In which the Caterist and the Major join Babe in a 'lah, lah' ….

What a rough day for the reptiles. 

Not the actual result - Victorians gunna do what Victorians gonna do - but the difficulty, the impossibility of spinning it … 

Oh sure, the news that "coalition slides but PM popular" was a solid reptile ploy, but in response to the crisis, the best the reptiles could do was to roll out petulant Peta, trotting out a cliché …

Yep, it's back to basics, roll up the sleeves, stick the nose on the grindstone, stay on the treadmill, get a little dirt on the hands, batten down the hatches, gird the loins, roll with the punches, and so on, but Chip came back, wild-eyed, with tales of wilful, difficult women, in Brighton of all unimaginable places …

But enough of these shocking tales, how could a decent hard-working reptile respond to the crisis? 

Well the Oreo showed one way, block the ears, and joining Babe in a cheery "lah, lah, lah", or if you will, "tg, tg, tg …"

The pond almost went there with her, but stumbled over the opening image ...

Did sweet long absent lord, did someone retrench the entire graphics department of the lizard Oz, and leave a pre-schooler in charge?

And with the pink and the blue? Sure, the Oreo is routinely childish and silly, but did she need this level of graphic abuse?

Well, the pond has kept the rest of the Oreo safe, and might go there sometime, but it simply had to move on and check out the Caterist response. 

Sure enough, the hands were over the ears, and the lad was doing a chant, with the "lah, lah, lah" followed by ... "demonic comrade Bill, satanist comrade Bill, demonic comrade Bill …"

Yep, it was the Department of Finance cash-in-the-paw man talking of rent seekers …

There, that's how to rent-seek, but the reptiles had blessed the Caterist with the Lobbecke of the day - and what a classic it was - and so attention had to be paid, because we'd moved from pre-school to primary class ...

Is there an irony in the Caterist mocking the very scheme the coalition government spent years developing? 

Well there might be, if one were to head off here …

Such a fuckwit, and so optimistic that everybody would forget what was being spruiked back on 25th July … but then the Caterist doubled down by dragging in the pond's eternal favourite …

… though the question is, does the Caterist really believe the guff he scribbles, or is he simply doing his rent-seeking duties? In his favour, he's a dab hand at predicting the behaviour of flood waters in quarries ...

Forget the direct action nonsense, there's the thing that intrigues the pond. 

The reptiles are so deeply in love with coal and coal-fired stations that the pond always deeply moved by the sight. The pond sometimes recalls that it had pull-cord light switches - now returning as a hipster classic - and a wood-chip heater, and kitchen walls blackened and greasy from the local coal gas, and a coal-fired power station with a slag heap just a couple of blocks away in Marius street, but what the fuck? 

It's possible to get nostalgic for the FX Holden and the 512k the pond once had, but who would want to return to them for daily use? Might it not be possible to kiss goodbye to coal and coal plants if new solutions can be devised?

Not for Caterists deeply in love with romancing the coal. And with the romance comes the fear of loss, and a trudging of the luddite path, full of gloom and grim foreboding tales of woe … not about what climate science might imply, but about the way certain Caterist-beloved rent-seekers will have to look elsewhere for their rent money ...

Ah well, never mind, it seems the battle for Victoria was just lost, so hands over ears and do that Babe thing, "lah, lah, lah, lah, lah …", or perhaps head off for a Pope cartoon to join the ScoMo express here …

And now for a second course, because these days the pond does banquets. How did the Major respond to recent events in Victoria? 

Why, by harking back into the dim distant past, and talking of a singular piece of policy stupidity done for short-term, ill-considered political gain, and yet bravely, boldly still trying to weave a silk purse out of the speaker in tongue's tone-deaf ear …

Actually it's a simple matter: as everybody except the Major has pointed out, you don't give things away for free in a negotiation; you expect something in return, something a little more important than a few votes in Wentworth, especially as they didn't turn up in sufficient numbers anyway ...

The pond found the conversation so tedious that it felt the need to inject a little something it picked up while browsing through back copies of assorted newspapers …

Why it's the hunt for that long-lost Order of Lenin medal … more anon, but first another gobbet of the Major trying to blame everyone in the media for a ScoMo own goal ...

So even nattering "Ned" and the bromancer can't agree, and are two experts checking out the shape of a camel, but the rest of the media are supposed to conform to the far right madness of the Major ...

As for the rest of the hunt for the Order of Lenin medal, these copies might need a click to enlarge, and even then might not be that readable, but the pond just wanted to confirm that the Major's devotion to nonsense goes back decades …

Yes, the Major set that hare running in the Currish Snail in 1996, and there it was, bobbing up again in the lizard Oz in the weekend March 1-2 1997 issue … and still that Order of Lenin medal has never been found …

Meanwhile, the Major goes on lecturing others about how to do journalism … while himself promoting a half-baked, half-arsed bromancer suggestion to do an imitation of the Donald…oh, and make sure that punters only look at Murdochian media because the rest are the enemies of the people ...

The ratbag behaviour of the Donald should be the model for the thoughtful 'leets and commentariat at the lizard Oz, him being the saviour of democracy and all? Only in Major "lah, lah" land ...

Luckily, the Rowe of the day evokes what the Caterists and the Major are doing, as they brood about energy and Israel … with more prescient Rowe always to hand here …