In which the reptiles keep spluttering away about Western Civilisation ...

The pond had hoped the recent crusade in defence of Western Civilisation had sputtered out, but holiday over, the reptiles have maintained the rage …

Please note above, on the right hand side, a story given remarkable prominence, especially when considering that it's up against events in Singapore …

Well Dame Slap has a word or two to say about that, but first a little of the other sputtering, with Dame Groan leading the way …

Actually that header doesn't quite capture the intent of the trolling. To get the full whiff of the gutter, it's necessary to revert to the trolling tweet …

Yes, it's Dame Groan in malicious mode, but what a feeble spluttering splatter it turned out to be, snarky and mean, but also so short it almost made the pond recall that Woody Allen joke about the size of the portions ...

Actually Dame Groan is about the best example going around as to the how and why the reputation of academics is diminished. 

She's listed at LinkedIn as a Professor at the University of Melbourne and a Professor at the Productivity Commission …and the pond professes the fervent hope that that's a spoof listing …

Meanwhile, the urbane Urban was out and about trying to lather up a storm ...

This is wretched and pathetic stuff … genuine mud-slinging, this time playing the religious card from long ago, or at lest 2008...

So the answer to the "arguably" alleged Islamic agenda is to promote a white nationalist supremacist agenda?

But it was Dame Slap who inherited the biggest storm in the reptile teacup this day...

The pond was magically transported back to the 1960s, or perhaps to Duchamp's urinal, which only recently was dragged out by the reptiles as a hideous example of the decline and fall of western civilisation …

The business of art and artists is to make a name for themselves, attract attention, and cavort about in ways that will épater la bourgeoisie  …

Well it was good enough for the French decadent poets, and it's been good enough for all sorts of artists since …

The pond long ago decided that it wasn't particularly shockable, and being comfortably bourgeois had no particular interest in being shocked … but does remember fondly the days when it turned up to watch Barry Humphries spit all over the audience, unwise enough to be caught sitting in the front rows within spitting distance …

But then there are all sorts of stupid people who turn up to art events, perhaps in the hope of being shocked into sentience or at least a temporary sense of distraction, and then are shocked to discover that they've been distracted ...

As for Isabella Whāwhai Mason she's got the notoriety and the attention she was seeking, it no doubt being difficult for a young Māori dancer to make a go of it … and so the pond will merely note that she has a Facebook page here and an actual website here ...

The pond feels vaguely heretical and dissident providing those links, as if in the glory days of Luis Bunuel, it had provided a link to the Spanish master shocking the bourgeoisie and Dame Slap …

And now it's back to the agog, aghast Dame Slap ...

Yep, the pond was swept back to the 1960s and a book Marshall McLuhan lent his name to, a graphic work entitled The Medium is the Massage (it's easy enough to find in pdf form these days) …

Or for those who want it in a convenient takeaway single image form …

And now as the graphics included the long-forgotten Harold Wilson visiting a museum - who can remember the days when the Beatles were seen as a dire threat to Western Civilisation - and the heretical 'bigger than Christ' John Lennon an actual form of the anti-Christ? - the blessed Pope has offered up a museum the pond would love to attend, with more papal blessings always to hand here ...