In which the bromancer experiences a gloomy petite mort moment, and the dog botherer rises up in anger ...

The pond knew it had to happen ...

After all the recent reptile excitement and euphoria about 18C, which the pond refused to encourage, now comes the gloom ...

Like any excitable child, the reptiles are prone to narcissism, mania, and accompanying depression, and today the cold chill of actual numbers sent the reptiles on a bad acid trip, compounded by idle chatter of devious Labor conspiracies ...

Of all the reptiles, the bromancer is probably the most petulant and childish, inclined to the sort of foot-stamping that's a feature of his onion-munching hero's political activities, and the bromancer took it in a Hanrahan "we'll all be rooned" hard way...

Talk of accents most forlorn ...

You see, 18C heralds the end of civilisation, decency, and anything else you can think of ... consider it an 18C-inspired rapture to the wrong place, hell-fire, damnation and lawless anarchy, the end of civilisation ...

Of course, speaking of identity politics, the bromancer was in his day, one of the more rabid members of the Catholic fundamentalist community ...communal politics and theology at its worst ....

Never mind, this particular rant is building up into a bromancer classic, a testament to the ages, and it is wrong of the pond to stand in the way of this featherless floozie in full flight ...

Remember, for want of a nail, 18C was lost, for want of 18C, the nation was lost, and for the want of a nation, the entire world, civilisation and everything held reptile dear was lost ...

Now by any humble and fair-minded reckoning, this is a bromancer classic, including the faux reference to poor old Xavier Herbert, who meant something quite different by Poor Fellow My Country:

Satirising his old enemies, he exposed social absurdity and injustice and dramatised what he regarded as the tragedy of Australia: its failure to uphold the ideals of the `True Commonwealth’, or to connect with the spiritualised land and its original inhabitants. Poor Fellow My Country famously decries Australia as a land `Despoiled by White Bullies, Thieves, and Hypocrites’. (here)

Who knew that Herbert had the prescience to satirise the jibber jabber of the despoiling bromancer?

And then there's the evocation of the Third World at our doorstep, and militia forces, and suddenly the pond realised it might be better to steer clear of whatever the bromancer had been drinking ...

(here for more cautionary words from Alice).

Never mind, the pond urges readers to "put it all together". Have they ever seen a reptile in a deeper, sadder, gloomier funk? Which bit of the funk is the best? Or is everything, in a Zen way, the best of the worst?

Are reptile dreams heading up the chimney in a puff of smoke?

Happily, speaking of white bullies and hypocrites, the dog botherer isn't cut from the same bromancing cloth.

The dog botherer's more a "pox on all your leftie houses" sort of reptile scribbler ... though the google conjunction shows just why the reptiles were gloomy this day ...

The pond believes that a lot of the lethargy, which when overcome, turns to anger, might be accountable for by the phenomenon known as "la petite mort" ...

All the splendid dreams of abusing the wogs and calling out the poofters and putting the lazy, shifty, uppity blacks to the sword, reaching a grand front page climax, and what then?

Listlessness, lethargy, an unaccountable tristesse, an inclination to gloom and despair, and then the anger ...

That is of course entirely unlike the way that the reptiles have used St Bill and the Bolter to inflame divisive, race-based debate ... but at least the dog botherer has the virtue of keeping his abuse short, and without the sort of Robert Burton melancholy that suffused the bromancer ...

Now, forced in to a position of judging, the pond would have to say that the bromancer's piece is infinitely superior to the dog botherer's ...

But the pond must acknowledge that the dog botherer also offers various pleasures. The pond particularly enjoyed ...

The greatest weapon and most consistently effective measure in combating racism is the daily imposition of reasonable standards by the overwhelming majority of tolerant, fair-minded people in their daily lives ...

Indeed, indeed, and personal responsibility has always been the reptile by-word - we can rely upon it ...

(at Vice, here).

Meanwhile, in another country ...

"This is an issue that if you have to deal with it, deal with it, but deal with it and move on. It is definitely not the issue people are talking about in the beer garden on Friday night or at the counters of banks, or to be quite frank, in the big office blocks when they finish work on Friday night," he said. "What they are talking about is 'what on Earth is happening to my power prices'. They want a job. "This is an issue, it is an issue but I'll be frank, it lives in the extremities of the bell curve. Where do you meet those people [who care about 18C]? At party meetings, they are absolutely blessed people and they are terribly politically involved and they have an intense interest in some of the minutiae of debate. They come into your office to rant and rave about it, all four of them."

And likely enough, the bromancer and the dog botherer were two of them ...

More of Barners at Fairfax here ...

Luckily, David Rowe has a cartoon this day which seems to summarise the fate of the reptiles and as always, more prophetic Rowe here ...