In which the pond returns to celebrate prattling Polonius and the dog botherer, a little late, but better late than never ...

(Above: the pond didn't miss much while in Telstra purgatory, but how it missed its papal blessings, with more benedictions here).

Maestro, cue a little eerie music, perhaps some Herrmann, or John Carpenter on the synth, the pond isn’t fussy and is happy to mix genres.

Now a strong, moody, atmospheric opening line: “It was a dark and windy night.” CU of clock radio, showing the bright screen flicker and die.

Beside the bed, we see an innocent slumbering. On the innocent, waking and noting the clock and the radio not working. Strange, sad, it was to be another day in the reptile coalmine, most likely with Dame Slap, and the innocent registers surprise, concern and alarm.

Track down the stairs as the innocent stumbles towards the magic science oven. It’s not working. Not the magic science oven, the innocent shrieks, no porridge today, and races to the computer, shrieking “not the motherboard, won’t someone think of the data!” CU of the Drobo as a black stump, the computer next to it gone dark too.

Camera tracks the innocent around the house. Fridge dead, washing machine down, the entire ground floor lost. Weeping and wailing, moaning and gnashing of teeth. Partner in the United States, enjoying what it was like to be in Germany in the early 1930s. Perhaps a CU of aeroplane booking under fridge magnet?

Alone in the house, no power …threatening shadows loom (German expressionism 101).

The innocent switches on a light. It works. What to do, oh what to do? Race out to the fuse box. CU of the circuit breaker triggering each time it’s made active … There’s something wrong … inside the house. Crank up the Herrmann.

Montage of activity. These power switches turned off, circuit breaker still triggers, those turned on, still the trigger …

Finally a working circuit. Move the toaster and the kettle out to the laundry. A glass shatters as the toaster hits it. Loses a toe on the cut glass? Perhaps OTT.

Cut to a slice of toast emerging from the toaster perched on the washing machine (the shape of Christ etched in carbon shown in CU?).

A long power cable and the computer comes alive. But the full to overflowing intertubes is dead. CU consternation on innocent’s face. Steadicam madly up the stairs to the modem. Dead. Poking and prodding of modem. Switching off and on always works. Disconnect the power, connect the power. Modem blinks, modem lives … It's alive, alive ...

Modem gives a pfft, and dies … CU of modem doing its impression of Norman Bates.

Cue lyrical resolving music. A lark ascending? All the circuits return to life, it was all the modem's fault, and so to a porridge. But nothing can bring back the intertubes … not until a new modem arrives.

Show languishing innocent as New Zealand, Barners and Donald the fascist jokes reach an apocalyptic peak overload …

Perhaps an animated shot of a bus zooming past the innocent? The innocent tries to get the bus to stop, but forget it Jake, it’s Sydney, it keeps going …(Let the visuals tell the story? The innocent has missed the bus? On the Donald, Steve Bannon, jokes about cheering on the Nazis in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, being ruled by Kiwis ...).

Heel boy, heel, roll over, get around behind ...

But an important lesson has been learned. A warm bowl of porridge is more important than a reptile column, or even fascists marching to salute the Donald… (Too syrupy an ending to show the innocent passionately kissing the warm porridge?)

Ah well, never mind, that movie’s over, the replacement modem eventually arrived, and now the internet drops in and drops out like a visiting relative or friend, and every so often the pond can resume contact with the world ...and the many strange sights on offer in these strange Day of the Locusts time, like a Shanahan arguing fiercely for multicultural diversity ...

Kiwis rulez! And for years the pond thought the core problem was multicultural diversity, which would only be fixed when we came to heel and happily followed the angry old white men shouting at the clouds above the island ...

What about all that fuss when the greenies were revealed to be hopeless fools incapable of following the rules?

Ah, that was long ago, before Malware revealed that his real purpose all along has been to score and keep the ring, a genuine gollum without principle or purpose ...

By a miracle none of the other electrical appliances in the house suffered any damage, and the loonacy keeps on going unabated, so in the end nothing was missed that couldn’t be immediately replaced …

But there was much catch-up business to do, and while the pond knew it was outdated and outmoded, like a Telstra system waiting for the NBN implosion to visit the pond in the next few weeks, this day required some strenuous catch-up ... (oh how they tried to blame the NBN, how they tried).

Sure, devoted readers of reptile madness would have sought out prattling Polonius already - how the reptiles keep him hidden these days - but the pond would have its perverse pleasure, come what may ...

No doubt Polonius would be banging on about the big issues - how the Nazis weren't so bad, what a pathetic hero Indiana Jones was, how chanting anti-semitic slogans, carrying the Nazi flag, making Nazi salutes, to the light of tiki torches like a re-enactment of the mob scenes in Frankenstein could easily be done by good guys ...

Or perhaps he'd be berating Barners the way he gave the greenies for being complete doofuses about their citizenship. Excoriating him for his incompetence, demanding he stand down ...

And once again the pond was totally out of touch.

Of course at moments when there are real matters, real issues, real crises, what better time to talk about gay marriage and Tim Minchin?

Of course it's an absurd match-up, and completely meaningless, but someone had to do it ...

By golly, they've got so much in common ...

Now right there, the pond knew that prattling Polonius would get the punters going.

Not about denying homophobia, which is standard form for adherents to the homophobic Catholic church and other homophobic institutions, which always seek to downplay the impact of their homophobia on private lives ...

No it was that line about Minchin having the cheek to be a success and head off to LA, and diss "the land of his birth."

The punters would have headed off in best Greg hunting style to discover that Minchin was born in Northampton, England, to Australian parents ...

Oh sure it's a minor matter, but when in the home of pedants, always adopt the Roman style of the professional prattling pedant ...

As for the rest, observe the pleasure with which the pursed lipped pundit frowns and sighs about foreigners and interlopers and useless expatriates - except Kiwis, we all love Kiwis ...

Indeed, indeed, it's all the fault of the left. Everything is the fault of the left, including the Donald, the GOP, bigotry, prejudice, and even the Sydney Institute and prattling Polonius himself ...

Meanwhile, Polonius's mention of the dog botherer alerted the pond to the news that there was a three way tag team match going down ...

And it turned out that the dog botherer was also obsessed with the gays, and just like Polonius, was conspicuously avoiding turning his column into a lengthy argument in favour of a 'yes' vote ...

Now around this point, devoted Greg Hunters will be arming themselves with some background knowledge ...

Minchin was born "to Perth parents" in Northampton in Britain, where his father, a surgeon, was completing a fellowship. The family moved back to WA when Minchin was one. He grew up in Swanbourne, about four beaches south of City Beach, and attended Christ Church Grammar School. (here)

Now the pond has limited knowledge of Perth - like Adelaide, it's one of the outer rings of hell, but more outer than most and very expensive to get to - but even the pond has heard of deeply conservative, deeply suburban, nicely well-off beach-side Swanbourne, which is apparently where real life happens ...

Or at least that's the sort of monstrous stupidity proposed by the dog botherer, who manages to conflate a musician, composer, an artist, a wanker, call him what you will that's true to Minchin's calling, with a "media elite" cut off from reality ...

By this measure, real life only happens in Morphett Vale, or perhaps Golden Grove ... or some other fuckwitted reference the dog botherer might get ...

And so to the actual rumble ...

Oh fucketty fuck, and yet even now, the Donald stands as a tribute to racism, with a neo-Nazi tinge, and racism and homophobia is in abundance in the land down under, and is readily apparent in the scribbling of the reptiles in la la land ...

But this is how the fine art of distraction works. Instead of writing a potent column arguing in favour of SSM, and wearing his gay hearted love of teh gays with pride, the dog botherer takes aim at Minchin, Clinton and all the others in the media as the reason for the Donald, Brexit, and any number of other recent follies ...

It's worse than Pontius calling for a bowl of water, because in this particular case, the dog botherer has in the past shown how he himself has helped fuel the backlash ... with generous doses of climate-denialist and Brexit loving nonsense ...

Please don't seek to deflect the blame on to an entertainer like Minchin.

Own your own role in climate denialism, love of the Donald, love of Brexit, and let's not forget that joyous work as a minor war criminal in the Iraq war ...

Oh and don't forget to sneer. You're always good at sneering - it's your Sky bread and butter, your patented sneer - so don't forget to sneer at the sneerers ...

And as Americans marvel and freak-out at the eclipse (WaPo here about the loons planning for disaster), the pond can proudly announce it's already discovered a place where the sun doesn't shine, as the dog botherer crawls up himself ...

It's always a source of profound pond pleasure and amusement to see a drinker of the Murdochian kool aid, scribbling from the bunker, talk of an extended echo-chamber, as if Fox News, the Daily Terror and the lizard Oz weren't part of a giant echo chamber ...

But not content with that burst of pleasure-giving, the dog botherer takes a final stand, and defends Pauline Hanson's latest stunt ...

Here's the thing. Piss Christ wasn't indulged. Serrano received death threats and hate mail and lost grants, and the NGV was injuncted to prevent its display, and when displayed, was attacked with a hammer ...

And the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a bunch of activist street performers, they're not fucking members of fucking federal parliament ...

Imagine the howls if a secular atheist MP tried to turn up in parliament dressed up in SPI garb ...the Catholic Boys' Daily would have a fainting fit of the first water ... because they're not that indulged, even if the pond enjoys their indulgence ...

But as always there's false equivalence at work, just like the Donald ...and if it's not false equivalence, then it's an even more diabolical strategy, of the Marcusian kind, which is to blame others for the possibility of the "no" vote getting up ...

There's no need to look to Minchin and others to explain why the "no" vote might get up, and it's not just the fence-sitting and ambivalence of those allegedly in favour of it in the reptile camp.

It's the way that the reptiles keep banging on about how in the real suburbs, the real reality is that no-one much likes poofters and that's the reality we should all live with ...

We all lose? No, the worst the pond has suffered is a broken modem. The people of Iraq lost a lot more at the hands of minor war criminals ... and gays might well lose at the hands of the contrivance and connivance of the onion muncher, the Murdochians, Malware and the odd imported Kiwi pretending he's a Tamworthian ...

Well, the pond did for a moment lose the chance to look at papal pleasures, which turned to the pond's favourite book, and its favourite childhood book illustrator Tenniel - check out the mo'! - with more referential papal pleasures here ...