In which the pond gets back to basics with a fruity Oreo ...

Luckily the sun still shines on a Monday in at least some parts of the world, and so as surely there will be a reptile story about 18C ...

But between 18C and a taste of Oreo, the pond has no choice. This is a back to basics Monday with the essence of free-floating paranoia wafting in the breeze ...

Some might think there's a basic mis-step there. 

Is a parrot a deep thinker? Is a squawker capable of thinking for her- or himself?

Can the Oreo deliver anything other than bizarre fundie reptile rhetoric by rote?

Only the Oreo knows ... but one thing is certain. There will now always be an obligatory reference to St Bill of the Leak, who was fast tracked to heaven and who now looks down benignly on the reptiles, offers his guidance, rewards prayer, approves of their thinking and smites mightily anyone who might dare to disagree ...

Now the pond has no idea how Baudelaire, a dangerous modernist, got into the conversation ... one week the Oreo is warning of the dangers of modernism, the next she's in bed with Les Fleurs du Mal ... but please, the pond lives in Newtown, and if Xians in the street are as rare as a drag cabaret in the Kremlin - oh such an amusing, witty conceit - somebody forget to tell the builders of this monolith, this veritable Tower of Babel ...

As for the students, they've been kicked out, thanks to high rents and the merchant banker moving in next door, and now must forlornly trudge from Redfern railway station to their educational temple which no light rail passeth ...

As for the rest, the pond senses a deep repugnance in the Oreo for any suburb brimming (or even rimming) with activists, lesbians and gays, let alone students ...perhaps she's channelling Erika ...

Never mind, the pond rudely interrupted the Oreo in mid-persecution anecdote, and so we should now return to what turns out to be just another way to express fundamentalist outrage at the notion of anyone daring to be different...

At last it seems as if the light of understanding has entered the pond, which had often wondered why the Oreo was so barking mad, and howled at the moon with a vigour which was exceptional even for an elite member of the reptile commentariat clique ...

The entire text is infused with Xian yearning and not just for St. Bill.

Those last few lines seem to indicate that the Oreo is deep in religious and biblical fundamentalism ... what with the obligatory quotation of John, but perhaps even more weirdly the citation of the holy trinity of liberty, democracy and Xianity ...

Perhaps the pond could match Baudelaire with a bit of Blake ...

Never mind, the pond might feel that way each time it walks past the angry Sydney Anglican educational temple of doom, but it will never bind joys and desires with briars, and that's why there's always a fruity Oreo treat on the pond ...

But wait, there's more ...

Yes, even Gra Gra, deep in his senility and ill-health, has turned to St Bill for a blessing ...

Totalitarians?

Suddenly spending your money as you see fit is totalitarianism? And somehow this all gets folded into yet another re-telling of the persecution of St Bill ...?

Silly old git. He must have needed a Monday earner, and knew what would be an easy sell to the reptiles.

Truly, the kool aid in the Surry Hills bunker is strong, and everyone must sup on it before scribbling ... or is there an even deeper explanation?

Yes, in the way that starlings do their murmurations, the reptiles of Oz picked up on a dangerous trend ... the dissing of mateship ...

But there's the problem in a nutshell. 

How to sort out the manly mateship from the unmanly mateship which sees unmanly mates consort with unmanly mates? And in an unmanly way refuse to drink certain sorts of beers.

To solve the problem, we need some sort of alert system, and luckily Rowe has produced one, and more timely Rowe here ...