In which the pond blogs about the Major Mitchell of Oz, because what else can an unreliable blogger do?

The pond likes to think of its time with the Major Mitchell as a psychotherapy session, with the Major lying on a couch, and letting it all hang out ...

Of course this is a rich vein of humour for The New Yorker, remembering that it's put together in New York, and anyone with half a dime has a shrink ...

The Major Mitchell has many sources of grief and mental agitation, including but not limited to, social media of all kinds, twitter, blogging, and the market failure of the reptile Oz under his watch ...

But this is hardly surprising. Many creatures experience guilt ...

And so to today's session, where the usual obsessions, and grief, and pain, and the howl, the cry, at the sky, the heavens and the whole damn thing, will come tumbling out ...

It's all there, of course. The agitation about hipsters and smart young things, and being a fusty old fogey ... and naturally there's the standard outrage at the Fairfaxians and the way the world has gone to hell in a handbasket, and it's all their fault, this shameless, shocking dereliction of standards...

Now this might not be the most appropriate time to mention the Major Mitchell's own editorial standards, but the pond usually does it while the patient is lying helpless on the couch  ...

There's more here, and anyone who likes can have a field day googling up the story, which turns up in predictable places such as Media Watch ...

Again there's more to be found by following the link ... and much more by googling, that fiendish tool of the devil, but it's not so much the nakedness of the error, as the resolute refusal to apologise, and the returning every so often to the ashes to fan the flames back to life that gets to the pond ...

...but the pond must return to its next gobbet to couch-stricken Major Mitchell ... struggling in the grip of a deep sense of irrelevance ... or perhaps struggling with memory loss, which at least has the charm of helping scribblers over the lump of hypocrisy and the mote in the eyd...

Now there are many ironies here, not the least that the editor of a populist tabloid rag in the deep north should turn sanctimonious and righteous about the mob and the sheep and the populists ... while at the very same time, the reptiles of Oz crusade in the most bizarre way on assorted furphies, including but not limited to 18C ...

There is, in the phrasing above, a deep sense of elitism and condescension in the Major Mitchell, not least the notion that the Major Mitchell and his fellow reptiles are just the chaps to inform an electorate and to lead them out of the wilderness ...

Never mind, GOP elephant, we just have to spend a little more time in the Major Mitchell session ... and catch a final burst of bitterness about bloggers and tweeters ...

Did somebody mention the Donald?

Actually, the pond has found that, if it wants to get from point A to point B, a bus ticket, or at least an Opal card, is much handier than a Shakespeare play ...

That's not an argument about utilitarianism and language, that's just a question of whether you want to catch a bus, or you want to sound like a fucking idiot by offering the driver a copy of Hamlet ...

Don't get the pond wrong. We luvs our Shakespeare, we just can't see how comparing Bill to a bus ticket makes a remotely useful point.

No doubt the Major Mitchell is the sort of futtock who stands at the bus stop making life miserable with those who had the sense to get themselves some kind of ticket ...

As for the notion that a wide variety of media sources is good for the mental diet, the pond can say, with some certainty, that paying attention to the reptiles of Oz has resulted in a significant loss of IQ, of balance, and of perspective ...

No amount of alternative sources can make up for the bizarre, the rabid, the paranoid, and the fetid festering ideas that come with the kool aid served by the lizard Oz water cooler ...

It's easy to end up thinking everyone is a stooge of Russia, and a lickspittle lackey of the dictator Putin, and worse, a never-ending tweeter of nonsense and stupidity ...

But that brings the pond to a point the Major Mitchell might like to consider if he wants to go Order of Lenin hunting these days ...

Has he thought of checking out this tweeting Ruski lover and the lickspittles who fawn over him?

Ah yes, the only thing that's been enhanced by reading the Major Mitchell and the other reptiles is the pond's sense of the wondrous ironies that abound in the world ...

And speaking of fictional, unbelievable, tosspot characters, here's where the Major Mitchell's tweeting Ruski lover hangs out with the Murdochians of the world ...

The Major Mitchell rails at tweeters, while the Murdochians elsewhere hail the Ruski-loving tweeting chief?

Well that's worth a David Rowe cartoon, remembering that many more Rowe cartoons can be found here ...