In which the pond catches up with the Major and dashing Donners ...

Dammit, there was the pond still stuck in yesterday, thanks to Malware, and there was nothing in today's news to bring any joy ...

Plan "C"?

What about plan "D" for "dud" or "F" for "fizza", as the meritorious Merritt laid the groundwork for defeat - everything's for the best in the best of all possible worlds - but the High Court will decide soon enough, and if everything - including catastrophic defeat and catastrophic incompetence - is all for the best, why dammit, the pond can spend some quality time catching up with the Major Mitchell...

Sure, it will be old, stale news for faithful reptile devotees, who've already caught up with the Major and digested him and used him for the fish and chips, no doubt on the basis that when eating a galah, you boil it and a stone together, and when the stone is tender, you throw the galah away and chow down on a tasty meal of softened granite ...

By golly, he's a tough old bird, and the thought reminded the pond of how Charlie could enjoy munching on a boot, and imagine it as a kind of pasta good enough for a king ...

What meal had the Major prepared? What delight had Malware and his NBN forced the pond to forsake?

The bloody left wing media! What a loss that would have been...

And so to the meal, all the richer for the delay, and the anticipation of leathery Major Mitchell delights ...

Impeccable Major Mitchell. Note the subtle apology for the persecution of hapless Kiwi and sheep- and rugby-loving Barners, by the devious device of deploying an ABC correspondent to assert that we were all British subjects once ...

The pond knows the ploy well ...

We were all Poms once ...

And now marvel how the Major soars on the wind - you can get the same sort of lift outside Manilla - as he shifts from citizenship to gay marriage ...

Indeed, indeed, and who could berate the Major for ignoring the Antipodean Resistance, let alone the cesspit known as the lizard Oz comments section?

But here the pond would like to pause for a moment and report on how it came to be totally confused about gender and dress and such like ...

You see, from a very early age at each highland gathering in Tamworth, the pond was exposed to the idea that men could wear dresses, and indeed that the manliest of men might toss a caber or blow on a pipe while wearing a skirt ...

Men in frocks tossing trees!? 

Why the very concept was completely preposterous and mentally destabilising ...

And then to see men in frocks marching down Peel street as bold as brass ...

Even worse, this idea of men in dresses saw a complete confusion of genders with men in dresses sitting alongside women in dresses ...

Even now they celebrate this gender chaos up Tamworth way ...it might even go some distance to explaining why Barners thought he was Australian, when he was in reality a Kiwi hearing the siren song of the sheep ...

Now it goes without saying that the last thing the Major Mitchell would wish on his kids is this sort of confusion ...

And yes, in the world of Major Mitchell, the best ploy of all is that old saw, "I know a prominent transsexual."

Indeed, indeed. Well the pond knows a number of transsexuals, happily going about their business without the need for prominence, and they cheerfully agreed that the Major was full of horseshit, or its close-run companion, bigotry, seeing as how the Major ran the line "I know many blacks but ...", "I know many women but ..." and "I know many gays but ...", the billy goat butt being that the Major actually thinks fundamentalist Xian bigotry is mighty fine, and can be dressed up as just reporting the facts, thank you ma'am, and feel free to add a wham bam to that ...

And then since the pond was still mourning lost opportunities, and dashing Donners was also on topic, why not sneak in the Donners that the reptiles had sneakily snuck in late on a Sunday ...

Sadly it wasn't much of a Donners, but you know what they say, any Donners is better than nothing ...

Ah, didn't he mean that we owe an enormous amount to Iberian Celtic culture?

Luckily there's absolutely nothing new in Donners, with tyke paranoia and conspiracy theories and a persecution complex at levels which might cause alarm if it involved an intake of lead ...

And so to another anomaly ... because also on Sunday the reptiles accidentally put this as the lead ...and it too was on topic, but took a very strange turn for a reptile column ...

Contempt? Well yes, there within the Major's yarn and Donners is a thinly veiled form of contempt.

Strangely, when the pond sighted it, this little evocation of contempt had already been lurking in the reptile bunker for a couple of days ...

For some reason, they dusted it off and trotted it out, and the pond was so astonished, it felt the need to take a cutting ...

The pond's not convinced by the biological or evolutionary arguments - there's more than enough fundamentalist religious nurture in this area to help nature along - but it understands the contempt to be discovered in many areas ...

In Tamworth, the pond learnt the fine distinction between slags and sluts and prick-teasers and wogs and dagoes and coons and boongs and poofters and pillow-biters, all side with the same smile of contempt ...

Sometimes it might be veiled, with a thin snide sneer, and sometimes the contemptuous labels could involve all kinds of categories - like Catholic frogs and proddy dogs ...

Contempt is what joined it all together, and who in a country town, if they belonged to a minority, or sometimes a majority, can forget the snarled invective, the frothing and foaming of a "spaz" or a "retard" or a "wog" or a "poofter" or a "cunt" ...

The pond thinks about it ... still remembers life in Tamworth ... still brings it to mind each time it reads a reptile of Oz, or pauses for a moment to contemplate the onion muncher.

It comes out in that Major Mitchell line about not wishing a dress on anyone ...but especially his kids ...

That's the fine argument of a bigot. 

Here's the thing. You can dress in all sorts of different ways in all sorts of cultures and make friends with the wild life ...

Try on a dress sometime ... or a sari, or whirling dervish skirt or whatever and be astonished at the comfort, especially in tropical heat ... why you can even Greg Hunt men's skirts without a blush ...

Sadly, in the world of the bigot, you have to dress with stereotypical rigour ... because ...closed minds, closed clothing ...

Speaking of wild life run wild, the Pope is reporting on a strange restlessness in the West ... could they want their own NBN, or the right to wear dresses? Or are they seeking plan "F", as in "fuck off Malware?"

As always, more intriguing questions and papal infallibility here ...