Wow, the pond was feeling jaded, it being Friday and all, and the pond desperately trying to remember what that day meant, and what a weekend was, and meanwhile the reptiles had turned themselves into the WSJ so that they could indulge in the internecine warfare that is reducing the USA to ashes …
… but that at least gave the pond a moment of humour, what with the reptiles desperate to maintain the war on China, and urge others into the fray …
Poor old Richo, in his dotage, senility incarnate, and spoiler alert, all the pond could take was the last few pars ...
The Donald? So it's come to this in the lizard Oz war on China? We must rely on the Donald? And perhaps press-gang Boris into ship?
The only thing the pond relies on the Donald for is a goodly supply of cartoons …
As for the UK taking a firm stand, the pond was reminded of a Bell cartoon celebrating the united, coherent approach of the UK government on assorted matters …
A cartoon about the Tories? This day the pond is looking for a cartoon-led recovery.
Why? Just look at the dismal alternatives the pond faced this day.
Killer Creighton still loose and on the prowl?
Is it any wonder that the pond seized on the hole in the bucket man, even though everyone, including most of the jaded reptiles, had long been over the Pellist matter … but give Henry his due, any chance to celebrate the medieval church is right down his medievalist mind-set alley ...
Sheesh, it must have been a slow day in what passes for a mind in its dotage or in Henry's hunt for column fodder … just when all the other reptiles had given up, along he comes with a hectoring lecture ...
Yes, that great renewal of canon law in the 11th century, which produced the wonderful Inquisition in the twelfth century, starting with the Cathars and the Waldensians, but then doing spiffing work right through to the nineteenth century … and let's not forget the ongoing work of the church right to the present time, doling out to justice to naughty books, women's rights, homosexuals and any other stray, passing heretic …
Why the pond will line up for a serve of that cocktail any time …
Okay, okay, the pond is doing a little conflation, but is that any worse than our Henry suddenly going full Catholic for the Catholic Boys' Daily?
At this point, the pond realised there was no point in arguing with our Henry - perhaps someone in the comments section might be moved by the absurdity of it all - and began to worry how it might slip in something remotely relevant to our current situation.
Say an immortal Rowe …
Or an infallible Pope, still tucked behind a paywall, but re-tweeting Wendy Bacon's tribute to Jack Mundey, who did more for Sydney than an entire set of The Australian from its very beginning pulped and used for garden mulch in the Botanic Gardens ...
Sorry, relevance isn't really the pond's game, nor is it our Henry's, which is why he never manages to fix the hole in the bucket ...
When the pond reflects on all the injustices and travesties of justice inflicted on the world by prattling priests, supported by our Henry, one can only marvel at the way these believers in the next world and imaginary friends, also tend to enthusiastic support of the Donald, capitalism and all that …
With all those cartoons gone, what to do for a little more filler? The pond was so desperate that it even thought about the Oz editorialist …
But what they meant to say, at tedious length, was that they were urgin' the Queensland government to avoid the Virgin … and the pond decided it could avoid that form of reptile discourse, or should it be intercourse, except to suggest that perhaps the Australian government should stop subsidising the reptiles, and columnists of the Caterist kind ...
Even the cult master himself was no guide ...
Poor Luke. Clearly he'd made it hard even for the cult master …
In the old days, this used to be called a colour piece, something to distract and lighten the mood … like a New Yorker cartoon …
You know, something to glance at while spilling milk from the parritch on to the page … so the pond glanced, even though it knew it was wrong, even though it knew it would end in tears ...
Ross Campbell andy Lennie Lower must be rolling in their graves.
So this is what the lizards of Oz have come to … the cult master assigned to this wan attempt to do a Lennie Lower, the WSJ trotted out, our Henry saying his prayers to an invisible friend in the next life, and, in a non-religious way, the reptiles offering their very own version of non-canonical Luke … trying to make death by virus seem a pleasant alternative to a life involving reptile reading ...
The drive-in?
Good luck finding one. There's a list here - the pond knows nothing of its accuracy - and a wiki here, but non-canonical Luke might as well have ended his ramble by saying that "there's always the moon made of green cheese" or "there's always something interesting to read in the lizard Oz that doesn't involve the war on China, frock-loving Pellists or General Killer Creighton, ably assisted by Lt Musk" …
But the pond understands the desperation, and so does The New Yorker …
Roll on weekend, whatever that is, whatever it means ...
DP - I watched ‘perhaps someone in the comments section might be moved’, sitting there like a divider in a filing cabinet, and remembered ‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it’.
ReplyDeleteBut it was the Henry, so closed my eyes, and I waited for the tape (tape?) to self-destruct. Counted 10 seconds - but the mission was still there. Damned tapes, never self-destruct when you want them to.
Now - those missions came from the IMF. Barely a month ago, the Henry had a cautionary column in the Flagship, which cited the International Monetary Fund. A link - a very palpable link. Oh, no - different IMF sending out those tapes.
So to this day’s Henry. Sprinkling of Latin, to add weight. All very reasonable in its way, when it dealt with definable ‘crimes’ and evidence linking the suspect to the event. But remarkably little about the way the church went about investigating matters for which there was no evidence, and never could be. Like that tricky triune thingy, to pluck an example at random.
And if your belief happened not to accord, in the most obscure detail, with the belief of the person in the fancy outfit at the table - you were headed for a short, but deeply unhappy, future. Never mind that a century or so earlier your belief would have been quite acceptable, even praised. You might like to inquire about that cloth that did not burn, that that chap Marco Polo wrote about. You could use a suit of that.
And never mind that a century or so later you would similarly be home free. Because, although the fancy outfitted one would claim to know all things, and see all prophecies, there was an apostolic astigmatism about what beliefs might become acceptable; or, at very least, cease to be a topic for the barbecue, at any time in the future.
And the fancily outfitted ones saw no need to consider possible fallability on their own part. Any suggestion that proceedings be observed by, oh, say a dozen good folk, drawn in from the market place, who could then determine if the hapless (and if you were on that side of the table, there was precious little hap coming your way) suspect just might have been overawed, or confused, or - innocent - such suggestion would have added you to the queue for the bonfire.
So it might have been more appropriate to Henry’s exegesis that he show why bringing-in some of the great unwashed, to consider matters of fact, as they applied to a Prince of the Church, just was not part of administration of law as the ever wise church saw it.
It would also have saved all that manoeuvring by another court to show that they really, really were not overturning a decision by a jury, just showing the jury how they should have reached the ‘right’ decision.
Other Anonymous.
"Like that tricky triune thingy".
DeleteNow, now, OA, you're not going to bad-mouth our good mate Constantine (who, despite church lies, was never actually baptised, not even on his death bed. Oh, ok well he might have been after he'd actually breathed his last). Constantine, who only wanted a united and obedient Eastern Roman Empire and figured those religious nutters could give it to him so he could go on warring and conquering.
And he succeeded enough so that the Eastern Roman Empire endured - after a fashion - for another thousand or so years. Being finally overrun (as a minor city-state) just two years after the birth of Christopher Columbus.
So as a Muslim state in the west (Spain) was destroyed, also a Christian state in the east was likewise overrun and the great Santa Sophia turned into a mosque (which I think has now been turned into a museum - the greatest 'Roman dome' ever built, even more impressive than the Pantheon).
But then, the Constantinople-ese were just Eastern Orthodox, and not true "Christians" anyway. Which makes one wonder why their pronouncement on the trinity ever became Catholic Law.
Gold star for that effort OA. "There was precious little hap coming your way" reminds me somewhat of "if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled".
DeleteWhen you put things this way it sounds like the institutional church was using calculated brutality to protect entrenched privilege. Oh, how they must miss the days when they could just kill anyone who disagreed with them (OK Hitchens may have said that but I cannot find the quote).
They must also miss some of the perks of clerical life. Consider "benefit of clergy"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_of_clergy
For a while a layperson could game the system by rote learning specific bible verses to avoid the noose or receive a more lenient sentence. It's also a lesson in how difficult it is to peal away some privilege once it is granted.
No GB - no problem with Constantine, who otherwise just got on with the job.
DeleteOther Anonymous
"peel"
DeleteBefuddled - a well-written, concise, account is David Christie-Murray’s ‘A History of Heresy’. He summarises the organisation of the Inquisition around the 12/13th centuries -
Delete‘A suspect, however powerful or distinguished, once hauled before the Inquisition, was judged guilty unless he could prove his innocence. . . .The evidence of wives, children, servants and persons heretical, excommunicated, perjured and criminal could be used against a man, secretly, and without their having to face him. . . . Perjury was pardoned if it was the outcome of zeal for the faith, obedience to a superior was forbidden if it hindered the inquiry. . . . No one was ever acquitted, a released person always being liable to rearrest.’
and the neat legal twist, when the condemned were handed to the magistrates (for the church seldom killed anyone directly, you understand) with the instruction that no blood was to be shed. Thus - burning, which was deemed not to shed blood.
An example of what could see you before an Inquisitor - ‘the Fraticelli, or Little Brothers, . . . held the ‘heresy’ that Christ and the Apostles had no property, and for this wickedness nine were burned at Viterbo, during the papacy of Urban IV’
Hmmm - what was that about the sanctity of the confessional - ‘obedience to a superior was forbidden if it hindered the inquiry’?
I’m sure our Henry has found adequate reasons to disregard the sort of fake news the Christie-Murrays of this world put about.
Other Anonymous.
I'm getting a good reading list from the pond's comment section.
DeleteThen, Bef, you might enjoy, if you haven't already, a couple of novels by Franz Kafka: The Castle and The Trial. They somewhat represent the spirit of ecclesiastical history as outlined by OA.
DeleteAren't we getting the feeling that the reptiles are giving up? I think that they have finally realised that they have lost. 'Sound money' has gone; coal is staying in the ground; government is getting bigger. They are afraid that in five years time they will be writing for The Spectator, at tuppence a word, and appearing on Sky for travel expenses. Not the glorious future they had hoped for.
ReplyDeleteSo if you thought that the drivel they are writing now is bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Soon it will be pure drivel, then pure, unadulterated drivel, and then, who knows?
Oh, if only, Joe ... if only.
DeleteJust so weird: something calling itself Gra-Gra Richo still gets nonsense posted amongst the lizards. Oh well, on with the living show.
ReplyDeleteAnd so we get to Holely Henry: "No matter how dramatic its current impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic may, 10 years from now, seem like a seismic shock that strikes, devestates and then recedes, allowing reconstruction to begin."
And that's how it's always been hasn't it: asthma, common cold, influenza, pneumonia, chronic bronchitis, measles, mumps, rubella ... You name it, it's had its day after just 10 short years and homo sap. sap. has moved on into carefree reconstruction. And COVID-19 will be just the same because Holely Henry has told us so. And that's as good as the word of ... well, of a so-called scientist any day:
WHO warns coronavirus may never go away
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-15/who-warns-coronavirus-might-never-go-away-vaccine/12251432
After all, 'flu only causes 1500 to 3000 deaths, 18,000 hositalisations and 300,000 GP consultations each year in Australia. Fiddly-sticks - nobody would notice that. And it's only taken about 100 years of "reconstruction" to get to this point.
http://www.isg.org.au/index.php/clinical-information/influenza-fast-facts-/
But that does show us Holely Henry's ways: the reptile declaration: "What I say is true !" combined with the usual illusions and delusions. So I think I'll just pass over his paen of praise to religious law. DP has completely demolished that anyway.
And so we come to Luke Slattery. Who ? Exactly. CM or no, he's not exactly worthy of a moment's attention before rapid dismissal. Except: no, Luke, the handshake isn't gone. It will be the badge of stupidity worn by people of very small brain wishing to show their manly courage. Do actually spend some time observing your own species, matey.
Oh, you have: "He attempted not so much to shake my hand as to shake the life out of it." Yep, that's the way of things. But hey, what about reinstituting the drivein ? "a mega-screen and splay of cars, a diner at the back, and speedy service to the car by waitstaff on rollerskates." Scantily clad young female waitstaff but of course, and everybody knows that rollerskates can outrun corona viruses.
Joe - was the Slattery (ennobled with a Lobbecke) working up to 'A la recherch du temps encore à venir' today? Slattery's attempt to invoke Proust on mindless air travel was a leap into a black hole. At that point, better to invoke Stephen Hawking, and offer better prospects to the Cult Master.
ReplyDeleteOther Anonymous
Now, now OA, we all know, courtesy of Fred Hoyle's 'October the First Is Too Late' that time isn't serial; all time exists simultaneously, just like all space.
DeleteAnd going back for a moment to the Bromancer's views of time yet to come, OA, I'm trying to work out what some obsolete conventional submarines that we might get in 15 or so years time might be able to do to defend us from this kind of warfare:
DeleteDefence has imagined modern warfare and Australia is not prepared
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-15/australia-unprepared-for-security-threats-warns-review/12248332
Are you sure the third scenario involving corruption scandals isn't being trialled already? Operation Angus?
DeleteI often wonder what will happen with autonomous vehicles in that time frame. AI seems to be at that stage of explosive growth that may render manned submarines as relevant as a new sabre for the cavalry.
But, butt, Angus is such a penny-ante little grifter. No substance to him at all.
DeleteDrop whatever you are doing and drink this in: Flinty is doing zoom broadcasts with Melbourne's leading anti-everything TV-smashing loon.
ReplyDeleteThis is a plateau below Sky After Dark:
https://twitter.com/slackbastard/status/1261252193664942081
"Flinty's finding it hard to get a gig".
DeleteYeah, I can believe that. DP would occasionally give him a run in loonpond - from his Spectator gig and he used to make even Holely Henry look good. But not for a long time now.