In which the pond celebrates the festival of the boot with nattering "Ned" ...

This weekend is as bad as it gets for the pond ...and the best solution is probably to get out and about and see some of the sights of Sydney ...

The alternative? Well it's perhaps even worse than actually watching a game of football ... the chance to read the dog botherer in full poetical, rhetorical mode ...

The pond felt a rising nausea, and it reached something of a gaseous peak about the time of that talk - past the bit about lubricated conversations - of Aboriginal people, and the "whether or not that is true" gambit ...

The colonial instinct remains strong in this one ...but fortunately the infection has been contained ...

Dear sweet lord, how did Corowa get into it? Was it something its good citizens did? Do they have divided personalities?

Here for that yarn ... and a mention of the immortal Keith Dunstan, brave warrior for a better world ...

The pond often wonders why the dog botherer is so steeped in delusion, but this day he revealed all ...

Uh huh ... so that's why the non-sporting world is deeply fucked ...

Of course it's possible to sound vaguely intelligent about sport, as Jack the Insider managed yesterday ...

The pond isn't so sure it'd pay good money, it's not even sure it's still got a cheque book ... the trouble with this sort of comedy is that it's already been done, badly ...

But it did occur to the pond that here was a challenge.

Was it possible to conjure up anything more tedious, boring and useless than watching men chase a ball around a field while baying mobs cried out for blood?

Come on down nattering "Ned". Show to the pond why a mindless nation dribbles over the footy ...

Now the pond knows its ratings will be down this weekend, but this is the capper, a guaranteed way to ensure people abandon the intertubes and turn to the telly ...

Unscientific green ideology?

Presumably that's the religion of climate science, and suddenly the pond was at one with the dog botherer cheering on the crows ...

Actually the pond doesn't mind if the crows live in perpetual darkness and can never stage a football match because they lack the lights - pace copper-clad, multinodal Malware's sensa huma - but what fun if the battery could be made to work.

Then the dismal reality set in. Already it could sense the emanating deep depression ... and at this point the pond realised it had gone way to far, and felt the need to soften the blow with a bit more of Jack the Insider ...

But then the pond realised glumly that it had made a pact with the devil and had made a promise to complete the full four quarters with nattering "Ned" ...

Talk about a Glum family ...

It's as if root canal therapy or OTR were better choices than enduring nattering "Ned" blathering on in a world free of climate science ...

Yes, the pond is glum alright ...while the blather is about the regulation you have when you don't have regulation because you disapprove of regulation except when you need regulation ...but to put things in a bright light, hallo, hallo, hallo, things could be a lot worse ...

On and on "Ned" blathers, and what's more astonishing is that readers of the lizard Oz pay for this guff ... it suggests to the pond that there's far too much disposable income at hand which might be better spent on the gouging demanded by fat cats in the private energy market...

On the other hand, it could be worse ...

But here's the good news, we're into the fourth nattering "Ned" quarter, and here we can learn how Malware, having fixed broadband, is going to fix the energy market ...and how apparently it's all the fault of the greenies and climate science has nothing to do with it, nor privatisation, nor the main parties having the first clue or the vaguest kind of foresight ...

There's another moral to be drawn from this tedious exegesis by the master bloviator ... don't expect any sense from a man who thinks climate science is a dangerous green ideology ...

But the pond already knew that. It just had to learn the lesson all over again, because pain and suffering is sometimes the only way a lesson will stick in the memory ...

Or comedy. Comedy's a great way to remember lessons ...

Never mind, the Price is right!

And here's another thing the pond won't easily forget ...

All that horseshit about feminism and Islamic fundamentalism exported around the world as insidious Wahhabism, while Chairman Rupert was kowtowing with with the Saudis, and now a token gesture long delayed is supposed to make everything alright?

Uh huh. Now remind the pond how the women's AFL grand final is being played this day ...

Say what? It was held in March?

Well at least they proved it could be held in March ... and now the pond is off to soak up the sights of good old Sydney town ...

In which prattling Polonius sets the pond off yet again ...

The pond never knows what will set it off ... the sound of fireworks, or a loud exhaust bang, or thunder and lightening, very, very frightening, or perhaps a sticker floating around on the intertubes ...

And then just as the pond is trying to drift off, it starts thinking that tomorrow is prattling Polonius day, and he's a bloody lover of Ming the bloody merciless, the man who introduced conscription to send people off into war, and yet the only times there were a couple of actual plebiscites, referendums if you're a pedant like Polonius, to test thoughts on the matter, the federal government had its ears boxed ...

And yet there are the reptiles, always blathering on about government interference, and there's not much higher level of interference to be done than seizing someone, forcing them to train as professional killers, and then sending them off into a useless, failed war in which they could kill or be killed ...

Yet when it comes to matters of love, the government is also supposed to be an interfering busybody, on the side of institutions wanting to suppress and oppress in ways they've done with malignant, baleful intent since their camel and goat-herding origins.

It's probably the same for Polonius himself.

The pond suspects that he only ever listens to or watches the ABC. He never makes reference to commercial broadcasters. He probably finds the sounds of commercials unpleasant, the naked pleas of spruikers and hustlers too offensive, insulting and demeaning, too, too ... what's the right word? Entrepreneurial and capitalistic ... ?

So he's turned ABC stalking into a pleasure as well as a professional chore, and then something comes up, and it sets him off, and the next thing you know he's jumping up and down, or shouting at the radio, or opening a window and screaming up at the clouds that he's as mad as hell, and he's not going to take that wretched Fran Kelly any more ...

There was a good test of the pond's thesis this day, though the reptiles did the very best to put the pond in a good humour with a piquant juxtaposition ...

The pond didn't much care what motormouth Lette had to say about her moment with Heff - so many tedious Hef moments these last few days, the pond can't possibly imagine why - but the juxtaposition of that question of "dirty old man or revolutionary?" with prattling Polonius was simply too much. Those few remaining reptile subs can be quite witty at times ...

But there was nothing in the Polonial splash to suggest that the pond's thesis would be put to the test, and it was only on looking up google that the pond sensed rising hope, or at least rising gorge ...

Polonius had been at it again, listening to Fran Kelly. 

Worse still, he'd been watching last week's Insiders. Even worse he hadn't been on it, and had been deprived of his opportunity to bore the socks off viewers.

No wonder he'd raced to the keyboard so that  full week later he could produce a shriek of pain, a howl at the moon, an anguished berating of the clouds, and a complete and profound rejection of that wicked woman, and the way she keeps spreading unseemly lies and untruths and distortions around the land ...

Actually, it leads the pond to ask, what's the use of a bill, or even a charter, of rights.

Now if the pond might observe that Polonius is a bit like a blowfly at a BBQ, it's impossible to keep him out, or shoo him away, and so it was back in the day of chairman Rudd's epic 2020 summit, and Polonius reluctantly attended on the basis that important folk of Lord High Executioner of Titipu should "make a contribution to policy discussions wherever possible."

So Polonius did, and recorded his contribution at Fairfax here, and luckily the question of an Australian bill of rights or similar legislation came up, with Polonius ending his piece this way ...

Indeed, indeed, and suddenly at that point, the pond felt the urgent need for a cleansing Rowe, celebrating a streaker at the footy, with more cleansing, celebratory Rowe here ...

The good thing is that Rowe provides a motif for the real point of the entire Polonial piece, which is the sowing of doubt, the cultivation of saucy fears, a raising of awareness of an impending sense of doom, all produced by the very notion of SSM, with gay people sauntering about as if they had some right to do so ...

Why from that moment forth, people who believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus and the power of a wafer to turn into flesh and blood for cannibalistic purposes will have their life essence, their vital bodily fluids threatened ...

Indeed, it's impossible to see the need for any sort of bill of rights, and yet it's impossible to see how life can proceed without such a baleful provision ...

Of course if he'd managed to summon up a stroke of courage Polonius would have stepped out of the shadows, flung his hat in the ring and said, damn it, I'm agin it ... but as so often happens, he's done a little squawking, observing others doing the fighting ...

And now by a sheer stroke of luck The Canberra Times' logarithm happened to throw up an old Pope offering an invitation to a wedding ...

And if that wasn't enough, the regular always reliable Pope gallery dispensed another papal blessing here ...

In which the pond enjoys its traditional TGIF lunchtime snack of scintillating Sharri ...

It's always a relief to turn to scintillating Sharri for a TGIF lunch treat ... though first we need to sort out a terminological exactitude ...

Is it the Duracell bunny?

Or is the Duracell bunny really a reheated Energizer bunny?

The pond merely reports and you decide ...

Indeed, indeed ... at last the pond realised who it was that Lyle Shelton was imitating ...

Where would the pond be without these scintillating insights. Ray Moore, oops, way more, please ...

Now the pond can't count the number of times that the pond has had to remonstrate with the reptiles. 

It might well be that in the tree killer edition the full Sharri is shown, but why are digital readers of a decently heterosexual aged onion muncher white man kind so often short-changed? Why is it left to the pond to fulfil the tabloid obligation of the page three Murdochian?

Never mind, Sharri has some serious business at hand, which is to conflate the SSM marriage postal survey with candidates jostling for a place in the sun in the Liberal party.

Forget the alleged energy crisis, forget the economy, forget the Donald and North Korea, it's the postal survey that's going to send everything into Sharri hyperdrive (well at least energiser bunny overdrive) ...

Now if the pond is on the money, in the world of the simplistic Terror, Sharri's piece will next cop an illustration of the onion muncher up against Malware in combative poses ...

And thus the Murdochians can keep their hero in the mix and make him seem like a relevant and potent force ...

Hmm, around this point, if the pond is a studious student of scintillating Sharri ...

... there should be a photo of Tony and Cory showing like minds in stern action ...

Or perhaps it should be a snap of a meeting of manly men, watched by an admiring poodle with a faint hint of quizzical bemusement ...

What's that?

We only have a smiling, beaming snap of one of the homophobes? Well never mind, one'll do ...

And there we have it. More splendid reptile logic, of a kind only a scintillating Sharri could offer an onion muncher ...

Lose the campaign and that's a win ...

Narrow the victory and that's a success...

Get the 'no' campaign to win and that will be a super victory ... the dog will really have caught the car then, and like all dogs, will know exactly what to do with the car ...

So what's to be drawn from this energiser Sharri outing?

It seems simplistic and simpleton enough for the pond.

They really do want him back, they really do want to re-heat the cold, grey ashes of bigotry, fear and hate ... 

They don't just want to do Malware down, they want the onion muncher back as the leader of the opposition, ready to give comrade Bill a hard time.

It's seriously weird and perverse, but it probably comes with a rider ... who knows, but that the onion muncher might return and storm to an unlikely victory, as he did when he dished it out to songs at the footy and to gays ...

Luckily that allows the pond to end with a few cartoons from a land where such wishes have come true ...