Vale Pellism ...requiescant in pace ...

Without being too referential, it was these comments that caught the pond's eye the other day, and produced this little note at end of day ...

The pond faithfully reads the comments and follows the links therein, and always appreciates the feedback, even if derelict in responding, and here was a truly astonishing insight.

The Pellists gone?

The pond could understand the Terror sweeping away the Pellist columns ...

The Terrorists are barbarians, tabloid rough hewn souls with no sense of history, community or responsibility.

Besides, there's always the chance the old sod might get some dirt dished in the coming trial, so why not sweep it all under the carpet

Of course a barbarian lack of interest in what was done in the past could just as easily be applied to the allegedly cultivated and couth their ABC, which is in reality full of the same kind of barbarians ...

This explains why the ABC tossed off the full to overflowing intertubes clips of David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz reviewing movies, just because they could, while the poorly funded SBS at least promised to keep their reviews online until December 2030 ...

In one important way, civilisation involves, and relies upon, memory. No need to dress it up as collective memory, just the ability to recall what was said and written ...

Which brings us back to the 'disappeared' Pell ...

Pell started writing columns for the Terror in 2001.

Now some have been cleansed, or 'disappeared', though a few still survive ... as here ... which fortunately takes all the right attitudes on abuse ...

But much has gone. The pond expects nothing of the reptiles ... where others, such as The New Yorker or The NY Times took seriously the business of digitisation and making their archives available to subscribers, the reptiles, motivated perhaps by a deep sense of shame, perhaps by a deep desire to forget, have done little about preserving their legacy in digital aspic in a properly ordered and accessible way. Memory runs shallow in Murdoch la la land.

But surely more could have been expected of the Catholic church, yet they too seem to have 'disappeared' Pell, cleansed him and his views from the official website ...

At one time there were links to every Terror column, or reproductions, and some could be found on other Catholic sites too ...

All gone, all 404s these days ...

Now the pond has some fair contempt for Pell, but given the choice of pressing a button that would disappear him, or would preserve his views in digital aspic, the pond would hit the preservation button every time ...

The ancient training in history would kick in, the deep fear that the intertubes is producing collective abysmal amnesia would haunt the pond ...

Better to know the enemy and have a laugh and chortle away than to reach for the rubber ...yet the pond had also failed in this instance, despite its fondness for a Sunday meditation with the Pellists ...

Naturally the pond went looking around the intertubes to see what it could find, but it was a hard, disappointing slog.

Sadly the Wayback Machine failed ... it still thought the Pell columns were available on the web, when all that was there were lots of 404s

Sure, a list of Pell's columns for the Terror could be found, as here ...

But while the Machine had preserved the Index, it hadn't gone the extra step and saved the pieces.

Still, at least in relation to the Avatar column that set it all in motion, the Machine did at least provide an intro in its index ...

Avatar 10 Jan 2010 
It was a considerable anti-climax. I was looking forward to enjoying Avatar, which is allegedly the most expensive film in history costing US$300 million. It wasn't terrible, but it was boring; preachy but probably harmless. ...

Armed with that, the pond went looking and stumbled on the archive of the Atheist Foundation here ...

Thank the long absent lord that She in Her infinite wisdom created atheists, because one kindly soul had made a copy of the review and put it up for all to see.

The result of all this fuss?

Not much, but that's not really the point. To break Godwin's Law yet again, to get the swear jar overflowing for Xmas, Hitler had a banal mind, was a vegetarian, loved dogs, and saw children as the future ...

As well as much silliness, Pell was inclined to ponderous humbug platitudes and no doubt thought he was being well meaning in his own way ... while at the same time, hungering after and scheming towards being the top institutional dog in an institution which demanded that sort of hypocritical scheming ...

All the more reason then that Pell's words should be kept close at hand on the interubes, as a reminder that certain kinds of power-hungry people can get to the top by mouthing righteousness and acting like a pompous expert on many things beyond their expertise...

It turns out that Pellists aren't very good movie critics - perhaps all their energy went into being top class climate scientists - but it's with great pleasure that the pond offers this piece of popcorn for Pellist lovers ...

The punchline comes with the professional devourer of human blood and swallower of human blood on a Sunday despairing at Hollywood going pagan ... as if cannibalism didn't have the whiff of ancient paganism hovering over it, in much the same way as the pagans hover over the rituals of Xmas and the Easter bunny ...

Speaking of pagan despair, there's no need for ultimate despair regarding the fate of the Pellists.

The Pellist columns aren't lost altogether. Anyone with the time, energy, money and mental sickness required could head off to the State Library and produce the collected works of Cardinal Pell as published by the Sunday Terror ... but for the moment, this will have to do, and, as they say in the movies, that'll do, pig, that'll do ...

(It might help the read to click on to enlarge).