The pond would like to start off the day with a few Presidential pleasantries.
Fuck Telstra, fuck Malcolm Turnbull, fuck BSA, and please make sure it's a hard and comprehensive fucking, and fuck Optus for being a useless rival, and fuck TPG because they'd use the same ancient fibre or even worse the wretched phone lines, yes fuck them all, because the pond is so fucking tired of the fucking endless dropouts on this Malware heap of shitty junk …
Ah, that felt good and Presidential, and might help explain the pond's delay in reporting for reptile duty, and now it's back to the fray ...
Apart from being cast into analogue hell, the pond began the day with an almost unendurable dilemma.
Two "Neds" glowering out from the reptile digital pages. Which one to choose?
It turned out it was easy in the end. Everyone knows the submarine program is a Liberal government disaster.
Why rake over such tired coals, when the real crisis involves the wretched Labor mob and their devious attitude to coal, which, when featured at the top of the lizard Oz digital page, had induced a reptile meltdown …
Why rake over such tired coals, when the real crisis involves the wretched Labor mob and their devious attitude to coal, which, when featured at the top of the lizard Oz digital page, had induced a reptile meltdown …
Shocking stuff, so naturally the pond had to turn to "Ned's" brand of smelling salts …
Indeed, indeed, and never mind that the planet has also decided to live or die by climate change, at least if the implications of climate science are to be accepted, rather than listen to blather about acts of faith in the Catholic manner …
But there's good news. For once words failed "Ned".
Confronted by the sheer impudence of anyone willing to accept climate science, "Ned" could only manage another short gobbet …
Confronted by the sheer impudence of anyone willing to accept climate science, "Ned" could only manage another short gobbet …
"It is, however, highly unlikely this summer's mood will be permanent."
Indeed, indeed, not if the reptile denialists have anything to do with it. Oh there was talk of a change of heart, and much hand-wringing by "Ned", but the reptiles won't easily give up on their deep and abiding love for coal.
Pouring cold water on talk of a planet at risk is an ancient reptile art, and the Oz editorialist set the tone …
The pond is sorry to interrupt, but what's this? A heretic has surreptitiously turned up, and someone smuggled the lad into the digital back pages with this measly splash …
And the story did no better, running the same doleful pic ...
Sheesh, when will the reptiles learn? Why can't they still be out and proud with their illustrations?
There, that's better, and the pond can go on with the heretic with a clear conscience …
Did someone mention a kite?
Problem solved. We can start building it in the same dock, alongside the the subs, and should have it ready by no later than 2150 ...
Oh dear, fancy playing the bushfire card with a snap, while "Ned" was busy assuring us that the fires would be forgotten by Eosturmonath, and all the other records and catastrophes noted around the world, as they will surely unfold, will simply be ignored by a humble expedient … read only Murdochian rags, safe in the knowledge that everything will be ignored, downplayed or flipped …
Could this heretic get any lower? Could he, shamefully, even begin a gobbet by quoting "Ned" himself?
What a caddish thing to do. Catch "Ned" in a moment of panic and hysteria, quote him, and then go on to knock the technology dreams of SloMo and his denialist team …
Surely it's about time this insolent wretch put a sock in it, and headed back to the business pages from whence he came …
It doesn't seem like it!?
Outrageous, shocking stuff ...
What the pond needed was a restorative draught of the lizard Oz editorialist, and luckily there were a couple of gobbets still to hand …
Fucketty fuck, a lower emissions economy? A nationwide wave of wind and solar?
Are these the same reptiles who spent a decade or more downplaying solar, and warming of the dangers of wind, and pooh-poohing in a Plimerish way the whole notion of climate science and useless renewable energy?
As they frequently observe in the days of the Donald, a sense of irony and hypocrisy are long gone … so let's see how long the reptiles can keep blathering on, under Maxwell Smart's cone of irony-laden silence, about the many ways that technology is going to fix everything, so we can keep on with our love of dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi ...
And there you go. Albo embarks on an ambitious target in keeping with unlikely company, such as Boris, and with much of the rest of the world, but it's uncosted and terribly dangerous.
Whereas coal-loving SloMo heads into the future reliant on technologies yet to be discovered, and completely uncosted, and she'll be right, because all denialists are a wing and a prayer, and a decent long odds bet, because let's face it, we're really talking about a problem that's fake news and a theological conspiracy …
The reptile cartoon, which passes for humour amongst the lizards, backed up this yarn about costs …
Yeah, you do the maths. It'll cost gadzillions, whereas unproven, uncosted, uninvented technologies extracted from one's arse are sure to come dirt cheap, like all dirty deeds do ...
And yet the pond has a taste for real cartoons by real cartoonists, ones with a sharper quill, like the quill that the immortal Rowe sharpens regularly here …
Can I second all your comments on the nbn? The intertubes went missing for the best part of a week at the height of the bushfires and have been failing repeatedly ever since (working on the backup SIM at the moment.
ReplyDeleteI thought the internet was supposed to have a lot of redundancy (no single point of failure etc) but I am obviously wrong again.
Befuddled - around our place one might hear a 'Thank you Mistah Turnbull' - in the style of that commercial for a real estate agency. It is the verbal signal that our 'NBN', which comes from a tower rather than through a fibre, is not delivering. Saying it doesn't restore the, um - service (!?), but it does provide a little catharsis.
ReplyDeleteOther Anonymous
Yeah - mine comes by wireless as well. I was told in the long outage that network damage in Victoria was the problem - so obviously a single point of failure can catch you out (I'm probably on the fringe where I live).
DeleteMorrison is relying on "human ingenuity". Great idea. Just look at how we have conquered major threats over the years. Why, in 1666 Londoners tried to fight the Great Fire by throwing water in it! 360 year later we fight fires by ... oh, wait.
ReplyDeleteThe "groundswell towards veganism". The Four and Twenty Pie Company has put out a vegan version of their iconic meat pie. Their slogan: "Meat pies: no longer animal cruelty in a pastry" (well, that's what I would expect them to say, but I may be wrong). The definition of Australian ('we love football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars') is looking a bit shaky, with the kangaroos burnt, and a sizeable proportion of league footballers being psychos.
Thing is, Joe, they probably always were (psychos) but we didn't hear so much about it back then and they didn't have a rampant Betty Arndt to sing their praises and egg them on. I wonder why nobody has got her to do her job for that NRL bloke who just burned his (separated) wife and three kids to death. She'd be all in favour of that.
DeleteJust to give you an idea of how bereft of inspiration the guys at Holden were, just check out this ad. Look a bit familiar?
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21rUjwAn5GI
With regard to the Thugby League players. My lunchtime walk used to take me past the local government offices where I frequently saw oversized necks squeezed into shirt and tie for court appearances. It was an open secret that the police (some of whom were ex-players) and the press (most of whom were sycophants) would cover up all but the most serious cases.
Lastly, can you imagine anyone with less ingenuity, foresight or vision than Scumo? I know they are collectively just doing the bidding of their financial supporters but they are ideally suited to the task. Absolute dullards.
Why change a winning formula, Bef. Shows how much we are at one with our American owners, I guess.
DeleteYeah, police collaboration, and consequent inaction, have always been a problem. Not sure what, if anything, can be done about that.
But "Scumo" (hmm ?) ? Well he fell into his position but apparently still thinks he worked a miracle to get there. Unfortunately just a few too many of our fellow Aussies still believe that the Libs know best how to run the economy, and all the bullshit and failures of Scomo and Frydenberg won't convince them otherwise. Ever.
So, Betty Arndt did finally speak up. Not to defend the family murderer, but to defend the Queensland cop who thought that that nice murderer chappy might have been "pushed too far". You see, if a woman kills a violent and oppressive man we make "excuses" for her, so Betty reckons. But men we just condemn right up front.
DeleteSo, read the Arndt's thoughts and words here:
Victorian Liberal MP Tim Smith calls for Bettina Arndt's Australia Day award to be cancelled after Rowan Baxter comments
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-23/tim-smith-calls-for-bettina-arndt-to-be-stripped-of-am/11992082
I'm so glad she's been awarded an Order of Australia, aren't you ? Because I now know what to think of it.
Our national Neddy: "Labor, it seems. took this decision influenced by the bushfires, the polls and the belief that sentiment had changed decisively on climate change. It is, however, highly unlikely this summer's mood will be permanent."
ReplyDeleteMaybe not, but one thing is certain, short 1 trillion trees, that the CO2 in particular spewed into the atmosphere by 2050 will last for a very long time - maybe a thousand (or more ?) years or, at 30 years per generation, for more than 30 generations. Is that permanent enough for you, Ned ?
Then we have the Kohler: "Is the Morrison government even remotely capable of the leadership required to turn that [Australia's social, political and economic "challenges"] around and come up with a plan based on national consensus ?"
ScottyfromMarketing and his band of mindless "high-decouplers" ? Not a chance, and just as well anyway since the last time we did that, Hawke and his band of "high-decouplers" led us into the wonders of free-market neoliberalism that we all worship so fervently now.
But just to close out the reptile day, we have the canny wisdom of "the editorialist": "Who can predict what the world will look like in 2050 ?"
Who indeed, but if all the neocons, wingnuts and Murdochians stay firm, they'll be keeping it just the same as it is now.
On Cartoonery
ReplyDeleteThe junior Leak’s doodlings are boring
I stare at his work and start snoring
He is no cartooner
I think that I’d sooner
A three year old’s fridge magnet drawing
While off the old block he’s a chip
It’s still the same dumb cartoon strip
Bereft of all wit
In short it’s just shit
Just like the Oz editorship
And Lobbecke’s similarly execrable
His ideas are incomprehensible
Those cryptic creations
Defy explanation
To me they are visually unfathomable
But Rowe is a brilliant artoonist -
A skilful political humorist
His scathing depictions
Are realer than fiction
Especially when Trump is a nudist
Well, classic Lear limericks, that lot Kez.
DeleteI do hope you are saving all your work for a subsequent, highly regarded, posthumous publication.
That's very kind of you GB. Edward Lear is definitely an inspiration and he was also a very fine visual artist - I wonder what kind of Learmerick he would have penned after viewing the uninspiring dreck of Leak and Lobbecke?
DeleteIn regard to publishing I do feel these little ditties are rather Pond specific in that they are always inspired by DP's material du jour and the comments section. Therefore a lot of it may be lost on non-Ponderers without the relevant blogpost as a reference.
Actually I much prefer being published ante mortem on this very blog. A sobering thought is that because the interweb is forever, all our postings will live on in cyberspace posthumously anyway.
Ah well, there's longevity and there's longevity. I just happened to see a bit of a list of "All Time Great Science Fiction" which stated that the work consistently voted the best was 'Dune'. Followed in second by 'Childhood's End'. But that since then, time had passed and although 'Dune' was probably still first, second now was 'The Left Hand of Darkness' and Childhood's end had kinda disappeared.
DeleteApart from thinking that 'The Space Merchants', or even 'Mission of Gravity' was better than all of them, I had only ever read one work by Ursula Le Guin, and that was something called 'The Dispossessed'. So it goes.
But I did wonder if any of them would come within a faint and distant cooee of the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' or the works of Homer which are all still with us. But you might have it right now: everything anybody has ever written will be stored in some computer memory somewhere and retained (almost literally) forever. Including 'The Sunshine of Kez' (if I may be allowed a trial naming).