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 …
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 …
"Lex Luthor: Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story."
ReplyDeleteBut, butt that's all that 'War and Peace' has ever been - a simple Russian adventure story. If you want a bit of real human meaning, you wouldn't be reading "Count" Leo Tolstoy. Though maybe his "autobiography" Anna Karenina might give a few hints. But here's a very descriptive comment from Alison Flood:
"What emerges from Sofia's diaries, which span more than 50 years and which are due to be published by Alma Books this October, is a picture of a cruel and difficult man, indifferent to his family, endlessly critical, who forced his wife to breastfeed all 13 of their children despite the agony it caused her."
See: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/02/sofia-tolstoy-diaries
Yep, just the right kind of bloke to give us all deep insights into humanity.
Doggy Bov: "...Knight's body of work shows his cartoon was no more than a caricature aimed at highlighting poor sportsmanship"
Nope. Knight's "body of work" shows his "cartoon" was just his usual fumbling attempt to show off his own brand of Tolstoymanship.
Doggy Bov again: "Did no one at Ultimo or Southbank think the [Knight's] cartoon was funny ..."
Oh I most certainly hope none of them did. I really do prefer my ABC folks to be at least basically human.
Doggy Bov repeating some young kid on QandA: "China is building coal-fired plants across the world..."
Yep, the same reptile lie, repeated and repeated until even gauche, naive and brainwashed schoolkids think its true. But here, courtesy of The Guardian, is some actual truth:
Last week, China announced it was stopping or postponing work on 151 coal plants that were either under, or earmarked for, construction.
Last month, India reported its national coal fleet on average ran at little more than 60% of its capacity – among other things, well below what is generally considered necessary for an individual generator to be financially viable. [Hello Adani, are you there ?]
Neither of these stories gained much of a foothold in the Australia media. But one story on global coal did: that 621 plants were being built across the planet.
But the figure is wrong. Way off, in fact. According to the most recent data, there are 267 coal stations under construction. More than 40% of those are not actually new ones, but expansions of existing generators.
See: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/16/world-going-slow-coal-misinformation-distorting-facts
Yair, right way down to his usual "standard", DP, and a good Sunday read.
Have to disagree there, GB, War and Peace is very much more than a simple Russian adventure story, and if that's all you ever got from it, you might find rereading it worthwhile. Certainly, the list of contemporaries who thought it was much more is pretty long and distinguished. I'm rather looking forward to seeing the Beeb's adaptation starting soon on SBS (I think).
ReplyDeletePrince Bolkonsky (the most interesting character in it, for mine) is a fine character portrait of a man gradually disillusioned by the disconnect between his imagined destiny and the rather shitty reality he gets (something relevant here to Abbott, Turnbull and many others in the Muppet Show). I think it is no coincidence that the best-drawn character is the "most fictitious" in a book largely populated by Tolstoy's interpretation of real people. To the extent that he was based on a real person, that person was Tolstoy's cousin Sergey Volkonsky, a Russian Napoleonic War General who supported the Decembrist attempt to free Russia's serfs and spent 30 years labouring in what would later be known as gulags for his troubles.
BTW, you don't need the quotes around Count. He was one. That fact adds nothing to his work, just as the strange account from Sophia detracts from it; I'm just putting it out there. He was a weird guy, an anti-Imperialist in the an Empire in an Imperialist age, a non-violent revolutionary in an age of violent revolution, an anarchist member of the establishment. But for all his contradictions, he was, legitimately, Count Tolstoy.
I think you'll find, FD, that Tolstoy made a thing of "rejecting" his title (amongst other things) while retaining, of course, its privileges. Hence my quotes.
DeleteBut despite your fine recommendation, I don't think I'll be returning to War and Peace, having failed to get very far with it many long years ago. I did manage to read all of Anna Karenina though (in translation of course), and to this day I still wonder why I bothered.
I personally find much 'fiction' (or 'faction' in Tolstoy's case) simple minded and unsatisfying - probably because I find many people simple minded and unsatisfying - eg "Abbott, Turnbull and many others in the Muppet Show)".
I sometimes wonder if the kind of fiction represented by Tolstoy's novels isn't a kind of 'personal appropriation' (in analogy to 'cultural appropriation') when the narrative involves the thoughts and feelings of people other than ourselves. Like a lot of 'cultural appropriation', I think we just get others, and even ourselves, wrong.
I did enjoy 'Crime and Punishment' at the time I read it though (nearly 50 years ago now), so maybe I, and they, are not completely dead losses.