In which Dame Slap offers the young her usual class-room rant about their derelict, useless ways ...

 

The pond has no idea why it attends Dame Slap's classes. She's always shouting at someone - she's a most unpleasant teacher - and her lessons are conducted in such a predictable way, it seems she expects her students will be swayed by incessant, monotonous repetition.

There's also a fair swag of confusion and hypocrisy in the mix.

This is after all the woman who donned a MAGA cap and went out into the night to celebrate the arrival of a President who is a multiple bankrupt, much married and quite happy to fuck a porn star or such like, while married and pretending to be an Xian and preaching Xian values.

At least when JFK got into bed with the Mafia, he managed to keep it discreet, but the Donald even manages to share lawyers with his Foxy friends …

The pond had to lay in a supply of cartoons so it could occasionally lift the lid and have a peek inside the desk, as the pond once did in a real skul when in need of urgent distraction.

Given the rampant hypocrisy of Dame Slap herself, how is it even vaguely possible for her to berate the young for putting Western civilisation at risk, when she herself danced in the street at the idea of a boor and a buffoon scoring a gig at the White House?

Well reflection and self-awareness have always been distant dreams when it comes to Dame Slap and her incessant ranting at freedom, though it's a freedom that's always hidden behind a paywall, reminding your average punter than freedom means the freedom to donate to chairman Rupert's coffers ...

Uh huh, that was a slow build, and now here it comes, the lecture about freedom, but first consider a deep and rich irony.

It will be remembered how the reptiles incessantly rant about religious freedom and the right of bigots and homophobes to only bake cakes and such like for the people they want to serve.

Now it seems that barbers must also be enlisted in the rant.

Hair cut rituals are possibly the most arcane and exotic ritual still standing in cities. The pond takes the view that if a woman wants a hair cut in the style of a man, the barber should do it - the barber a few streets up from the pond on Enmore road is grateful for the trade, and would possibly also shear a sheep if anyone cared to bring one into the shop.

The pond vividly remembers the time when it was considered impossible for a woman to wander into a public bar, order a beer and drink it standing at the bar. It was either the ladies' lounge or go thirsty.

Yet a service is a service, and a drink is a drink, and these days anyone can feel free to wander into a bar, which of course explains why the pond never goes there …never forget the freedom to stop reading Dame Slap, a freedom routinely exercised by young people tired of being abused.

Apparently some barbers don't want to cut women's hair or a transgender persons hair, even if they want it done in the style of a man. Well there are layers upon layers - giving a bad haircut might be the easiest way to score the customers you want to keep - but the pond finds it hard to understand how giving a haircut now involves sending women to the ladies' lounge, or how it ends up in the same category as cake-baking, as per the angelic Shanners' la la land rant  back on 16th December 2017, scribbling furiously about religious freedom …

Oh okay, the pond only ran that so it could slip in another cartoon before getting back to Dame Slap's class …too much wagging and she gets terribly upset.

And now back in the class … as we discover cake-baking and hair-cutting are as one and reflect deeply the perils of western civilisation, in much the same way as Blake managed to see eternity in a grain of sand.

We also learn the importance of maintaining whatever bigotry suits you, even to the point where you can pretend you don't know how to cut a woman's hair, or don't care to offer such a service and didn't have the nous to put up a sign … you know, no blacks, women or sheep will be serviced in this shop …

Please, instruct us, Dame Slap ...

It's astonishing really, how freedom consists of maintaining the right to keep locking up blacks, minorities and such like, and if anyone gets agitated, they're just repressing the bigots …

If it happened to the pond in a personal way, it would be hard to see how it was all just a form political correctness or self-loathing ...having a couple of cops cuff you and haul you away while waiting for a friend …

The pond would likely be pretty pissed off, but not being black, the pond can share some of Dame Slap's enormously self-satisfied complacency.

Oh sheesh, there the pond goes, sounding just like Dame Slap. It's just like being in a bad dream ...

The pond should have known that the IPA was behind it all, and the blather about defending Western Civilisation would somehow transform from barber shops into a lecture about history, with some sort of new millenarian apocalypse just around the corner, because that's what the reptiles constantly yearn for… some apocalypse and rapture ...

Uh huh, the pond gets the drift.

 Is that the same as the ideas emanating from the Donald and needing Dame Slap's and our commitment?

 

And it was around here that the pond and Tombs parted ways.

The pond doesn't mind exaggeration in the cause of an argument, but the notion that anyone is free to express unorthodox views - we're getting to it in the next gobbet - is just so much foolishness.

Here's a bunch of views collated by PBS on Mormons and dissent, with one not atypical report from Margaret Toscano, who was excommunicated in 2000 for writing about the role of women in Mormonism …

[I appeared before the church's disciplinary court] because I cared about the community, and I wanted to talk to them about this. Again, I'm this hopeless idealist -- I'm hoping that maybe if I go there and talk to them, I didn't think it would make a difference in them not excommunicating me, but I wanted them to see that the issues are more complicated, that you shouldn't just label a person as evil because they have questions. 
 ... It occurred to me as I'm sitting there that if this had been in the Middle Ages, if these men had not only the ecclesiastical power but if they had the power of the state, where they could give a physical punishment to me, I realized in this moment that they would have burned me at the stake. And they would have done it smiling, thinking that they were saving my soul. This is why at the end they can shake my hand and say, "Oh, you're such a lovely person," at the same moment that they're saying, "We've condemned you," that you now are cut off from the church and the kingdom of God and everything else. 
 ... I did not expect that I would have grief over the excommunication, because I had been in a state of limbo. My name was on the records of the church, but I was not really in the church. ... This will be kind of a mercy killing, right? So I was not expecting that I would have so much grief, but I cried for three days. I couldn't stop crying. ... Sometimes when I hear a Mormon hymn, I feel the grief. It's very primal. It really is.

Well that was just the pond tilling the soil, in readiness for the planting of some nonsense.

Now for the sanitised Tombs/Dame Slap version …and a hearty abusing of young people, who are certainly guilty of one major crime. They're young, dammit, and that is unforgivable …

So what's the message the pond took away from the class? Well intolerance and a refusal to do business with people is good, and a foundation of western civilisation …and if you really want to be unorthodox, head off to a Mormon university, though it's unlikely you'll be viewed kindly if you start singing some of the songs in The Book of Mormon.

Sadly, the pond suspects that young people won't learn any of Dame Slap's lessons, not even the Trumpian ones.

You see, the lizard Oz demographic is hopelessly aged, and young people don't pay much attention to it, nor are they self-loathing enough to fork over shekels to cop a sanctimonious lecture from a Donald Trump lover …

Going down that path would be sliding further into a most peculiar form of Dame Slap un-enlightenment, though according to Rowe there's no stopping some people sliding into all sorts of strange places, with more sliding Rowe here ...