In which the pond counts down the days ...

The pond knows the feeling, and the reptiles are showing signs of becoming unhinged in the Xmas madness ...

This day, at least for a moment, the Bolter occupied the rotating digital splash at the top of the Oz front page ...

He won't be silence, he won't be muzzled? It immediately reminded the pond of one of its favourite Nicholson cartoons, with more Nicholson here ...

Of late, the Bolter's obsession with Malware has verged on the psychopathic and he has become a verbal stalker of the first water. 

The pond is a grizzled veteran in terms of Malware fear and loathing - each time the pond wakes the sleep button and tries to log on, it comes back in a surging wave of nausea - but the Bolter is obsessed, barking mad, Glenn Close cranked up to 11 and exceedingly vengeful ...

At the same time, he's got down in the pit with Milo, while pretending that he's attempting to elevate the tone of a coarse, narcissist, attention-seeking loon ...

Confronting Milo? He facilitates, he endorses, he panders to, he encourages and he enables Milo. 

If he confronted Milo, he'd be sounding more like the way he sounds off at Leunig ...

He senses hatred and spite? Well he would, wouldn't he, being a humourless sod, incidentally filled with an abundance of hatred and spite. It's one thing to say you don't like or get a cartoon ...

... but to spot hate in that cartoon suggests the Bolter spends most days in the mirror cultivating the hate so he can spot it at the drop of a hat ...

For a man who walks, talks and spews hatred and spite at Malware on a daily, possibly hourly basis, the talk of hatred and spite is ... well quite humorous and comical and jolly ...

What on earth does he think Milo offers? Humour? Think hatred and spite of the kind the Bolter dearly loves, but is too cowardly to indulge in ...

It's down there with the hate and the spite that went into the Terror story noted last night in Media Watch ...

It's one thing to do a well-documented story about the assorted prize heels now being outed, backed up with well-researched revelations about these shameless heels, who infest politics, the media, business, the Republican party, evangelicals, yadda yadda, and quite another to spread a murky rumour without a sense of shame ...

Who knows the truth of the matter? The Terror better have the good oil to back up its judgement. The way the other Murdochians went to water suggests that's still up in the air ...

But back to the leadership question raised by the Bolter so many times, and to the latest sly tove trying to gimble in the wabe ...

It's been delicious to watch the onion muncher eat humble pie these last few days ... but with their hero off to attend his sister's wedding - by golly the photos from that should sell like hot cakes - the reptiles have been looking for a new hero to fan the flames, and lo, out of the woodwork has come ScoMo ...

Never mind that the faint-hearted wretch didn't utter a peep when it might have mattered or counted, now he's standing tall like a Colonel Blimp commanding the born agains from a distance ... and naturally the reptiles wheeled out their very best to celebrate the occasion ...

Morrison breaks silence ... Treasurer a wooing he would go ...?

That's not going to go far, and not just because the ding dong is the Treasurer, graveyard for those who aspire to political glory, and not just because of his blatant, palpable cowardice when it mattered, of the kind faint-hearted losers show when asked to reveal themselves... 

No, the real test is the way poor old Shanners struggled to get any meat off the bone, and ran just a few short tepid pars, as if trying to get the pond to crack the ancient Woody Allen joke about serving  small portions of ScoMo ...

Yep, there in the last par is the real gloom of the reptiles ...

After all the fuss and the fury has it come to this? A growing view that the reptiles have steered this ship onto the rocks and all they've got left is the wretched ScoMo?

There's the onion muncher off to a gay wedding, clouds of folly and prejudice trailing behind him, and ScoMo coming out of his funk only to discover all that's lost?

Some conservative leaders are capable of vision and generosity. It might come from kingly born to rule syndrome, but they understand the harmless gesture. With the surveys running in his favour, and a gay sister, the onion muncher had the chance to step up to a moment of glory. He might even have walked the walk instead of just blathering the talk on indigenous matters.

Instead, what did he come up with? Knighting a duke.

And what has ScoMo managed? A black knight imitation ...

Is it any wonder everyone wishes that it was December 25? Fancy a Christmas lunch with the rellies being better than an hour reading a reptile trash rag ... move along, keep the line moving, nothing to see here ...

And so to the Pope, making the point much more eloquently than the pond, with more papal blessings available here ... with, it should be noted, an abundance of good humour and an absence of hate and spite, though perhaps there might be a bit of spittle arising from all the huffing and puffing at the grate ...