Justin Milne must go ...

The pond continues to enjoy a reptile-free life, but sometimes it's still provoked beyond endurance.

The pond has no time for Michelle Guthrie, but what to say of Justin Milne, still wrecking things as he's done from the days that he couldn't even run a small film company without running on the shoals of a financial reef …

Fairfax here …

What a lickspittle toady of the forelock-tugging kind.

Editorial independence? Sounds like News Corp is more his beat ...

What to say? As usual, David Rowe says it all, with more Rowe here …

The pond continues its sabbatical, but ...

The pond is continuing its sabbatical, and thanks everyone for comments and thoughts, and as it tries to recover, is discovering the wonders and joys of a reptile-free life, but …

… the pond just had to call attention to this expert study of the herpetarium in the Graudian, and the way that News Corp has helped fuck Britain, Europe, the United States, and in Australia, state and federal politics, and along with that, the country and its policies and management.

It's a singular accomplishment, and the pond frequently wonders if its own interest in reptiles only encourages them to greater heights of destruction, marching as they do, at the whim of their despot owner …

Never mind, it's all in Inside the News Corp tribe …and what a depraved tribe it is too … with an owner who might, if circumstances allowed him, institute the sort of depraved, obscene Orwellian powers being rolled out by the Chinese government (ABC radio here).

Yes for once 'Orwellian' is a just, so and exact word, as noted in Matthew Carney's Leave no dark corner.

How pleasing it is to see others become diligent students of the reptile mindset …swarming onwards with a form of digital dictatorship in mind … with those who please sundry Chairmen rewarded, and those who upset them and their minions cast into the outer darkness.

The Graudian's piece should be read by anyone who pays a shekel to any News Corp publication or channel … and then if, after reading, they continue to pay up, why then let them enjoy their voyage of lost, damned souls, and let their children inherit a world the reptiles have helped shape ...

And two other pleasures the pond hasn't given up … the always engaging Rowe, with more good humour here …

… and the pervasive Pope, with more papal pleasures here ...

In which the pond takes a break, but not before gorging on a final serve of Oreo ...

 

Everything old is new again, and the onion muncher survives again, because that's all he knows … a professional politician, with the abilities of a rank amateur ...

The pond contemplated it with a weary grim joy and decided to take an extended break. 

We're all dying but some are going a tad more quickly, and the pond's ill-health has undercut its ability to tend to its reptile herpetarium … and in any case for what? To make a fresh round of Direct Action jokes, and marvel at the inherent uselessness of the onion muncher?

Well at least the pond's banner retains some ongoing relevance, with the onion muncher's direct action nonsense still rampant … but the pond wanted to go out with a bang, and who better than the Oreo to provide an Oscar Wilde rocket for the pond's buck?

Yes, a genuine Oreo rant would surely be a fitting way to put the pond into mothballs …paranoia and hysteria rampant, and in such a generous serve too … not just double stuf, but mega stuf …

 

While the Donald fucks the planet, what's an Oreo to do but turn on Europe in a way that the Donald would love ...

It's impossible to discuss rationally, of course, but anyone wanting a clue as to why far right, populist, white nationalist causes are popular with assorted reptiles should just read that, and they'll understand why the Oreo, Steve Bannon and the Donald are one …

It's really not far from the sort of dog whistling that was such a feature of the 1930s, but sadly the pond is too tired to care …

Meanwhile, the extraordinary fuck-up known as Brexit, which has served for Boris's ambitions and Farage's ratbaggery and not much else, is exactly the sort of lunacy which attracts far right moths to the flame of instability ...

Myopic elites smear patriots as racists?

Would that be the patriots that blather hysterically about Islamics and blacks intent on white genocide?

The pond sometimes wonders if the Oreo is aware of how deeply, how fundamentally bigoted she is … and then a reminder that the Oreo loves white nationalist populist far right governments of the Hungarian and Polish kind brings the pond's ability to wonder to a screeching halt …

Can a little Holocaust denialism be that far away? Poland's Holocaust law triggers tide of abuse against Auschwitz museum …

As West Fears the Rise of Autocrats, Hungary Show's What's Possible …

“Sometimes I feel like I’m traveling in a time machine and going back to the ’60s,” said Zoltan Illes, a Fidesz lawmaker from 2010 to 2014, who has since become a critic of the government. “All the characteristics and features on the surface are of democracy,” he added. “But behind it there is only one party and only one truth.”

Indeed, indeed, and there's only one Oreo too, and how she loves her Orban ...

For a moment the pond wondered whether the Oreo had at last deleted her internationalist credentials from her potted bio … but alas, no, she still cites her work with the 'leets, notoriously intent on establishing world government by Xmas …

And with that ritual observed, hypocrisy, paranoia, fear and loathing rampant, the pond is off on an extended break, which may or may not be permanent …

Hearty thanks to all those who have left comments, with just one final ritual to be observed, as the pond checks in to the old folks' home with Rowe, with more Rowe to be found here ...

In which the pond turns to the urbane Urban and Dame Slap for a dangerous dose of critical and creative thinking ...

The pond deeply regrets that it had to delay consideration of urgent matters flagged by the urbane Urban, in order to get through its Saturday matinee trilogy … but in a way, it's just as well, a kind of serendipity, because the urban Urban contained an astonishing example of screen villainy, more deeply disturbing than even the boogeyman in Halloween ...

The pond could hardly contain itself.

What an outrageous, fashionable but contentious skill set. Who on earth imagined that critical and creative thinking might be of use to modern readers of reptile publications?

The pond is deeply disturbed that fashionable but contentious 21st century skills such as critical and creative thinking are being contemplated …

Where will it end if this filthy disease gains a foothold? 

The intellectual roots of critical thinking are as ancient as its etymology, traceable, ultimately, to the teaching practice and vision of Socrates 2,500 years ago who discovered by a method of probing questioning that people could not rationally justify their confident claims to knowledge. Confused meanings, inadequate evidence, or self-contradictory beliefs often lurked beneath smooth but largely empty rhetoric. Socrates established the fact that one cannot depend upon those in "authority" to have sound knowledge and insight. He demonstrated that persons may have power and high position and yet be deeply confused and irrational. He established the importance of asking deep questions that probe profoundly into thinking before we accept ideas as worthy of belief. (here)

As for creative carry-ons, the pond has had enough of that nonsense to last several lifetimes, and resorted to an encyclopaedia to see where this hideous 21st century idea might have started ...

Renaissance men had a sense of their own independence, freedom and creativity, and sought to give voice to this sense of independence and creativity. Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658) wrote: "Art is the completion of nature, as it were 'a second Creator'"; … Raphael, that he shapes a painting according to his idea; Leonardo da Vinci, that he employs "shapes that do not exist in nature"; Michelangelo, that the artist realizes his vision rather than imitating nature. Still more emphatic were those who wrote about poetry: G.P. Capriano held (1555) that the poet's invention springs "from nothing." Francesco Patrizi (1586) saw poetry as "fiction," "shaping," "transformation," Finally, at long last, someone ventured to use the word, "creation." He was the seventh-century Polish poet and theoretician of poetry, Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595-1640), known as "the last Latin poet." In his treatise, De perfecta poesi, he not only wrote that a poet "invents," "after a fashion builds," but also that the poet "creates anew" (de novo creat). Sarbiewski even added: "in the manner of God" (instar Dei). (here)

It was all shockingly modern, the sort of blather one might find in a course about the glories of Western Civilisation … though sadly the rest of the urbane Urban was inclined to the dull, and the pond wondered whether it should skip the lesson, and go straight to Dame Slap … but being a studious student, the pond pressed on ...

At this pond, all the pond could think was, 'why hasn't the urbane Urban consulted the dashing Donners, a man of infinite understanding and awareness? He'll explain why creative and critical thinking are completely useless ideas ...'

Ah, the wise dashing Donners, a star of computers, robotisation, changing times, modern technologies and globalist Catholic cannibalistic groupthink …

What a relief he was dragged in to offer a vision of the future for young things … but by now the pond was hoping that the urbane Urban would recognise that, with her dashing Donners flourish, she'd done her job and the future was safe, free of creative and critical thinking, with the chanting of 'angus dei' a much more useful form of thinking …

Dame Slap awaits, be short about it, urbane Urban, perhaps just another dash of Donners and then in lieu of the IPA, how about a bit of CIS? 

Well that puff piece of hysteria and loathing is done, and so the pond could move on to the latest Dame Slap litany …

Such is the paranoia in reptile la la land that the faintest whiff of criticism sends them into a paroxysm of fear and loathing …

Not critical or creative thinking, that would be reprehensible, but such is the familiarity of Dame Slap's rant that the pond thought it should import a few cartoons to celebrate the man Dame Slap hailed as the man to MAGA …

 

Ah there you go, 'snap', and so to snap along with Dame Slap ...

Yes, true democrats must stand up … why not don a MAGA cap and rush out into the streets of New York to celebrate?

Meanwhile, Dame Slap is still holding a candle for that moderate seminal creative and critical thinker Steve Bannon ...

Uh huh … another cartoon to maintain the fear and the loathing …

The pond makes no apology for the cartoons.

When Dame Slap goes into one of her paranoid fearful crusading rants, it can turn endless and monotonous, a feast of crazed and crazy nonsense ...

Actually section 18C has three fifths of fuck all to do with the reaction to Knight's cartoon in the United States, but the pond apologises for attempting to introduce some sort of notion of critical thinking into the litany. 

That's shocking, reprehensible behaviour and a cartoon celebrating Dame Slap's MAGA would be much more civilised …

And still the litany goes on, but the pond suspects that Dame Slap is starting to run out of puff, if not out of rage, paranoia, fear and loathing ...

What's funny about this? The way the reptiles, a kind of a kool-aid sipping bunch of Jonestowners, linked together in their polarised Surry Hills bunker, keep shrieking in unison how everybody else is wrong about everything …

Dame Slap wants to thwart tribal tendencies?  She's the living, breathing heart of reptile climate science-denying tribalism …

As for that talk of creative and critical thinking? Just get an app, and that'll fix what ails ya … remember everything can get sorted by an app, an app is all you need, the logarithms will work a treat, and all will be well, and the garden will be fruitful or at least fruity in the spring ...

Be alarmed? Be alarmed about the age of outrage? 

But all the reptiles, Dame Slap, the Bolter, the dog botherer, after dark at Sky, all of them, are in the outrage industry, being outraged on a daily basis. It's their business model, and the pond has responded with its own business model built on the same rage and hysteria …

And this Dame Slap outing is yet another classic example of the anger, the rage, the outrage, the paranoia and the fear and the loathing and the intolerance and the complete inability and lack of interest in walking a few yards, let alone a mile, in someone else's shoes …

And what has been the result of all the Dame Slap's rage and intolerance? Epic love of Lord Monckton and the donning of a MAGA cap, so that she might dance at night in the streets in New York … 

And meanwhile, all the pond was left with was a bunch of cartoons …

In which the dog botherer pens the third part of the epic trilogy ...

And so to the third episode of the weekend reptile saga, and how thoughtful of the reptiles to avoid doing spoilers by referring vaguely to "ferals" in the dog botherer's splash …

And how open and honest was the dog botherer, acknowledging he's a racist, climate-change (or even science) denying, bullying misogynist …

But who are the villains in all this, who are the ferals? Well the pond doesn't mind doing spoilers in the cause of entertainment … it's the ABC, of course of course, in much the sam way that a horse is a horse and the dog botherer is an asinine ass ...

Of course …

Why didn't the pond realise it? It's all the fault of the ABC. It's always been the fault of the ABC, and it will always be the fault of the ABC in the future …

Damn you ABC, and now the third episode has to be given over to an ideological rant about your villainy …

Lex Luthor: Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe and understand how the ABC ruins everything.

No, that's not quite right. How about a reference to the dog botherer's epic support of Lord Downer in the Iraq war?

Superman: Is that how a warped brain like yours gets its kicks? By planning the death of innocent people? 
Lex Luthor: No, by causing the death of innocent people.

Yes, there's nothing like groupthink coagulating around extreme and irrational warmongering views, something the pond finds quite frightening … but back to how it's all the fault of the ABC ...

The pond is no movie reviewer, but the dog botherer banging on endlessly about the ABC ruins the third episode's structure, and the dialogue has the tired ring that might be found in a 1970s movie ...

Miss Teschmacher: Sick. You're really sick. 

Lex Luthor: Sick, Miss Teschmacher? Sick, when I'm mere days from executing the crime of the century? No, no, no, no. Step away from that, please. How do you choose to congratulate the greatest criminal mind of our time? Huh? Huh? You tell me than I'm brilliant? Oh, no, no, that would be too obvious, I grant you. Charismatic. Fiendishly gifted, uh… 

Miss Teschmacher: Try "twisted."

Never mind, when it comes to paranoia and tilting at windmills and with an astonishing intolerance for anyone diverging from his own mindset, nobody can match the dog botherer …

So rich, coming from a climate science denialist who has railed endlessly at Paris, the NEG, Malware and all the rest of it … and yet somehow it's all the fault of the ABC ...

A plurality of views?

What a hoot … 

The day the dog botherer can name a single reptile given the access and profile he has - or all the rest of the climate science-denying pack at the lizard Oz - then he can talk about a plurality of views.

It's the pond's business model to highlight the monomania that runs rampant through the lizard Oz, and the oscillating fan, feeble and beyond the valley of the useless token, is the wretched exception that proves the pond's business model is the rule …

Long may the dog botherer blather about binary choices in a polarised digital media world …no better example of a black and white ideological zealot exists in the reptile bunker …

Please alert the pond to any exceptions that may prove the pond's dog botherer rule …

And now to a Wilcox cartoon celebrating the dog botherer mindset. 

Hang on, didn't the pond once see her on Talking Pictures? Say no more, another part of the ABC Fairfax cosmic superhuman media conspiracy, with more examples of her conspiratorial thinking here …

In which the pond asks the Grand Inquisitor to write the screenplay and draft the charges of treason and treachery ...

For those who came in late, the pond is in the middle of a Saturday matinee marathon …

In the first episode, nattering "Ned" warned it was madness to attack Malware's legacy, so the pond immediately called on the Grand Inquisitor, a man who would have been at home conducting the witch trials in Salem, to do the screenplay for the second episode …

It should go without saying that the pond feels that Malware is responsible for everything, a mix of the Emperor and Darth Vader's sinister mind control, and he's as loyal as a viper cradled to Cleopatra's Wentworthian bosom …

All that remains is to read the grand inquisitor's charge sheet, and note that it starts with a snap of Malware at TIFF, which back in 2016 Variety described as a dumping ground, too big, and something of a plain old embarrassment …

Even worse, as a result of his lack of taste, Malware has forced Polonius to lead off with the 'cinemah' for post-ironic talk of domestic and foreign 'tiffs'…

You see? Of course it's all Malware's fault, and how shameless and shocking of him to do what he said he was going to do, and resign from his seat. How could this country keep functioning if politicians do what they say they will do? Why didn't he just stay in parliament, and do his wrecking and sniping and undermining in respectable onion muncher (or now Jules?) style?

But that's only the beginning of the Grand Inquisitor's charge sheet, and there are some doozy crimes to be unveiled ...

Indeed, indeed, what a loser and a dropkick Malware was, and what on earth does it say about all the Liberal sheep who elected him to be their shepherd? But then these same sheep thought the onion muncher was a pretty decent shepherd, so what would the pond know?

Only the grand inscrutable scrutiniser and inquisitor is capable of compiling a full charge sheet detailing his many crimes ...

That did it for the pond. Just look at those last few notes on Malware's many thought crimes:

Disobeying Polonius's explicit instruction to resign from parliament in 2010;

Having the mendacity to accept climate science was something different to a blind, irrational religion;

Taking a perverted interest in Bill Henson, when he would have been more profitably employed speaking in tongues;

And shock horror, worst crime of all, so unimaginable and horrendous, the pond hardly dares to repeat it … being praised by journalist David Marr … in a way that insulted the great suburban and regional gods, where Catholic priests might go about their molesting business unmolested by the likes of Polonius …

And now only one duty remains … a few words in praise of the onion muncher, and the final judgement, though strangely Polonius turns to jelly, and only raises it as a question ...

What a feeble grand inquisitor! What a disappointing last reel …what a way to wreck a Saturday matinee, which had been shaping up nicely.

Even worse, there's been no explanation of what motivates this vile and treacherous traitor, and what forces are aligned with the emperor and his fiendish trade policies …

Clearly the franchise needs a creative bump, more twists and turns and more villains ...

… so on Sunday the pond will turn to the third part of the show, wherein the dog botherer will unmask sinister collaborators ...

… let's hope it's not a dud like previous third films in the Star Wars outings have been …

Meanwhile, a few one reelers, a warm-up for the ongoing saga …

You see, it wasn't just Polonius who understood how Malware had ruined everything, and it was all his fault …

Yesterday the lizard Oz editorialist was stern about his reprehensible, witch-like behaviour ...

How sad the spectacle, and how unfair that 44 should have been raised … wasn't it enough to point out the hypocrisy of Comrade Bill and leave it at that?

And if all that unbelievable talk about "rolled gold guarantees" didn't offend the reptile sense of the English language, and cheap jewellery, the reptile editorialist was back at it again today ...

Oh dear, the first ScoMo banana slip. Suddenly we've shifted from grand genre heroism to silent slapstick, and for what? A useless skirt … an offence to the dog botherer's infallible sense of patriarchal truth and wisdom …

And even worse, the reptiles are now tortured by further chances of treachery and treason, with the government so fragile just one man (and possibly a woman) might bring it undone ...

Tiberius on Twitter? Which reptile came up with that witticism? Was it the bouffant one?

Ye ancient cats and dogs, the reptiles aren't taking their inspiration from one of the most useless PMs ever to grace the Liberal party?

Billy McMahon’s incessant intrigues to undermine party colleagues was brilliantly described by Gough Whitlam as the then prime minister being “Tiberius with a telephone”; Turnbull has proved he’s Tiberius on Twitter.

They are, they are … but here's the thing. There were a lot of sheep who voted for Billy as their leader, and now the sheep have voted for a most excellent rapper as their leader …

By golly, there are dark days ahead for the reptiles, but before moving on to the third episode's blame game, there's just time for the infallible Pope rapping away, with more papal rapping here ...