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 ...