she's too mannered and studied - though a kind word should be said for her work as Lindy Chamberlain in Evil Angels/A Cry in the Dark, especially on the day the death of Michael Chamberlain was announced to the world. At the time she was abused for not getting the Australian accent right, but that often came from people unaware she was attempting the curious mix of New Zealand and Australian that was in Chamberlain.

The film's still worth a look as a study in a classic case of paranoia, hysteria, rumour mongering and general national delusion and panic of the kind the Trumpists and Overingtons now exemplify ...

Regarding this latter day nonsense of confected lies and unapologetic shamelessness, some might like to read a corrective in a piece which Fairfax picked up - they're starting to become an outpost of WaPo.

Luckily, the piece can also be found in its original home under the header Meryl Streep called out Trump's bullying and lies. Trump just hit back - with still more lies.

Sadly people of the Overington reptile kind are no longer interested in lies or liars, but like to shoot the messenger ...

Some journalists are arguing that we need to take care in labeling Trump’s falsehoods as “lies,” because that imputes motive and intent. If some feel more comfortable labeling them “false,” that will probably suffice most of the time, with the crucial caveat that it must be done squarely and prominently. But the broader point here is that, in the debate over how to handle Trump’s profound and unprecedented dishonesty, let’s not underplay the possibility that the usual conventions of political journalism may prove woefully insufficient to conveying to readers and viewers what Trump is really up to here.

Yes, that's how you get to do an Overington and blame Streep for Trump ...

As another take on it, here's hipster activists way back when, a little too timid to state the bleeding obvious in a blindingly Trumpian way... that the man is a fraud and a phoney and a liar who makes the average professional lying, dissembling politician seem like a Trappist monk ...

And then? Well and then Overington writes a story blaming Streep for Trump.

Well the pond doesn't usually post links to full movies at YouTube, they're inclined to disappear,  even though it would irritate Fox, Murdoch and Graham Burke, and thereby score a trifecta, but this little poorly framed excerpt might whet the appetite for something other than Overington ...