In which the pond spends quality time with one of its favourite reptiles, the Major Mitchell, celebrated purveyor of debased, delusional commentary ...

Now there's a digitalising flashback to the good old days of the Chairman's 'Pinky and the Brain' plans for world digital conquest ...

They were memorialised in the Sydney Morning Herald on 3rd September 1993, and a click on the image should enlarge it to readable size ... for those perverse enough to want to read it ...

Meanwhile, to keep on where the pond left off, the pond has a small, select herpetarium, and it faithfully and loyally tracks the cute cavorting of the reptiles within it ...

No doubt there are many who can't understand the pond's delight in these creatures ...

... and think the pond should argue with the fearsome-looking beasts, but who could imagine that a thorny devil could be turned into a visual delight ...

Speaking of thorny devils, the pond is aware of real world activities that have flung the reptiles into a state of national hysteria ....

Last night the pond drove through Cleveland street where one of the busts went down, but by the time the pond reached the area (the entire street had been completely shut down earlier in the day), all that remained was a solitary cop car, lights flashing, and a bit of plastic crime barrier tape flapping in the breeze ...

Sadly or luckily, some of the reptile copy this day landed before the big drama ...

But that doesn't mean these reptiles are out of touch or out of date, and the pond danced with joy at the return of another thorny devil to the pages of the lizard Oz, the perennially on song and in tune Major Mitchell. 

The Major Mitchell had gone missing for days on end,  and  the pond always gets agitated when one of its reptiles goes missing, but the Major Mitchell was in top form ...

Now this is sublimely rich stuff ... this talk of truthful reporting, coming as it does from the man who made the Order of Lenin the medal on every Australian's lips ...

Never mind, the pond's been there and done that, so it's on with today's read ...

Well it wouldn't be a Major Mitchell piece without a finger firmly inserted up fundament of self and the lizard Oz, but that's part of the ineffable charm ... and for those who wonder how the pond can conflate this bold and righteous reptile with the noble galah ...

... remember that birds and reptiles are exceedingly close in the Darwinian chain ...

But let's not argue over whether dinosaurs were handsomely dressed out in feathers, let's get on with the inflated sense of self-importance some dinosaurs notoriously reveal ...

Yes, at a time when South Australia managed to get greenie Sarah, wild card Cory, Nick X, and Jolly Jay in front of the cameras at the same time, at a time when the crow eaters are opening their windows to shout in unison that they're mad as hell ...

... that's the time that the Major Mitchell can show just how much in touch he is ...

Every time the Major Mitchell celebrates common sense, he shoots, and he scores ... after all, common sense tells the pond that cabbage, sealing wax and string would be much the cheapest way to get high speed broadband working around the country, and surely real journalists should be asking why we haven't embraced this high end solution ...

Ah, at least he no longer rails at old school blogs, with Twitter and Facebook the new enemies du jour ...

Actually there are a few questions that old school bloggers of the pond kind might be asking, like why the reptiles of Oz for a decade supported shitty copper and crappy HFC solutions and are now pretending that it's got nothing to do with them ...  and that the technical problems have got nothing to do with said shitty copper and crappy decades old, run down HFC ... 

And the pond might also be asking just how much it's going to cost, and how long it's going to take - as the disaster becomes clearer by the day - to fix up the crappy non-broadband that Malware has foisted on the nation, at the insistence of the onion muncher and with the grateful blessings of the lizards of Oz ... somehow imagining that this would stop Foxtel's goose from being cooked ...

But that's the delightful charm of the reptiles of Oz, thrashing around blindly and then wondering why everything's fucked up ...

Ah fuck it, he's such an ugly sod, such a screeching useless galah, no wonder the pond is deeply charmed, fascinated and compelled ... such a joyous mix of bigotry and bile ... still blathering on about the pub as the national centre for common sense, as opposed to the place where parrots go to get as pissed as galahs ...

And so yet again, the reptile who did so much to debase journalism in this country keeps turning up to debase the commentary pages of the lizard Oz ... and the pond resolutely refuses to utter a cruel word against this Major Mitchell ...

Now usually around this time, the pond would wrap up proceedings with a cartoon ... 

But as we're in a digital mood,  and as the AFR was mentioned in dispatches by the Major Mitchell, here's a different comedy item,  which in the last few days has sent the actual geeks who actually built the full to overflowing intertubes in Australia into something of a frenzy ...

Justin Milne the father of broadband in Australia?

So that's why it's comprehensively fucked?!

Well done Max Mason, that's the best joke the pond has come across in recent times, even better than anything the Major Mitchell could  scribble...

Actually to be fair, it was Ziggy that produced the original joke ...

Um, that little "mini mid-life crisis"? Milne's company went broke ... and as for the rest? Well some of the geeks have been noting certain resemblances to certain sitcoms ...