The pond is always balancing and juggling ... how much tedium is enough, how many reptiles in a row will result in cries of 'stop it, stop it now, I'll do anything, just stop it', like a torture sequence in 24.
It doesn't help matters when a leading reptile like the dog botherer confesses from the get go to superficiality and inanity in his scribbling ... arising, it seems, from his regular inspection of the Newspoll runes ...
And as the pond got stuck into the read, it didn't get any deeper, what with the dog botherer's love of the Yeti, and yet he somehow manages to see a Malware yeti ...or maybe he doesn't. The pond can't rule it in, nor can the pond rule it out ...
Yet he, the dog botherer, does manage to produce a marvel and a wonder. It's the way that he and his reptilian kind have suddenly in the past few weeks, discovered a tremendous love, excitement and awe at the nation-building ways of Malware ...
Even now, the pond still celebrates Malware's magnificent nation-building effort with the NBN, from 50 to 51 in the blink of an eye, and he has, as Moir has noted, been singularly adept at Malcolm-like innovation and creativity ...
More Moir here, yet even he doesn't manage to quite capture the full charm of the dog botherer in Icarus flight ...
Marvellous, promising stuff ...
But above all, while nation-building, let us not forget the fiendish and difficult Islamics, who threaten everything ...
It will be recalled by some that we started out deploring superficiality and inanity in reptile commentary, to at last arrive in the land of "on the one hand ... on the other hand...", or if you will, you have to be silly to have read this far, and you would have to be foolish to have missed out on this level of fatuous prophecy ...
Perhaps he will, perhaps he won't. Maybe he's a goer, maybe he isn't. Could be he's a winner, could be he's a tosser. He might get back in, but having said that, contrariwise, conversely and notwithstanding, at the same time, he might not ...
Nevertheless, it would be foolish to rule it out, when we might just as easily rule it in ...
Come what may, the pond looks forward to more decisive analysis and confident predictions from the dog botherer ...it is difficult to argue in opposition to such a balanced outlook ...
But now for the bad news ...
This was just the beginning of an horrendous test. The pond has laid out an elaborate ultra-marathon route for the hardiest of reptile devotees, and in the way of such events, the pond must now plant an alarming sign on the side of the road ...
This was just the beginning of an horrendous test. The pond has laid out an elaborate ultra-marathon route for the hardiest of reptile devotees, and in the way of such events, the pond must now plant an alarming sign on the side of the road ...
Yes, it's not only the splendid juggling of the dog botherer that graces the reptile pages and analyses the state of Malware and the state of the nation ...
Nattering "Ned" has also been at it, and it's a ripper ... at least in terms of ennui-inducing length ...
If this is boldness, then bold must be the new dull ... and now a final warning ...
As they drop like flies in a bar saturated with too much spilled beer, the pond celebrates nattering "Ned's" celebration of bold, brave, decisive Malware ...
How did the pond know that 18C would be front and centre yet again in a reptile harangue?
Never mind, on we go, and this is the first of the tricky hills the course designer thought would sort out the weaklings and the losers anxious to die on their knees ...
Ah yes, good old class warfare. What to say about that?
Put it another way, sturdy marathoners ...
And now back to nattering "Ned", though the pond is wondering whether it should have borrowed the game of hurling from the Irish ...
Indeed, indeed, it's totally mystifying, all this talk of hours, and it's even more mystifying if anyone heads off to the gov.uk site here and reads this ...
All 3 to 4-year-olds in England can get 570 hours of free early education or childcare per year. It’s usually taken as 15 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year.
Some 2-year-olds are also eligible.
Oh why oh why did they settle on 15 hours?
Never mind, marathoners, remember ...
And so to the final steep climb the wicked course designer flung in, wherein nattering "Ned" proves that everybody's better off ...
It's occasionally known as the Marie Antoinette test ... or was it the Einstein or the Lincoln paradigm? ...
Well it's too soon to pause for refreshment, because nattering "Ned" must discover more examples of Labor perfidy, while celebrating the land of brioche for all ...
Fight on his feet? Strange, the pond always remembered that quote which was made famous by honest Abe Lincoln, or was it Einstein, and now litters the intertubes ...
Relax, many prefer to die on their knees, and besides, it's astonishing that anyone should expect to be compensated for the cost of energy, given the way the prices fell in such an astonishing, immediate and long-lasting way after the carbon tax was abandoned ... and nary a soul has since whispered about the idea of putting a price on carbon ...
These damned serfs, these needy peasants, are always whining and moaning ...
... but never mind, marathoners, it's the end of the ultra, and QED, it's been definitively proven that ...
These damned serfs, these needy peasants, are always whining and moaning ...
... but never mind, marathoners, it's the end of the ultra, and QED, it's been definitively proven that ...
Amen to that, and another Moir to wrap things up and sort out that energy thingie ...
" ... how much tedium is enough,"
ReplyDeleteJust call me Dunbar, DP.
But I think that finally it has come upon me that Nedddles and the Dogbotherer, and I inhabit different universes with no crossover point. This arose when I realised that they and I are talking different languages - what they write looks like some kind of English, but it just makes no sense to me at all, now.
I think I was kinda prompted to get the message when I got a practical example from reading Laurie Oakes' column in the Hairoiled-Scum this morning. The gist was that he reckoned that Malware had had a huge boost from landing a few insults on Bill Shortenin'. And then goes on to say that, but of course, the public don't actually like it when politicians do that sort of thing. Hmmm.
I suspect, GB, that when Oakes (as dull and past it as Ned, but thankfully much briefer) mentions a "huge boost", what he really meant was "It gave a huge boost to my fellow reptiles and I, yet again giving us something vacuous to scribble about instead of doing some real analysis".
ReplyDeleteBTW, does Ned get paid by the word? If so, there's yet another reason for New Corp's plunging profits.
Good lord.
ReplyDeleteImagine waking up one morning, opening your eyes, and discovering you are Chris Kenny.
A quick cup of tea, and then you spend 20 minutes or so having the computer re-shuffle the key words from your last 4567 articles into something that will assist the paper's sales dwindle.
Then a quick tweet or two for morning tea.
Then off to the next Murdoch office for the day, pick up a clipboard on the key notes for the day, and then prepare for the evening's remarkable blather and brain-farting with others from the News Ltd Poop Deck. Which will be watched by remarkably less people than read the paper.
God, I think i'll have a flask of whisky for dinner. You'd think working in Downer's office would be heaven after a day of reptiling.
"Imagine waking up one morning, opening your eyes, and discovering you are Chris Kenny."
DeleteWell vc, better than being named "Lassie" and waking up next to him...
I was delighted to see Chris Kenny using "take up the cudgels". Orwell in 1945 "I think it is time to start a campaign against some more of the worn-out and useless metaphors with which our language is littered.
ReplyDeleteThree that we could well do without out are ‘cross swords with’, ‘ring the changes on’, and ‘take up the cudgels for’. How lifeless these and similar expressions have become you can see from the fact that in many cases people do not even remember their original meaning. What is meant by ‘ringing the changes’, for instance? Probably it once had something to do with church bells, but one could not be sure without consulting a dictionary, ‘Take up the cudgels for’ possibly derives from the almost obsolete game of singlestick. When an expression has moved as far from its original meaning as this, its value as a metaphor—that is, its power of providing a concrete illustration—has vanished. There is no sense whatever in writing ‘X took up the cudgels for Y'. One should either say ‘X defended Y’ or think of a new metaphor which genuinely makes one’s meaning more vivid.