In which the pond insists on having another serve of gruel and nattering "Ned" ...

A kindly reader recently reminded the pond of an xkcd cartoon, available in full here (and it really should be seen in full, it's a long and shaggy story, and yes, the pond does read the comments, even if derelict in replies)...

It reminded the pond of a real peril not too far over the horizon, and it whetted the pond's appetite for a dose of nattering "Ned" peddling phantoms, ghosts, alarums, fears and phobias in this day's Oz ...

There's nothing like a good malaise to get the pond going ... and to wonder why, given the situation outlined by xkcd, the reptiles spend all their hysteria deposits on transitory politics and Islamic fundamentalists ...

But spend it they do, to the point of bankruptcy ...

Now those who can remember the twentieth century might recall a great depression, a couple of world wars, a holocaust, and moving forward to recent times, some might remember the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and the situation in Syria ...

And marvel how nattering "Ned" could write "The West these days is too democratic to stage horror events such as the French or Russian revolutions ..."

Apparently events like Syria and proxies and sock puppets don't count as a horror event, or if it is, nothing to do with us, and instead, all we must be concerned about is keeping the rich in indolent, insolent comfort so that they might scribble alarums for the Mudorchians ...

Now the pond will confess that it developed a taste for this sort of extravagance from an early age ... not from the first edition, but early in the pond's life ...

(That picture book here)

It means when nattering "Ned" spits out that Corbyn is an "anti-war rebel", it seems we should all be, in "Ned's" ideal world, pro-war, war mongering conformists ...

It matches nicely with the cultural amnesia that we should forget notions of caring for each other (let's only be Judeo-Christian at ten o'clock on a Sunday), and idle talk of society, and celebrate the brutalist post-Thatcher world where there is no such thing as society, and the sooner we get back to the dark satanic mills and the survival of the fittest the better for everyone ... or at least for those with a decent inheritance and a nice living on a hundred pounds a year ...

(That handy guide here).

But what's remarkable is the way that "Ned" dismisses false prophets, which means surely that he is the one true prophet ... unless he happens to be a naughty boy ...

One of the rules of exceptional analysis is that this time is always the exceptional time ... no other time has exceptional moments in the way that this exceptional time has ...

Another exceptional part of such exceptionalist analysis is to omit awkward exceptional exceptions which have richly, extravagantly, to the exceptional malaise ...

... which is why "Ned's" next line, "the mistake is to view the crisis of the West through partisan prisms" provided a delirious chortle of delight from the pond, it being natural to view the crisis through the partisan prism of the Murdochians and "Ned" ...

Reading all this guff, you'd swear that "Ned" resided somewhere above it all in Olympus along with the other Murdochians, far above petty ideological posturings - except that it's always the alternatives to the Tories that cop the real pounding - and that Fox News spent each day correcting the Donald and showing him the light, and that the Murdochians were the only way forward to a new world order ... when really all they want to do is kill more trees so that they can keep on making more useless newspapers ...

Nattering "Ned" reminds the pond of the Meldge Free Producer, a triumph of Glotten Laboratories in Robert Sheckley's The Laxian Key ...

The machine produces an endless supply of Tangreese, a grey powder (surely a metaphor for Murdochian analysis) ...the only trouble is that it can only be switched off with a Laxian Key ...

The fools who discover the machine and turn it on (much like those who keep on buying the lizard Oz) try to make money from their discovery and offer the Producer around ...

"Get off this planet!" the official shouted. "Do you really think you can sell Tangreese on Meldge? Look around!" 
They looked. The landing field was gray and powdery, and the buildings were the same unpainted gray. Beyond them stretched dull gray fields to a range of low gray mountains. On all sides, as far as they could see, everything was Tangreese-gray. "Do you mean," Gregor asked, "that the whole planet — " 
 "Figure it out for yourself," the official said, backing down the ladder. 
"The Old Science originated here, and there are always fools who have to tamper with its artifacts. Now get going, and quickly." 
Halfway down the ladder he hesitated. "However," he said, "if you ever find a Laxian Key, come back. We'll erect ten statues to you!" (the story here).

Now if only the pond could find the Murdochian Laxian Key....

Otherwise we'll keep on getting endless grey powder analysis of this Tory nattering "Ned" kind ...

... when it might be handy to have more analysis of this kind ...

... or this ...

... or this ...