In which the pond stays loyal to the bromancer, because the pond is always with stupid ...

Look, the pond knows it's a little late in the day, but the pond is loyal, dutiful, quite British and monarchical in its own conservative way ...

Sure, the bromancer didn't quite know how to say it, and at least in the google splash, it turned out sounding a little wrong ...

Hmm, it seems the bromancer might be tortured by his bastardry. Did he and his sub really pause for a nanosecond and think about the rhetorical flourish of either "If Australia Day is illegitimate, so are we," and "Australia Day as legitimate as us"?

The pond was instantly reminded of that old joke, frequently attributed to Winston Churchill on the intertubes ...

Now of course the pond knows that it was Einstein who cracked the joke (or possibly that vegetarian dog-loving Hitler), but the point seems to be that now we are debating just how much of a bastard the bromancer is ...

Is he five pounds illegitimate, or five million?

How else to explain why, days later, well into February, long after the oi, oi, ois have started their long journey to distant stars, he must return, like a Tamworth dog high on grass, to ancient discussions ...

The pond was moved by the sight of the trauma, the bromancing Richard III bastard brooding about his bastardry ...

And it should go without saying that the pond was moved at the bromancer's deep self-awareness and his remarkable insights ...

Of course one of the most corrosive problems - one it seems nobody can do anything about - is the amount of jibber jabber the reptiles generate, and there is no reptile more expert at the art than the bromancer ...

What he has against salami must remain a mystery to the pond, though it has to be said that it reminded the pond of the sort of anti-Italian attitudes that were rife in Tamworth back in the day. 

Garlic was another victim, and it took the pond years to become a garlic devotee ... though it wouldn't be surprising to read the bromancer rabbiting on about "the result is a garlic-pounding assault on dinkum oi oi oi legitimacy ..."

Never mind, the next gobbet is pure bizarre, and as with any bromancer outing, singularly unaware of Australian history ...

Actually it would seem perfectly reasonable to question any dependency on any foreign power, be it British, American, Caliphate or Calathumpian ...

It seems poor old Malware has already copped his first bruising at the hands of the bully boy Trump, and so it went for the Irish ...

The pond was reared on tales of wicked Oliver Cromwell and treacherous Poms, even as dear grandfather trotted off to the Somme, and lived to regret the experience and drown it and the family in drink ...

But it wasn't just the pond ... many have seen an alternative to servile worship of the British, conducted onion muncher and bromancer style by Catholics unaware of the history of Oz ...

Good old Daniel, and it's off to the Irish Times with ye for Daniel Mannix: the republican archbishop who took on the British Empire ...

To be sure, Daniel is incongruous company for an atheist, but that's how it goes, and those who prefer the company of a bromancer who apparently doesn't have the first clue about the Irish experience in Australia will be pleased by the final gobbet ...

Now the pond knows that it's not the place for a futtock of the first water like the bromancer to raise thorny questions about free will in a reptile column.

Strangle the pond in the shallow waters before we get too deep ... that's the sort of thing you have to Greg Hunt here ...

The theological doctrine of divine foreknowledge is often alleged to be in conflict with free will, particularly in Calvinistic circles: if God knows exactly what will happen (right down to every choice a person makes), it would seem that the "freedom" of these choices is called into question.[1] This problem is related to the Aristotelian problem of the sea battle: tomorrow either there will or will not be a sea battle. According to the Law of excluded middle, there seems to be two options. If there will be sea battle, then it seems that it was true even yesterday that there would be one. Thus it is necessary that the sea battle will occur. If there will not be one, then, by similar reasoning, it is necessary that it will not occur. That means that the future, whatever it is, is completely fixed by past truths: true propositions about the future (a deterministic conclusion is reached: things could not have been any other way). However, some philosophers follow William of Ockham in holding that necessity and possibility are defined with respect to a given point in time and a given matrix of empirical circumstances, and so something that is merely possible from the perspective of one observer may be necessary from the perspective of an omniscient. Some philosophers follow Philo in holding that free will is a feature of a human's soul, and thus that non-human animals lack free will.

Free will? Human's soul?

And who is this Philo who talks of these? Hmm, was he an Xian?

Nope, he was actually Jewish and around before Christ, which might make a few people wonder why the bromancer attributed the notion of free will to the Xians ...

Oh right, he was making a point about radical stupidity and an eternal willingness to forget how the Xians begged, borrowed and stole not just the marble from various buildings to build St Peters, but also filched lots of ideas from Romans, Greeks and Jews, and anybody passing with an idea they liked ...

The pond is so tired of this talk of Christian civilisation ...

But that's what happens when you have a dime novel mind expound in Christmas Cracker way on theology, history and the whole damn thing ...

Indeed, the most circular and depressing argument for no change is that a given date or symbol is unifying, because the bromancer says it is ...

And then came the obligatory mention of 18C, and then the talk of how having a discussion about the date is wrong ... because Donald Trump ...

Because Donald Trump? Is that your answer to it all? A cup of tea and Donald Trump?

The pond wondered why it just didn't cut to a Rowe cartoon, with more Rowe fortunately on tap here ...

Yes, he would be the sort of brat that threw popcorn ... and he did pay a fortune for the ticket, only to see the hair go to the flicks with his best bro ... Sad.