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 ...