In which the pond considers more contenders for the Kenny award, with Dame Slap falling by the wayside, but nattering "Ned" a proven stayer ...

Even a broken quote has many authors, and the pond issues this timely warning for punters eager to bet on the weekly winner of the Kenny award ...

What if they're betting on Dame Slap up against sure-fire favourite Miranda the Devine?

Look at how the smack-down unfolded this day - the Devine barking climate science denialist mad as usual, and Dame Slap seemingly desperate to avoid the award, desperately trying to sound secularist sensible ...

Should the pond pay attention to Dame Slap when she proposes a worthy, perhaps even dignified, debate?

Well it's important for reptile lovers and students of form to study the reptiles even when they lag, and drop way back in the field ...

The pond can sense disappointed punters tearing up their betting slips and walking away shattered. This on a day when the HUNsters were lathering up into a frenzy ...

Nobody said that gambling on Kenny winners would be easy ... otherwise the pond would long ago have left for life on a tropical beach doing a Banfield ...

The devoted reptile student must note certain matters in the Dame Slap piece - including but not limited to churches, Xianity, and abortions - and store them up as hints, clues, as to how Dame Slap might perform down the track when she's restored to sound reptile mind ... and ready for another gallop in the Kenny stakes ...

There's no doubt it's a disappointing performance for Kenny award devotees, but in compensation the pond also offers this day a dose of nattering "Ned".

The case of nattering "Ned" suggests a difficulty for the Kenny award, which at the moment seems to have only one category, the barking mad howling at the moon. 

While there are many worthy contenders for the one prize, what of the stayer, the ultra-marathoner?

Surely there should be a number of prizes, with an ability to sound like a terminal bore intent on inducing a case of terminal existential ennui celebrated with a separate gong ...

The pond likes to think of these stayers - prattling Polonius would be one, the Caterists are game taxpayer funded triers - as Colonel Blimps salivating over the crispy bacon they had before the war ...

That script for the Goons' crispy bacon saga here,  and in the same spirit, drum rule - or even drum roll maestro - and a serve of nattering "Ned" ...

Now before we go banging the jingoist drum, the pond should remind stray readers that the pond's grandpappy did time on the Somme in the knee-deep winter mud in 1917 as a machine-gunner, a favourite target for the Boche, and returned a broken alcoholic to wreak havoc in his family ...

But that was long ago, and to brood about it too much would mean ... ending up as demented and senile-sounding as silly old nattering "Ned" ...

Now for personal reasons aforementioned, the pond remains acutely aware of the war, but whenever someone mentions the war, or starts banging the jingo drum, the pond doesn't try to shush them up ...

If they must mention the war, or crispy bacon, the pond always reserves the right to run a few Low cartoons ...

Now the pond doesn't have the foggiest clue what set nattering "Ned" off this day ...

The pond's grandfather could be set off by all manner of things, a car back-firing, or just an attempt to get to sleep, and inevitably he'd end up at the pub.

Somehow the pond has instead ended up in the company of nattering "Ned" banging on ...

And yet, while nattering "Ned" goes off the deep end and back into war mongering memories, it somehow fits with the entire rag's sensibility, and its daily talk of Xianity, western civilisation, Labor's NBN, and all the rest of the ratbag reptile nonsense ...

And at bottom? Well it's just another old fogey braying about the crispy bacon we had before the war, and the way that young people might refuse to join the senile angry old men shouting at clouds and brooding about long ago ...

Cicero should have added that, to draw the wrong conclusions, while banging on endlessly about events that occurred before you were born, is to risk sounding like a senile silly old fart ...

Fuck the pond is so over armchair warriors blathering on about sacrifice and incompleteness and inadequacy and all the other jingoistic flag-waving shit ...

Go down to the pub and get as pissed as a parrot nattering "Ned", then go home and bash your wife and rage at the pink elephants in the hallway and lock the family out of the house and then we can talk of tragedies and sacrifice, you useless gherkin ...

And when you're done brooding about 1917, remember all the other useless years of the first world war and all the useless years of the second, and throw in a holocaust too, if you like and want a singular sense of uselessness ...

It is sweet and fitting to die for your country? Fuck Horace, and while we're at it, fuck Cicero too, and yes, fuck all the Generals, especially the armchair Generals that litter the lizard Oz, and while we're at it ...

More Sassoon here,  more Owen here ...

Phew, and after that, what better for a little light relief than a trickle down Pope cartoon, with more trickling papery to be found here ...