In which the pond returns for a surfeit of reptiles and a roll call at Dame Slap's school of pain ...

The pond has had any number of reptile ventures while travelling (and how strange it is to be in a world disconnected from the full to overflowing intertubes).

It turns out that even on a Friday night the desperate desire of the reptiles to bump up the circulation figures leaves copies of the rag littering the airport like the almost award winning ubiquitous Sydney bin chickens (it goes without saying that the Tamworth city bird, the magpie, won). Fairfax long ago gave away this painful, obvious, and pathetic ploy and yet the reptiles remain tragically desperate and needy ...and delusional ... because people value things by what they pay for them, and free is what you pay for a suburban rag tossed over the gate.

Never mind, as a result, the pond was able to spot an advertisement from Foxtel in the lizard Oz advising that extreme weather events had impacted services.

Where were the reptiles when this happened? Surely it's as astonishingly a weak excuse as the South Australians offered for interruption to power supply. Oh back then how the reptiles mocked talk of extreme weather events. Suggestions that power lines knocked over might struggle to deliver power produced gales of reptile laughter. The power must go through, irrespective of storm, hail, tempest or tornado ...

Et tu Foxtel?

Is it time for Foxtel to get a great big battery to ensure continuity of supply? Probably not, but it seems they're offering a gizmo for $99 to provide a Foxtel streaming service, in a desperate attempt to catch up with Chromecast and all the rest of them ... hmm, perhaps a great big battery will come in handy. Or an even bigger travel bag full of delusions of grandeur.

Oh there was also the HUN and the Terror littering the airports like bin chickens, featuring the likes of Mark Latham, but that's too low rent even for the pond. And on the pond's return, it was in time to discover that the Terrorists are still trying to sell the joys of pissing two billion plus against the wall...

It's a fuck up, that's what it is, an unsellable policy fuck up ...

But back to the littering bin chickens. The pond caught up with the Major Mitchell, not having noted the lad for some time ... and his header was delicious ...

Anyone wanting to actually read the blusterer might have to click to enlarge - please, pause for a moment to reflect on the point before hitting the mouse - but the pond will just settle for reproducing the headline which the scanner so cruelly cut off: "Predicting Political Coups Every Second Day Is Junk Journalism."

It was so rich for a rag dedicated to calling for or predicting political coups every first day that the pond cackled with laughter, until nearby passengers started to eye the pond a tad nervously ...

And yesterday while in an airport, the pond also caught the Caterists in full flight ...

 

Again the scanner has cruelly cut off the header, which read "Paul Keating thinks Australians are stupid."

Who knows what Keating thinks of Australians sui generis, but the pond has every conviction that Paul Keating thinks the Caterists are profoundly stupid.

Again the pond only offers the clipping as evidence of having been there - it might be readable by way of clicking to enlarge the portions - but for those without the energy or the desire to visit corpses of the past, take it from the pond it's as richly a stupid piece as the Caterists have managed in many a year. It must have left prattling Polonius rolling about in a fit - to think that Ming the Merciless might need a braying, taxpayer funded Pom as his defender ...

Funnily enough, the Caterists relied on another pond favourite Hal Colebatch, and the only benefit to that is to be able to provide a link to Peter Stanley here, which inter alia included these lines:

I recently said (in response to a question from Mike Seccombe of The Saturday Paper) that ‘good history has to be based on evidence, scholarship and good writing’. I thought that ‘Hal Colebatch’s book fails on every one of those measures’. Let’s start with the writing. For a book written by a man known as a poet, Australia’s Secret War is strikingly badly written. It resembles nothing so much as music by Michael Nyman, the composer of monotonous scores for films such as The Piano or The Draughtsman’s Contract: for a while interesting, but soon wearying by repetition.

Indeed, indeed, the pond is no fan of Nyman, so there's a palpable hit.

But now the pond must leave its travels and its airport sojourns behind - the only thing worse than free reptile sightings is an abundance of free reptile sightings and all the tears that must be shed at the lost forests of trees - though perhaps we should note that both the Terror and the HUN were offering tempting subscription deals, featuring "free" noise cancelling headphones, and sundry other benefits, in all an alleged over $550 in value, for the modest stipend of seven bucks a week, or over the first twelve months, a total minimum cost of $364, meaning that the reptiles were now operating as a charity and just giving it away to any punter wanting to cash in ...

It's another part of that "free" syndrome, this time featuring preposterous figures that don't add up ... though the reporting is admittedly as shoddy as the accounting.

Of course it's just a rort and the reptiles are relying on the punters to allow the automatic subscription to kick in, so that they might become News Corp johns turning tricks on a weekly basis for ever ...

Oh and the pond should note that Disney rather than Comcast are still in the hunt for vast swathes of the Chairman's empire. Has anyone wondered how Disney's corporate family-laden values will sit with a news channel that regularly trolls for pussy gropers and child molesters? How will the mouse and Hannity sit together? Will this trip to the dark side see "Judge" Jeanine sit alongside "Judge" Roy and score a support role as Darth calls for a cleansing of the empire?

Never mind, the pond must return to the digital present because headmistress Dame Slap has called everyone into class for end of year grades ...

  

Still she does it!? How could the pond resist? It was inevitable that suitable illustrations would be dragged from the vault ...

 

The pond started this routine as a joke, but Dame Slap has earnestly embraced the role ...

Of course it's more than coincidence that Dame Slap's star pupil should turn up today in the lizard Oz with a stupendously stupid headline splash ...

All the pond can do is offer a prayer of hope for anyone caught up in the welfare system in this country and become a victim of interfering bureaucrats, urged on by brutalist lizard Oz columnists. 

If there's a living hell on earth, it's trying to deal with Centrelink ... a form of torture devised and approved of by politicians incapable of filling out a form in relation to citizenship which would disqualify a welfare recipient for decades ...

Dame Slap exemplifies all that's wrong with a system designed first of all to punish and to shame and to restrict and to deny...

But enough of the cane for the moment, it's on with the verbal abuse and so to the rest of the assessments ...

The idea that Dame Slap is dedicated to "liberal" with a small "l" principles makes the pond glad it isn't reading the column in an airport ... the eruption of cackles might have disturbed other passengers, could even have seen security called ... and then the pond might have been forced to imitate a clock on the run ...

And now just like frequent flyer points, all good junkets must come to an end ... because we all know what's coming, an assessment of the captain of the class, a no good loser dropkick ...

In all this lather of reptile fury, the pond will admit to missing only one thing. 

The cartoons, like this one by Rowe hinting at the massive hypocrisy of those willing to pillory Chinese banqueters while sitting down to indulge in and enjoy their own little financial feast ... and as always more Rowe here ...