Every so often the pond is blessed by a chance to observe natural phenomena … clouds, or a gaggle of birds, forming oddly evocative shapes … or the hive mind lizards of Oz on a crusade …
Sometimes the pond is simply overwhelmed by the astonishing beauty of the hive mind at work … so many assiduously beavering away, it quite takes the breath away …
There was a sublime example this day … and the pond had to revert to its old anthropological field habits to take it all in …
Look at this splendid array ...
Now the pond realises that many will be bored … the pond can almost hear the refrain booming down the full to overflowing intertubes: "oh fuck, they're not still banging on about that, are they?"
Indeed they are, and it's the ponds duty to go out into the field and bring back an abundance of clippings. These require little comment, perhaps a little abstract at the start, but then the thing itself speaks for itself …
Some reptiles were assigned the job of bringing a bowl of water, for the washing of the hands ritual … and Dennis "the bouffant one" Shanahan took on that arduous duty …
It's a difficult task, defending a goose who boasted how the fix was in, but Shanners is the right man for the job ...
Other reptiles were assigned the job of getting like minds to take flight with the reptiles …
Andy and Sam took on the task of talking to state pollies to see who would join the crusade, including dummies in a government that couldn't organise a tram, a museum, a revamped stadium, or a space for women around an abortion clinic …
Such cackling geese really don't have that much to do with tertiary education, which is why the crusading reptiles treasure their cackling even more ...
Yet more reptiles were assigned the task of mouthing off to the pond's favourite song - what about me, it isn't fair, those bloody wogs get all the attention, and the white Anglo-celtic crusaders don't get their share … it isn't fair, what about me, yadda yadda …
The urbane Urban is just the right person for this aspect of the crusade because she knows that the work of the thought police never ends, and a most offensive attitude was in urgent need of correction ...
This is a cunning ploy, because the pond thought the Satanic Verses was deliberately and correctly offensive … but the trouble is, the pond thinks that the onion muncher is also deliberately and provocatively offensive …
Still, the urbane Urban kept on with the thought police business … and naturally the IPA had to be consulted ...
Disappointed? Look, prof, when the reptiles get on a thought police crusade, no one is spared and no dissenting opinion is allowed …
Now by this point the pond realises the feeble-hearted and the sensible will have long ago deserted this post, and as a result, they will miss out on the leader of the pack … the bromancer himself …
In this entire carry-on, which was faithfully tweeted out to an uncaring universe, the reptile crusaders managed to score only one comment on social media, and here it is …
Oh come on Sal, that's hardly fair however you say it, "Murdoch media no longer seek the truth", or perhaps "bormancer no longer seek the truth."
There's a profound error at the heart of it, contained in "no longer."
That implies at some point in the dim, long forgotten past that perhaps the reptiles did seek the truth, but there's little evidence to suggest it was so - unless the truth is defined as cash in the chairman's bank account …
Never mind, it's been an exhausting journey, and the bromancer is sure to induce a terminal state of tizz …
The ironies here are multiple, not least the way an illiberal, intolerant and anti-wog news organisation has thrown all of its resources behind a demonising crusade … made worse by the way there's a simple solution at hand.
The ACU!
Will the bromancer, fellow tyke, dare to go there?
There's one thing you can say about the inanity and sheer stupidity of the bromancer … it's always on parade. That line …
If a Chinese government official said a Confucius Institute would help students appreciate the genius of Chinese culture, would anyone bat an eyelid?
… is a pearler, a gem, a classic …
If nothing else, the pond understands that some lid-less reptiles have difficulty batting their eyelids, but the pond could just imagine the reptiles embarking on a very bigly crusade the moment they discovered the wicked Chinese communists were not just funding a university, but were also demanding that the course be structured in a way that favoured the genius of Chinese communist culture …
Why this very day, what's top of the page in the tree killer edition?
As for the rest, what a disappointing lack of imagination.
Give the money to the IPA, or the CIS? Or offer generic talk of "those smaller private institutions of higher learning that are dedicated to Western civilisation" ….
Why are the reptiles so leery about giving the money to the tykes? Why do they refuse to join the pond in chanting ACU, ACU …
Is it because it would be so naked and so obvious … or is it because even the tykes can't see the point of yet another useless y'artz degree, funded not for academic purposes, but for obvious ideological, almost theological reasons, with a lashing of racism, bigotry and prejudice to add the right flavour for reptiles …
Is that the reason the craven Craven has been so craven? He realises he might be on a crusader hiding to nothing ...
The pond felt no need to add a question mark to that last rhetorical question … not when the answer is obvious.
As for the crusade, is this the end? Have the crusading reptiles had enough? Will the hive mind, exhausted by nervous agitation and stress, finally slumber?
Nope, this will go on and on, and in a decade's time, it will still be dragged out and recited in some reptile litany or other about how the crusaders were betrayed, and western civilisation was ruined…
Such is life, and the only blessing for the pond is that it won't be around to record it, and some other mug involved in reptile studies will have the job …
Meanwhile, there are real issues to discuss, and real suffering to observe, especially in the bush, and the pond was moved to see the Pope's evocation of the oppressed and the forsaken in Armidale …with more studies here …though the pond suggests that maintaing a 150 metre perimeter at all times will help reduce tensions for anyone involved in field work …
The Bro: "The Ramsay people have to face up to reality if they are not to waste, or worse, a vast sum of money."
ReplyDeleteHey yeah, Bro ! But, butt couldn't the 'Ramsay people' just give the money back to those it was taken from in the first place ? Or would that kinda be the real "or worse" option ?
Pssst DP, 'Campion' ! The Aussie equivalent of Buckingham.
In the American context at least, an endowment seems to be like the purchase of an indulgence to insure that the venal and self-centred in life will be thought of more kindly in death. If that was what Paul Ramsay wanted he should have thought more carefully about who would manage the endowment. Involving the likes of Abbot and Howard would always ensure a decent into chaos. It looks like feeding time in the crocodile enclosure at the moment - hilarious.
DeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteAnother fine example of the Murmuration of the Murdoch Minions.
The writing of history is dependent on two periods, the one history is written about and the one it is written in. So often our understanding and view of the past is a reflection of our anxieties and pre-occupations in the present.
It’s therefore telling that the knee jerk reaction of the reptiles of the failure to transplant their beloved Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation into ANU is to carp on about how unfair it is for Middle Eastern types and the Chinese to have managed to successfully introduce their own centres.
Back in the early 90’s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there would have been none of this sort of pearl clutching. Western Democracy/Capitalism was victorious according to the neo-conservatives and an idiot such as Francis Fukuyama was being lauded for a piece of utter nonsense ‘The End of History’. The Middle East and China were just expected to bow to the inevitable and take up liberal democracy and free market capitalism.
Less than 30 years later after a series of disastrous interventions in the Middle East and the capitulation of industrial manufacture to China, the West is having a crisis of confidence. Some of the architects of the Wests diminishing power, such as Howard and Abbott, therefore feel the need to have their world viewpoint further reinforced with vanity projects such as the Ramsay Centre.
It won’t do any good history just keeps rolling along.
Gregory the Bishop of Tours wrote in his ‘History of the Franks’, “A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad.” which is probably as good a description of history as any.
DiddyWrote
G'day, DW, you've been silent for a while recently (we keep kinda losing people for extended periods - we seem to have lost Bez and his rhymes, and even FrankD has been silent for quite a while. So it goes, eh ?)
DeleteAnyway, the thing is that the human race (ie subspecies homo sapiens sapiens) has been around on Planet Terra for maybe 200,000 (or even 300,000) years. Now yeah, heaps of stuff went on during the roughly 190,000 (or 290,000 years) for which we have absolutely no idea what was happening (except that we must have been granted a word for sex at some stage or we'd never have been able to think of doing it).
For instance, what is now the North Sea was once a fertile and inhabited plain which got flooded (apparently by an ice-wall collapsing in north America, or summat). But we have absolutely no idea of the 'human history' that was lost in that massive inundation.
However, what I'm really thinking is: ok, if the human race continues for say another 190,000 (or 290,000) years, what will the 'universities' of that time be teaching about 'Western civilisation' ? Anything at all, d'you reckon, or will it all have been forgotten long, long before then ? Lost like the days and ways and says of the North Sea Plain natives ?
"Australian conservatives have been outplayed again and again and again in institutional politics" - G Sheridan, 8/6/2018
ReplyDeleteI read it once. I read it twice. I look, and I look - and slowly, very slowly, it occurs to me: there is a common denominator to the problem.
Could they try an article next week about the vacancy of skills and acuity in Australian conservatives? I mean, there's a problem one could get to work on. Could they develop a competent conservative who might take on institutions and win?
The they could move on to developing likeable conservatives. The sky might be the limit for the endlessly vanquished tories.
Hmm, well it might be a lack of sophisticated ability, vc, but I reckon they'd be busily informing you that it's just because they are such honest and honourable gentlepersons, that those sneaky, evil Lefties always overcome them.
DeleteSurely there is at least one Conservative on this continent who could present an hour of conversation on Counterpoint that is worth listening to.
DeleteNice irony in this carry on about Western Civilisation. One of the great glories of Western Civilisation is the scientific method, which is roundly rejected by the reptiles when id doesn't suit their agenda i.e. most of the time.
ReplyDeleteWhat is missing here is Gandhi's perspective.
ReplyDeleteNouns and verbs can be tricky.
DeleteApparently Donners who pretends to be a moral philosopher could not see the very dark irony in having the onion muncher and Alan Jones launch his new book.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
Because once upon a time they both stood on the steps of parliament house in Canberra very self-righteously calling for the murder of the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Plus as usual the bromancer betrays himself in promoting the "search for truth". Which is quite odd because all of the usual right-wing "catholic" traditionalists pretend/claim that the "catholic" church is the ONLY source of truth in the world, with its (bullshit) magisterium containing all of the details for ordering both human behavior and the structures/functions of institutions.
I’m confused. The best bits of ‘Western’ ‘Civilisation’ seem to be those most derided by reptile types. Those of us devoted to the study of Messrs Bach, Van Gogh, Rimbaud, Vivaldi, Tolstoy (steady on - ain’t he a dirty Russkie? ed.) see our BAs degraded, downgraded and defunded year after year. You’d think the denizens of Ramsay St would twig that an institution that turns the ground floor of a once proud school of music into a pub would hardly be the appropriate place to host its earne$t efforts to promote greater understanding of Fragonard and Satie.
ReplyDelete