In which the pond makes a classic fatal TGIF 404 lunch-time mistake ...

First a Rowe joke, just to settle the pond down, with more settling down - and getting around behind - available at Rowe's splendid graveyard here ...

Ah that's better, though really it seems the first shovels to sink into the ground belong to the AMP …

And now to a confession of the pond's tragic mistake this day.

Stumbling around in the cesspit otherwise known as the Speccie in search of a lunch-time TGIF distraction, and bereft of Giles and Flinty, the pond stumbled on a climate science outing …

Why not give it a go, the pond thought, only to discover that it was a vomitous spewing of anger and rage that, even by the pond's usually low standards, was simply beyond the pale …

It happened to be written by one David Archibald, and apart from going on and on in an interminable way - with the usual guff about climate science as a religion, written by a person who clearly had only a passing acquaintance with scientific method or scientific argument or debate - it ended this way:

Did you see that?

There's a man celebrating suicides, and there's the Speccie publishing it …

There's hope in people killing themselves? Now there's a funny fucking form of hope ...

It's down there with the Devine's 'hang the greenies from the nearest lamp post' routine, and it's so rich in bile and anger and hate and fear and loathing that it's about as much as the pond could do just to note it - though it does also provide evidence that the pond is into self-mutiltation, because it made it to the end of the piece …

Then it occurred to the pond that this David Archibald chappie had escaped the pond's radar, but it soon turned out that he wrote for Quadrant and had been a One Nation candidate in WA …

In a 2015 Quadrant article One Nation candidate David Archibald described single mothers as "too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly 3 million years of evolutionary pressure". "This will result in a rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly," he said. He also said support payments for single mothers should be axed and described single motherhood as a "lifestyle choice".

Speaking of ugly, that ABC story here featured a photo of said David Archibald …

Sheesh, talk about a man in a glass house arming himself with a bunch of stones …but no doubt he had a mother and possibly she loved him.

Meanwhile, the gargoyles on Sydney University must be pleased … and it certainly would have cheered single mums deciding who might tuck slippers under bed for the night.

Naturally, being desperate, Pauline and co. stuck with their man so that more cloud-shouting could continue …

He's just a naughty boy?

But how fitting he should have been inspired by the onion muncher ...

Then the pond came across a book launch here ...

David Archibald, is a Perth-based scientist and analyst. Hear David speak on his latest book launched by his publisher, Connor Court. We should be taking the Chinese at their word. When they say they will seize the Senkaku islands from Japan, then they will be attacking Japan. When say they are going to seize the South China Sea, then they will be killing Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indonesians and Malaysians to do so. When China says that they will be having a war with the United States in a Götterdämmerung that will decide who rules the world thereafter, then another world war is coming. They have said all those things. It is time for Australia to awake from its torpor and prepare for what is coming. We need more submarines and quickly. The F-35 will be shot out of the sky, but there is a better alternative. This book explains all.

Fuck the absent duck, as soon as the pond hears somebody say they can explain everything or even 'all', it reaches for its Glock …

Why is this particularly piquant?

Well in the very same Speccie, the pond had gone wandering around and also stumbled across Derek Parker having a go at brutalising/pretending to do a book review savaging (strike out which is the less aggro) of Derryn Hinch and Clive Hamilton.

The pond had thought it a pretty weak outing, whatever one thought of Hinchie or Clive, and passed it by, but then seeing Archibald having a pink fit about China, remembered that when he got to Clive's book, Parker scribbled thusly …

Chinese conspiracy theorist? It just sounds a bit silly? 

But what about Archibald announcing the imminent arrival of world war three with the Chinese?

Is this what the Speccie has come to? Mocking the paranoid quasi-nationalism of the Archibald as if he was some sort of weird leftie loon?

By this time, the pond was suitably confused and thoroughly chastened.

Straying into the weirder pages of the Speccie, it turns out, could be a bit like reading Storm Front for kicks …and the pond gave that up long ago. There's funny ha ha, and then there's funny peculiar, weirdly out there and far away ...

Best to play it safe in the future. 

If the Speccie won't keep delivering Giles and Flinty, and the urbane Urban for top notch filmic climate science, then the pond will have to steer clear …

They have been warned. It is time for the Speccie mob to awake from its torpor and prepare for what is coming. 

Meanwhile, perhaps best to stick with the Pope, always on hand with papal advice for his flock here …