In which the pond distills its favourite brand of moonshine ...

The pond got to talking the other day with a friend about about the moonshine that the pond illicitly distills and circulates. There was the moral question - did the pond mind the brain damage that might arise from stray passersby swilling the hooch? - but a better question was what was the pond's preferred drop?

Here the pond had to confess that it had given up on the likes of deeply heavy shyt of the Miranda the Devine, Akker Dakker and Bolter kind, and of late had settled for a modest drop of the lizard Oz reptiles …

Given that ignoring the most barking mad of the reptiles severely limited the amount of rotgut and mind fuck, there were still some clear favourites … with the pond always loyal to the onion muncher.

Just look at the line-up of top digital stories this early morning in the lizard Oz.

There's the onion muncher just below the EXCLUSIVE …no matter what, no matter the damage he's already done, he can't shut up. He makes Barners look like a rank amateur, and see below him, there's Matthew Guy, a man involved in notoriously corrupt activities, going the onion muncher path, and going the slur. The polls must be really going against him …

And just below the developer-loving Guy, it's possible to see where the path of outrageous slurs and notorious hate might lead this country, in the same way that the Murdochian reptiles of Fox News and the Donald have led the United States …

It gets even funnier when the onion muncher now pretends he's a tribalist, at one with the new leader of the tribe … because Australians, notoriously and pleasurably don't fancy themselves as tribalist, but rather as inclined to the laconic and ironic members of a community. The last thing anyone needs is the mumbo jumbo of a fanatical tribalist ...

Is there anyone at any time in recent history that's been so comprehensively tone deaf as the onion muncher, with the possible exception of former chairman Rudd?

You see? He just can't shut up, he's always having an anxiety attack about his ongoing relevance, and the lizard Oz always caters to his narcissist need for attention. 

If he'd had any grace, the onion muncher would be off doing a former chairman Rudd and writing amazingly long memoirs about his great deeds and triumphs, and the doings of his dastardly enemies, but it might be hard for the onion muncher - how to write about the BBQ-stopping reintroduction of knighthoods?

So instead he keeps bobbing up in the lizard Oz … blathering about a policy divide, when of course his recent behaviour has been motivated by a simple, Freudian form of deep hate and a desire for revenge, so naked that it frequently verged on the positively indecent ...

In my judgment?

Dear sweet sir, over the years, you have demonstrated you have absolutely no judgment, and your retrospective desire to prove you how you were grander and more inclusive than Malware just proves your ongoing capacity for delusion …frequently bathed with self-pity, as with the notion that Scottie will be okay because no one will be stalking him for his job, in the way that you suffered while PM … sublimely forsaking mentioning the way you relentlessly stalked and finally ousted Malware ...

… which is why after a dose of onion muncher moonshine, the pond gets a swagger in its step and is ready for the day …

And now for that blather about being a tribe and a tribalist ...

What an admirable fucker he is! Sure he fucked the last few years and sure he was a major force in the squandering of the majority, but now they're all tribalists?

But tribalism is exactly what the country doesn't need.

A strong feeling of identity with and loyalty to one's tribe or group. (here).

Not the community, not the country, but a tribe or group ...

But what about the rest of the country you tribalist goose, you monomaniacal narcissist chatterbox?

That's how you ended up doing the Royalist rag when the young Royals have recently been demonstrating that they didn't need your inordinate stupidity to help support the brand.

Luckily the immortal Rowe had a weekend cartoon that evoked that onion muncher tribalist mindset ...

More immortal Rowe here, but now the pond has to confess that citing the onion muncher didn't answer the question as to which reptile member of the 'leet lizard commentariat was the pond's favourite hooch. After all, he's of the political subset, even as he scribbles like a very dumb propagandist.

So to the question of which commentariat reptile the pond swigs down with the most relish?

Currently the Monday offers many contenders … there's always the Order of Lenin man ...

But the pond could pour a bottle of Major Mitchell down the sink without blinking. 

It gets harder with a choice between the sweet taste of an Oreo, and the Caterist, still with his paw deep in the taxpayer's cash register ...

All the same, there was no need to hesitate. The choice is clear.

The Oreo is, on a Monday, and probably above any other contender through the week, the 'leet commentariat scribbler most likely to have the pond howling at the moon in drunken pleasure …

Here, take a swig, and make sure it's a deep draught. 

Sure, right at this precarious moment, she's foresworn the Donald, and his enthusiastic support of far right nationalists and loons, sure, she's only going the safe route of bashing academics, but she's as close to ouzo as the pond can manage with its potato and corn mash ...

Treasure that opening line. It's a pity of course that the Caterist wasn't a co-author. There would have been something piquant about the cash in the paw man getting agitated about academics and public money …

Of course there's a punchline coming in relation to the Oreo herself, as she blathers on about academic waste, and having pity for the homeless and such like - why not just close the lizard Oz and give the proceeds to the homeless? - but it will have to wait until after the penultimate gobbet …

Oh okay, it goes without saying that the Oreo personally prefers to be stunted, and prefers to display deep intolerance and a closed shop to different cultures and experiences, unless it happens to be the gun-toting extreme right in the United States, and their memorable celebrations of intolerance and aggro refusal to be open to different cultures and experiences, unless it happens to be an openness to blowing people away.

And now the pond will have to suggest that the Oreo herself is a sublime example of the failure of tertiary education in Australia …

Say what? She's been trained as a professional bullshit artist for the lizard Oz, in the arcane area of political science, and she's actually a desperate globalist, cited around the world?

And that's why the Oreo is the pond's preferred choice of rotgut moonshine … with a warning that once you get a taste for downing undiluted metho or wood grain alcohol, it can be hard to give it up ...

Actually it's remarkably easy to deplore child marriage, any form of genital mutilation and the death penalty … and it's not hard to be an atheist or a liberal, except when the reptiles start banging on about how universities are full of free-thinking atheistic liberal leftists at war with Western Civilisation, or infested by climate science theologians …because there's nothing more important for reptiles than debasing both science and the humanities …

The real test comes when you swill the Donald-loving moonshine - hang 'em now, hang 'em hard, never mind the Central park Five - nonsense that's routinely distilled by the Oreo on a regular basis …

Got a problem about a history of men's dress, an area the pond finds interesting? Dress reveals much about people, customs and society.

In much the same way, the pond found Jiayang Fan's piece for The New Yorker, Yan Lianke's Forbidden Satires of China interesting ... (currently outside the paywall)

Warning: an interest in other cultures would be helpful for the read.

How hard is it then to stay tolerant and benevolent? 

A lot easier than it is to imagine what it must be like to be an Oreo, a scribbler who no doubt finds it easy to imagine a life, a country, a world, where every institution must have an armed guard or three on stand-by as madness sweeps the planet ...

Luckily the immortal Rowe provides a solution … after imbibing the hooch, you'll be primed for a tension-relieving laugh … and did the pond remember to remind you there's more Rowe here?