In which the pond does the Major and a crash course in great books ...

The pond is struggling to keep up with the reptiles today, but this offering from Stephen Brook is irresistible as a starter …

Note that reference to "off reservation."

No, that's not Faine's crime, that's stupid Stephen Brook, who doubled down in his actual report ...

It looks like ABC Melbourne Mornings presenter Jon Faine has wandered off the reservation again. Aunty has been forced to apologise on behalf of the radio presenter over an out-of-character ethnic slur he made against Indian NBN technicians. The apology follows a year of highs and lows for the ABC veteran. His spectacular take-down of managing director Michelle Guthrie for failing to defend the ABC against the government was well received at the Melbourne Press Club in June. Faine acidly pointed out Guthrie’s dignified-silence approach failed to stop the government freezing indexation in the next budget, which will cost Aunty $84 million. But Faine’s frank interview with a disability activist in March was labelled insensitive and bizarre.

"Wandered off the reservation again"?!

And Brook thinks he's being superior to the offensive Faine? How else to put it than to say than to put political correctness aside and call Brook a fuckwit of the first water? Unless of course he intends a meta-level of irony, and a deep sympathy with Faine, and a willingness to go there with him ...

There's plenty more at NPR here …

Uh huh, and now for that apology from the lizard Oz for the scribbling of babbling Brook ...

Never mind, the pond has so much to tackle, it was just seeking a little light relief before heading off to Major Mitchell territory, the reptile galah reliably offering exceptionally uniquely infallible advice* (*ABC approved) …

Now it should be remembered that the Major is a climate science denialist and the mischief currently being produced by all the dissidents springs from the reptiles, and their love of dinkum clean Oz coal, oi oi oi…

How the reptiles have cherished the onion muncher and all the rest of the fundamentalist hard core deniers …Lloydie amongst them, and still beavering away today ...

Sadly the pond hasn't got time for Lloydie, because the Major calls ...

Oh dear, there's a reptile aware there's a drought going on. Someone put stick their head outside the inner city 'leet Surry Hills bunker for a nanosecond, did they, to see what's happening to their farm investment?

Here, have a cartoon …

What now?

Well the Major has stared into the abyss, and see now how he blinks ...

Constrain prices? That's what it's come to as the Major blinks and retreats from the onion muncher abyss?

How Ben Chifley would be chortling and dancing in the streets if by chance he happened to be able to see this talk of "constraining prices" …

 

Here, have a price fixed cartoon …

And now because the pond is a glutton, and a devoted reptile consumerist, it simply must provide an add-on, featuring Luke blathering in the wilderness, apparently unaware there's a real crisis in western civilisation centred on Canberra and Malware's fortunes ...

You see, Luke scored the Lobbecke of the day, and is maintaining the crusade, even as the lights go out in Canberra, and so attention must be paid to the man honoured with cult reptile status ...

Indeed, indeed, and how could anyone celebrate European Enlightenment, without mentioning the Donald and without being aware of the art of painting?

But enough, that's the pond's way of saying it's heard Luke-speak a zillion times before in reptile la la land … and sometimes a little distraction is necessary ...

Pathetic really, that the noble crusader dream should have been reduced to a great books course, with a few sops from elsewhere thrown in …

Issue after issue, the pond is confronted with ads in the NYRB offering great book courses, or great music courses, or great this and that courses …

Even as the country descends into a babble of conflicting voices and lies and phoniness, it's the sort of hucksterism and boosterism beloved of American triumphalism ...

 

… can Trump U be far behind?

Even if the great books proposal goes nowhere? 

So the pond has just endured another bout of existentially meaningless discourse, full of futility and pointlessness, up there with the very worst of French post-modernist relativism?

Enough of all that, let the debate continue, it's such fun to see reptiles flapping in the dismal breeze, when they could just sign up for a great books course by correspondence for a very modest stipend - extending the mortgage should raise enough cash - and perhaps, if Rosseau is included, discover the dangers of Italy and wanking …

{There I} learnt of that dangerous means of cheating Nature, which leads young men of my temperament to various kinds of excesses, that eventually imperil their health, and sometimes their lives. This vice, which shame and timidity find so convenient, has a particular attraction for lively imaginations. (Psychology Today) 

Avice? Not in the world of the reptiles and modern psychology… and then there's the virtues of using a goose …

...to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of Master John of Scotland, alias Scotus. (adelaide.edu here, though google is goosing them with a certificates issue. What a pain in the arse google is).

Well yes, that's full of references to Western Civilisation before reaching an apt conclusion.

But enough, the pond doesn't mean to mock, but to celebrate the joys of bum-wiping and wanking, and western civilisation reaching its highest forms in the comely shapes of the onion muncher, the war criminal little Johnny and of course the Donald …