In which dashing Donners and oracular Oreo contend for the pond's top spot ...

Nothing delights the pond more than reading an anti-censorship tract, especially if it emanates from the bowels of the Catholic church, or perhaps dashing Donners ...

It provides the pond with a chance to link to the most famous contribution of the Vatican to the y'artz ... the noble fig leaf ...

Happily the fig leaf has its own wiki, here, whereby we can all recall that the joyous Roman acceptance of nudity and sexuality was vanquished by Xian prudes and pious twits ...

That sets the mood for dashing Donners' tone poem to wild-eyed hedonism, and pagan sex and violence ...

Ah, the full understanding of life and the thought police ...

Talk about rich comedy, and what do you know, a mortified pond completely forgot to mention that other great contribution of the Catholic church ...

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum has its own wiki too, here,  and handily there's a selected list of authors and works banned here ...

The pond will see Zorba the Greek and a bit of Shakespeare, and match it with Milton, Gibbon, Flaubert, Descartes, Locke, and then up the bet with Samuel Richardson's Pamela, which might have been banned for inducing terminal tedium, but sadly copped it for other unimaginable reasons ...

Then there's Voltaire and more philosophers than a stick can be shaken at, Gide, Simone de Beauvoir, Moravia, Sartre and Nikos Kazantazakis, and that's before we even begin to think about the way that secular authorities once jumped to do the bidding of the moral guardianship of the church.

In the old days, if you wanted to read Burroughs, or Miller, or Roth, or all sort of books, there was the church cluck-clucking and tut-tutting in the corner as the state faithfully followed its censoring ways, and hapless people like the pond sent money orders off overseas so that they might get a brown-paper package through the post, unless pinged by customs ...

Copies were sent around from owner to owner, with poor old D. H. Lawrence amongst the victims, though Lady Chatterleys's Lover might well have joined the pond's personal index with Pamela ... mainly for the florid prose, the desperate inability to write about sex without inducing laughter, and the ennui it produced ...

It's worth bearing all this crap in mind - the pond still recalls being advised that as a result of its reading it was destined to travel the fast low road to hell - especially poor old D. H., when reading Donners' truly rich comedy, which uses D. H. as a punch line ...

Ah fucketty fucketty fuck de fuck, what a funny old world it is ... but fear not, in the pond's world, Dame Slap will remain Dame Slap - here no Dame Snap, no Dame Snap here - in honour of the nuns who used to show the pond what a slap really meant ...

And so to a quick pivot. It's a measure of the decline and fall of the Oreo - so quick, so fast - that she should be dropped down the page, behind dashing Donners,  because this week her comedy stylings simply didn't measure up ...

Now it's true that there's the usual rich irony that the pond expects of the Oreo in that header, given that fake patriotism and screeching about the fate of Judeo-Christian western civilisation is her stock in trade, leading to much glory and tremendous recognition around the land ...

(here)

But this day, there's not a single mention of the Islamic hordes poised to destroy western civilisation by noon tomorrow ...

It's not as if the Oreo doesn't know how to do it ...

It doesn't get much more faux patriotic and silly than that ... and there's oodles more at the stroke of a google key.

It probably passes as hard-core porn for dashing Donners, guaranteed to provide a happy ending ... but the pond must now pass to the Oreo's attempt at a sober, fiscally responsible read ...

No doubt readers who are more alert - the pond tends to nod off during screeching tirades - will want to have an argument with the Oreo about matters economic.

The pond only opened eyes enough to have a chuckle about "ABC's fake news pushers", because it's such an elegant reminder of what a total dipstick the Oreo is, scribbling as she does for a climate denialist rag, and offering every so often her own version of fake news climate denialism ...

And there was the Oreo having a go at Malware for talking Australia-first when the Oreo has made a living out of peddling hysteria and "western civilisation first" for as long as the pond can recall reading Oreo ...

Nor was the pond tempted to note that the Oreo had written approvingly of the Donald, who was talking about the need to spend on infrastructure, while berating Malware for talking of spending on infrastructure ...

An exercise in clarity, simplicity and accessibility?

Fuck, she's good. The pond almost regretted marking her down, but threw in that "fuck" so dashing Donners would feel comfortable at the level of verbal filth and sludge to be found on the pond...

Happily, this also gives the pond the chance to celebrate the Donald's tax plan ...

Now there's an exercise in clarity, simplicity and accessibility, and it should be added, profound maths and excellent stupidity ... why it's so short, you could tweet it ...

How long before we hear that someone didn't know things might be a little more complicated, less easy and a little hard, though not as hard as small hands might want (the pond threw that in for dashing Donners, seeing as how he loves a little naughtiness).

And now, for those who've made it this far, how about, instead of the pond's usual Oreo treat, a few cartoons?