In which it's just another tedious day with the mindlessly repetitive Dame Slap reciting the bigots' two times table ...

The pond's always pleased to see a little Newtown street art, even when it makes the pond think it's slipped back into the 1970s …

Meanwhile, over in reptile la la land, the social media experiment continues to produce unfortunate responses of a street art kind …

Oh you naughty reptiles, look at what you're hosting ...

As for the trial of the century? Hardly …we haven't seen the Donald on trial yet … and there's still plenty of time left in the century ...

But yes, this has all been an avoidance tactic by the pond, because today is Dame Slap day, and the Dame is being exceedingly predictable and tedious. The pond could recite all the lines by heart, and the responses, and yet still she insists on detention ...

When is it not so, some might ask, but there's only so many times a day the pond can stand a shrill shriek in the ear …

That yarn about not being Danish Australians made the pond feel deeply for the Dame.

Even back in the day, there was no problem being a Scottish Australian, and everyone was dragged down to the Highland Games on number one oval, and the mournful wail of the bagpipes could be heard on every street parade.

The Welsh infiltrated themselves into eisteddfods and everybody thought it was a right old celebration, with a proper nod to the source - though you could count on one hand the people who remember Sunstruck. And of course you just had to shake a tree to produce a shower of Paddys at certain times of years, with religious as well as tribal differences on parade.

Then there were the Lebanese, who flourished in the country rag trade, and the Greeks who cornered the country cafe and deli business, and the Italians, who cornered the stereotype business with an appearance in a show written by an Anglo, the 1966 They're a Weird Mob …

Of course some tried to hide their ethnic origin, but everybody knew it, and along with it came either tolerance or bigotry … 

It wasn't much fun being Chinese in a country town, even though everyone went to the restaurant across the road, and the pond was grateful for the occasional free meals handed out to the lumpenproletariat … and it certainly wasn't much fun being black, though they were carefully segregated in a special class in a portable across the oval so everybody could pretend they weren't there ...

Why bother pretending none of this existed? Why pretend that multiculturalism wasn't a thing, when it was all the go, even if it wasn't named as such? 

Why pretend there weren't dissonances and tribal hostilities as well as many easy interactions ...

Perhaps that's because this is the reptile idea of a qualification for race commissioner … an ability to defend this sort of cartoon ...

So many times the reptiles, and so the pond, have been done this path before, and the usual litany, and the pond might add, the usual trite observations.

If the pond reads one more time that "having access to good Middle Eastern falafel doesn't secure social integration" it'll run from the building, since it's equally true that access to a Danish might only guarantee an inclination to fat or mental phobias …

Now what's the bet that Bill Leak will be dragged kicking from the grave and his suffering paraded, as often happens with the parading of a Christ figure, suggesting that the pond was wise to get in a few good illustrations of the risen Leak ...

Of course Bill Leak had to raise his head from the grave - the reptiles will never get over the way he was a racist, and a homophobe, in his later years - along with assorted other bigotries and phobias dressed up as satire ...

The pond thinks these things are best kept out in the open …

In the past year or so, the reptiles have specialised in demonising certain communities … and it's a long hard road before the communities escape this sort of targeting. 

These days the Chinese and the Vietnamese are well up the pecking order, unless trapped with a reptile or Dame Slap clone on public transport and subjected to a stream of abuse …

You know, the sort of abuse still being directed at Gillian Triggs long after she's left the scene, because reptiles never forget or forgive. It's in their nature …the persecution of the foreign, the alien, the other, the outsider … as if they want the pond to be trapped on some kind of Lord of the Flies island ...

Actually we've already seen what happens when the reptile yellow press are free to roam with foam-flecked hatred, and we've also seen what happens when the constant pleading to abandon regulation scores a result.

Whenever a reptile says get rid of regulations, and 'let's see what happens', we all too often sees what happens a few years down the track …

... an own goal, of the kind celebrated by Rowe in this day's cartoon, with more Rowe always available here ...