In which the pond indulges in more than just a fattening Oreo ...

The pond would like to start off by defensively explaining that there is more to life than the reptiles.

Recently the pond watched a slacker comedy set in LA. It wasn't much, but it was amiable and cheerful and it was shot in 12 days for three fifths of nothing, or one and threepence ha'penny, but what the heck, that's how it goes for IndieWire Sundance style shows ...

It was just a shaggy dog story, with the lead actor also the co-producer, writer and director. It might have been better to watch it on the 4th July, but it was refreshing to see an entirely different set of American lifestyles on parade.

The pond has a peculiar fondness for LA, where everybody's got a script and/or is attending an audition, and where walking is a capital crime, so a movie where the main character rides a bicycle, clips the plastic balls off an SUV and despite being an epic loser, scores a cheque at the end seemed impossibly quaint and young ...all the more titillating, because the United States seems to have a federal government run by the greatest, most inept slackers ever to step in front of a camera and try to get a cook-out together ...all we need is the lighter fluid for a bonfire of the vanities.

And then there was Barry Levinson's HBO telemovie about Bernie Madoff, which had a script that didn't deal that well with the intersection of drama and real events, but which featured some good performances, including Michelle Pfeiffer and Hank Azaria.

That lead to the pond doing some checking of collateral stories, like the lawyers writing about the show back in May for The Atlantic, here, and it all felt strangely familiar, not just because the pond tracked the original saga at the time, but because the United States is in the grip of an even more gigantic White House-run Ponzi scheme right now ... with bonus pardons for all built into the storyline.

The pond has thousands of other movies on the Plex/Shield combo, so that it doesn't have to worry about the intertubes or Foxtel or the Murdochians to score entertainment, and every so often The New York Review of Books pops into the mail box, with stories about ancient Rome (The Atlas of Ancient Rome, sorry, inside the paywall), summarising a coffee table book in a way that makes the pond pleased it couldn't afford it, or doing stories on the brave new world of genetic editing (happily outside the paywall at time of writing)...

And then there's a nostalgic look at Van Cliburn in Moscow (here, outside the paywall), which turns up in the slacker July 13-August 16 tree killer summer edition, which uses a different ordering to the table of contents to be found on the digital home page here ...

Then the pond has sitting on the toilet table a book on the history of philosophy and the rising tide of secularism, which concludes with a call for the return of the feminine ...

Oh and occasionally the pond will also watch the ABC ...

Only occasionally, but it's good to know it's there ... even if it's now littered with and besmirched by an assorted mob of crazies fresh from the IPA, American think tanks and like-minded befuddlers and distorters of reality ...

Still, it's another distraction, and it helps explain why the pond's not-too-secret vice of watching the reptiles at play in the herpetarium doesn't actually take up much time, and involves almost no thinking ...

Rather the point is that if you have a secret vice, enjoy, because there are many weird flavours out there in the world, and they should be relished for the Oreo oddity they offer ...

... but please enjoy in moderation ... too many and the mind fattens, sickens and keels over.

Vary the diet and try something different ... be a slacker in LA for 80 minutes, ruin thousands of investors - or a country,  travel in ancient Rome, ruin the NBN, and if you must, and it's your pleasure, have an Oreo taste treat ... just once a week, mind ...

There is, after all, something comfortable and comforting about the familiar, like a pair of old slippers so battered they're next to useless ...

Some might think the sight of a demented wolf howling at the moon, and/or the ABC, a pitiful, piteous sight, but when it's done by one of the top ten minds in an Australian university, it takes on a piquant charm for the pond ...

Now there's no point in discussing any of this or attempting some kind of rational approach.

That way lies madness, or the Donald instituting a gigantic Ponzi scheme in the White House, so that when he appoints a Wall street merchant of a shady nature as his latest spokesman, all talk of draining the swamp turns into a celebration of spivs and sharks ...with a fierce debate in the pond household as to whether he looked like one of Bernie's sons in the movie, or if he looked more like a member of the Vito Corleone household ...

Equally there's no point in worrying about the blinkered ideology of ratbag reptiles talking about PC and all the rest of it. The way they all sound the same suggests they think everyone else does it their way, which is to say, drink the same kool-aid, and then in a murmuration of starlings, issue simpleton, simplistic, mindlessly childish rhetorical repetitions about the same thing (over and over and over again!) ...

Why do they keep harping on about it? Why do they fear the world and dissenting thoughts so? Why are they so relentlessly challenged and agitated and about such a narrow number of things?

Why do they keep quoting each other, with the Oreo wheeling out the dog botherer, and the dog botherer wheeling out the bromancer, and the bromancer celebrating the onion muncher, and all of them grovelling in a terrified, fearful way at the feet of the mutton Dutton, except Dame Slap, who clearly thinks she'd be his ideal consort ...

Who knows, the point is to enjoy it, the way that one might enjoy an ethnographically, demographically rich tour through many of the world's eccentricities, be they slackers in LA or Van Cliburn in Moscow ...

Accept the Oreo's bizarre fixations and savour the deeply root beer, banana split weirdness...or not. Whatever ...

Along the way there's a chance for serious students to study the way the dextrous Oreo's rhetoric works.

Watch out for the opening "Many believe", which in a US context, might just as easily run "Many believe in aliens, UFOs, angels ..."

Many believe that an Oreo column without a mention of Judeo-Christianity and Western civilisation would be like a biscuit without life-threatening fat, flour and high fructose corn syrup.

Does "many believe" make any sense when used in this way? Many believe it does, but many believe that these many believers are a source of sublime comedy.

Ah, the pond senses you still haven't read enough koans ...

You see, an Oreo column is simply a chance to recycle all the grievances already reported in the lizard Oz, or complained about, because they were trained to think growing up that rote learning was the basis of a sound education.

Heck if you do enough repetitions, you can drag a thin plotline out into a feature length slacker comedy of grievances...

In all of this, it's strange that the pond should feel sorry for Julia Baird ... currently the object of much reptile abuse, but this sort of flock of bullying galahs makes for some odd bedfellows ...

Apparently the Oreo missed Baird bringing the Anglican Primate of Australia on to The Drum last Friday night ... but that's half the point. Why should an Oreo check out the real world when alternative reality offers genuine slacker pleasures.

Besides, it's likely what Philip Freier had to say about domestic violence within and without the church didn't suit the Oreo and the reptiles ... and anyway, what makes the Anglican Primate of Australia think he knows anything at all about Judeo-Christianity and Western civilisation up against the razor-sharp insights of the root beer caramel apple banana split Oreo mind?

Not to worry, the pond has had its Oreo treat for the week, and with an eye on moderation, that's more than enough ...

As usual, after this sort of feast, if there's a queasy feeling of bloat in the stomach and over-indulgence in the sorbet, the pond always recommends a cleansing sorbet of a cartoon, such as the First Dogs to be found here ...

... or if thinking LA and showbiz and reality TV, why not a Moir, with more Moir here showing backstabbing as a way of life ...