In which the pond endures Dame Slap whimsy, and survives Ned's lengthy natter so it can get to a Rowe cartoon ...

Where to start? Have we got all year?

Can the pond begin with a confession? At the moment it's in a wild, indiscriminate affair with American politics, and the more sordid and kinky and downright weird it gets, the more compelling the pond finds it ...

Attempts by the local Terrorists to get in on the act are simply pathetic ...

What planet is the Devine on? (And will someone explain mobile phone technology to Samantha Brett? Would she like to borrow the pond's Nokia 3310? Or would she prefer a 3320?)

How is it possible to improve the Terror with new designs and new layouts, if all that does is provide a new frame for a barking mad loon howling at the Donald face in the moon? 

There's a research team? The Terrorists need a research team to discover the Devine lives in Murdochian la la land?

You know what they say about polishing a turd? Too crass for the pond of course, we'd much prefer to talk of polishing the brass balls of a monkey ...

And sad to say, the pond's wild affair with US cable means that even the lizards of Oz have lost their flavour on the bedpost overnight.

The pond is so over Malware v. the onion muncher, and yet there's more of that lumpy gravy and mashed potato reheated and dumped on the pond plate this morning ...

Oh sheesh, it isn't possible for a politician to don the magic cloak of Ming the Merciless without it setting off a firestorm?

What? Someone thought that a forelock tugging, grovelling homage from the bromancer would provide entertainment worthy of a publicity man, a singer, a Russian lawyer and a flurry of emails, and incidentally help Malware in the current stoush?

With the greatest reluctance, the pond decided to check out Dame Slap, always a favourite, but sometimes best left on her very own planet ...

Uh oh, that sounds ominous. The talk of the magic touch, and the spell to set it right, and then Voldemort making an appearance, and JK ...

Has someone let something even more deadly than the kraken loose? Not the Rowling ...

Oh dear. Now the pond appreciates where Dame Slap is coming from. It's an attempt to match up to the Donald and the Ruskis, and celebrate our own high farce, but as soon as Harry Potter entered the picture, it begins to sound more like pathetic whimsy of the fey kind. Dame Slap is not a humourist, there's not a Wodehousian bone in her keyboard, so why on earth (or even her own planet) would she bother...

The pond wondered whether the moment was right for one of its notorious Burroughs cut-up montages. Perhaps some dour nonsense from editor-at-length "Ned"* (*patented term, pirated by the pond) might leaven the Dame and send any stray reader off to sleep before any long-term damage might be done by an encounter with Slapian whimsy?

It sounded right, with Ned nattering away about philosophy and overarching framework and such like ... why not give it a go?

Yes, by golly, that's as tedious as anything the golden keyboard of nattering "Ned" has ever produced, and no doubt he will keep on exuding oracular insights at great length ...

Knowing that the pond had this solemn, sullen wind at its back gave it the strength to embark on the sea of Dame Slap's hopelessly inane and extended Potterish set of metaphors ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, the pond is having an attack of the vapours. Please waiter, a stern stiff swig of nattering "Ned" before the pond expires at the thought of a completely wasted life ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, that's better. Pure undiluted nonsense about the way conservative and liberal voters are at one, and blather about freedom, but if freedom is so important and being liberal is one key strand of the government, why then sound like Daesh on the matter of gay marriage? Why it's as mysterious and as strange as the transubstantiation so beloved by the Catholic Boys' Daily ...

As for the guff about the internet, the pond has been there before and seen Malware tie himself in knots on the matter of encryption - where the breaking of the locks on a mobile phone might actually break all the locks and what then? (Oops did someone just drop the ATO in it? Quick, delete or encrypt that story...).

Never mind, contemplating the fatuities of a Ned on fire - all the more poignant because he's such a fuddy duddy old duffer, deep in the grip of conservative fantasies and intolerance - gave the pond the strength for a final gobbet of Dame Slap ...

Dear sweet seemingly never to return Jesus, did Dame Slap just write what the pond thinks she just wrote?

Sweet suffering Jesus, that's an image to ruin lives, that's an experience the pond is keen never to repeat. 

Waiter, a cleansing sorbet of nattering "Ned", who surely must have futtered out his last words, his last pregnant seed by now ....

Speaking of futtering, what the fuck? 

What exactly does it mean, that blather about philosophical values and launching not just policy "but values-based attacks on Labor reflecting both liberal and conservative philosophy"?

So we celebrate liberal values by fast-tracking gay marriage rights? But we delay and obfuscate and hopefully even manage to defeat the notion in a vicious plebiscite campaign as a way of pandering to conservative values?

No wonder the Oz, Malware, the onion muncher, the Liberal party and the country are well and truly deeply futtered ...while all Dame Slap can offer as an alternative is her rich Potterish fantasy life ...

Your honour, is it any wonder that the pond remains beguiled by American cable news?

Truth to tell, the only reason to pay attention to the sorry mess at home, and the soiled leadership and the wretched reptiles is the pleasure of another richly funny Rowe cartoon, with much more Rowe available here (about time he got into the business of selling his prints via Twitter like Moir)...

That portrait of the onion muncher eating the homework and threatening the Corgis is worth a thousand words of the editor-at-length, and a million of Dame Slap in potty Potter land leaving coiled up bits of brown on the pavement of life ...