The pond just had to begin with the Caterist today, if only because the flooded quarry whisperer was blessed with an illustration …
Of course it lacked the quality of the cult master, and was generally wretched, but did it contain a hint of bondage, and is there a safe word the pond should propose before anyone reads the Caterist? How about a chant of "white Caterist, white Caterist"?
Spoiler alert. The pond only slipped in that reference because of the fatuous way that white Caterist began his piece …
Indeed, indeed, is there anything more insincere than an expert in everything, from race relations to the movement in flood waters in quarries to climate science to supplicant for government subsidies to book reviewer?
The pond had always thought of "entertainingly problematic" as a reference to white Caterist's skill as a climate scientist and as a student of the arcane art of the movement of flood waters in quarries ,and as a roadkill victim in court defamation actions, but apparently not… let Caterist the book reviewer please take the stand ...
The Kelvin rating of street lights? Why that's nothing compared to the shirt you might lose in certain court actions …
But the white Caterist and Shriver are on the money - how distressing it is, how unnecessary and wretched this editorial function is. The pond blames blacks and their hyper-sensitivity, as if they've suffered anything at the hands of the British empire or the way things work in the US. Oh if only the confederacy of dunces had won!
The way these folks carry on, why, next thing you know, you might be made to stop telling people they're quarry-owning mass murderers, or you might be forced to cry out "black Caterist power" or some other obscene gibberish, and you might be forced to bend a knee to the dispensers of dinkum justice …
… when really they're little short of serial killers, or poodles on a leash.
Oh how constricted we are, how white Caterists and white Shrivers must suffer, endless victims of an historical conspiracy … whither robust discourse, you uppity, difficult, tricky, always problematic blacks, or wither discourse if you will ...
And bugger it, the next thing you know the deep science of quarry whispering might be lost to the ages and we might be illiberally erecting statues to who knows who doing who knows what …
And so to the supporting movie, or an episode in the the never-ending one reel serial, or however you like to think of the Major doing the usual reptile routines about the ABC …
Of course the notion that the put-out-to-pasture but kindly kept on the payroll Major lives in the real world is a bit like imagining that Dame Slap doesn't live above the faraway tree on Planet Janet …
How much kinder it would have been to cut the pilot loose and let him go, and let some fresh young white power lizards loose in Surry Hills … but never mind, there's going to be a series of challenging questions asked as we move along with the Major …
Say what? The Major is an avid ABC radio listener? Did this suddenly develop in recent times when the parrot moved on? Has he got something against Ben Fordham? Does he only do it to detect the filthy green lefty perversion of news provided each day by the cardigan wearers? Why didn't he mention Stalin in relation to five year plans? Has the Major gone soft?
But is there anything the ABC can do that won't attract the ire of the reptiles and their failing, flailing business model? What about all the traitors that have left News Corp to join the ABC, or just as bad, the Nine newspapers? Why is Stalinism rampant in the media in this country? Surely there's too much news and current affairs in the ABC, which undermines the reptile business model? Why doesn't the ABC give more money to local comedies hosted by ageing hipsters so that the singular inability of the reptiles to do comedy, or hire a decent cartoonist, might be seen as a strength? Isn't the ABC news a dire threat to the ability of the country to see the world through the rear end of a telescope, Murdochian style?
So little the pond knows or understands ...
Ah, now the pond gets it … there's nothing like getting in a News Corp and Foxtel possum to sort out the ABC … though there are still questions to be asked.
Why didn't Tonagh get the job of sorting out the reptiles when he had the chance? Why does the pond get a chance to laugh at this sort of header?
Mystery upon flattening the text case span mystery, but the pond knew the Major would have the answer ...
Indeed, indeed. Question after question. What has happened to the cult master? Why is the Caterist subjected to a second rate drawing? Why was the recovering reformed feminist the Oreo assigned to reptile duties in relation to Eden Monaro this day? Was she needed when the Nats might just do it?
How on earth was the dog botherer's climate science denialism still hanging around early on a Monday?
Sure, it's gone now, but was someone asleep at the wheel? Don't they get up with the Major and the pond and listen to the ABC, and realise that yesterday's dog botherer is so yesterday, and now we must have another attack on the ABC?
Come to think of it, why was Caroline Overington reduced to doing Strewth!? Where did Alice Workman go, and did anyone care? Why is Alice Workman now back, and does anyone care? Cough, cough …
Why that induced a coughing fit in the sole reader to leave a comment ...
But no doubt the Major has his own set of penetrating questions ...
Ah, that'd be the stunning impartiality displayed by the Major - as in his Order of Lenin ideal hunt - and the ongoing impartiality on view in the lizard Oz …and the necessary impartiality on view in the treatment of climate science, and the remarkable impartiality in importing fodder from The Times, the WSJ, the Spectator and sundry other sources, all reading and sounding remarkably like the braying in unison of donkeys …
And speaking of the braying of donkeys, you guessed it, there was the tough dog botherer out and about talking of sooks and cry babies and such like, apparently unaware that people really didn't like loudmouthed, obnoxious bullies …
Did someone speak of sooks and cry babies? Why the whole dog bother rant is full of the sulks and begin galled and getting agitated by cruel ironies, and oh, the pitiful suffering of the reptiles, why won't you shed a tear, you cruel barbarians …
Yes, the bile and the bitchiness and the resentment is really quite close to the surface … as if the dog botherer himself knows nothing of misleading climate change angles, and oh how the reptiles hate the turncoats, those Speersy and Karvie types that headed off to the cardigan wearers and refused to stay in the hive mind and drink of the kool aid thoughtfully provided in the Surry Hills water coolers …
Sometimes the pond is misled into thinking that the lizard Oz and its scribblers have some remote connection to the real world … but all they can do is gather fluff from their navels, fluff which comes from sitting on the couch watching the ABC for too long, so they can scribble their whining, cry-baby, sooky columns …
For fuck's sake, harden up reptiles, nobody gives a fuck about you, and your failing business model … and blaming it all on the ABC doesn't help, you wretched mob of irrelevant moaners and whiners … get on with your climate science denialism, your bigotry of the Bolter kind, and your love and support of the virus and the Donald … (yes, just imagine if Australia had gone down the path of the USA, as the dog botherer seems to suggest might have been a good idea, rather than listen to alternative views. If that's hysteria, give the pond hysteria every day of the week).
Fortunately, there are cartoonists who drag the pond back into the actual world, including the always relevant Rowe, with more real world experiences available here …
Oh here, have a little more of the real world ...
When the Cater leads with his chin like that - you just had to put him first on the hit parade, DP - just had to. While he might be losing the freedom to think (he can speak for himself only - the rest of us still feel quite capable of thinking) he still asserts his freedom to borrow extensively from others to compile his columns, and books. Well, if you are so oppressed that you cannot think - borrow from others.
ReplyDeleteAnd I note that the Associate Editor (National Affairs) has gazumped Polonius on the dreadful imbalance on 'Insiders' yesterday. In the process, he has reminded me of the name of the Communications Minister (the offer of double points and an early minute is hereby rescinded), which I had not managed to retain from yesterday.
No doubt Polonius will find some incisive piece of trivia from the same session of 'Insiders' for his own columns later in the week. Oh the suspense.
Chadwick
Ah well, just for a quickie response, Chad, while I try my hardest to remember how to think, as for you I give thanks to Maj. Mitch. that I too now know that the answer is Paul Fletcher (trust a reptile to know all their fellow travellers) which I might possibly remember for an hour or two, and one thing he's done is to try to "defund the ABC".
DeleteNow, is there something else he can lay claim to ?
Obviously the very best way to improve the mental health of the ordinary every person would be to abolish the Murdoch media machine - which keeps everyone in the dark and feeds them bullshit.
ReplyDeleteAnd abolish TV too - see Four Arguments For the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander and The Network movie too.
A fairly simplistic argument by Mr Mander: "you really can't summarize complex information. And that television is a medium of summary or reductionism" because if you can't reduce complex information to a "summary" - ie form a model - then basically you can't discuss it at all - other than those complexities which are fairly accurately modelled by deep and complex mathematics (except for E=mC^2 which is simple and shallow). He does state the real problem though: "it [tv] reduces everything to slogans"
DeleteAnd the reason it does that is that the majority of its paying audience can only "think" in slogans. So really, the problem is the appalling simplicity of human understanding. And that applies to the vast majority of everything said or written too - or isn't it obvious that the human race as a whole couldn't deal with subtlety or complexity and that it lived by slogans long before it created television.
You are familiar with 2000 years of the history of simplistic religious texts - generally delivered as slogans - are you not ?
GB - thanks to the Wiki (one of the few good things to survive on the web) I learn that Paul Fletcher was born in Devizes. It would be a cheap shot to speculate if he fits 'There was a young man from Devizes' who figures in several colourful limericks, and accidents of birth do not rate as achievements.
ReplyDeleteNeither does the period he spent in the office of Richard Alston.
He did write a book, title 'Wired Brown Land? Telstra's Battle for Broadband'. Don't bother to giggle it - the few reviews that remain accessible note that his own position as an 'executive' in Optus kinda gave the game away.
So - if getting a book published ranks as an achievement - that makes two.
Some of that will now occupy bits of my brain, along with 'phone numbers with 6 digits (or fewer) and the registration numbers of vehicles that have long since become feedstock for recycling steel.
Chadwick
There's a whole world full of people like that, non ? Still, he's way ahead of nearly all of the reptiles, most of whom haven't published even one single book - though I grant that the 'multi-publishers' (Nullius Ned and the Bromancer) more than make up for that both in quality and quantty.
DeleteIncidentally, I meant to pass on the name of the other book I bequeathed to my colleague in case you're getting desperate for reading matter. It was 'The Mythical Man Month 2nd Ed' by Fred Brooks. who was responsible back in the late 1950s, early 1960s for managing initially the hardware and eventually the whole effort of the project that made IBM so successful: the System 360 hardware and software family (later superseded by S370). Brooks coined the saying that: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" (and hence that men and months are not interchangeable) - a dictum that applies not only to software, of course.
All a bit old hat now, obviously, but great stuff back in its day.
GB - thank you for the Fred Brooks reference, which I have added to my list of publications to seek out.
DeleteI have mixed feelings when I read about the age of mainframes, mainly because I became too aware of how much material was effectively lost as those systems were taken out. Yes, 'computer guys' assured us it was all 'in storage' somewhere, but my several attempts to retrieve items like geographic reconstructions from land survey were unsuccessful.
Yes, I was assured, it was all on tape, but they didn't seem to have a gadget that could read those tapes, even if they could find the exact tapes down there in the basement.
Chadwick
- and there it is, on Kindle, Anniversary Edition, update 2010.
DeleteChadwick
All the old reel-to-reel tape units were taken up to appear in movies, Chad. We all remember seeing them, of course. A 1600ft (or even an 800ft) reel could back up a whole S360 site. But yes, finding stuff in them later could be a chore.
DeleteMy memory of them harks back to the early days of the PBS scheme (back in the early 1970s) when all of the PBS transactions for the day would be entered online at data entry agencies all over Australia and then transmitted over phone lines (usually leased lines for better throughput) to a mini-computer system in Canberra (in Woden, to be precise). When all of the data entry sites had finished transmission, the total set of data would be downloaded onto a 1600ft tape which was then walked across the computer room to the IBM S360 which processed the day's data.
Really not too bad for the early 1970s when the Fed Pubserve actually understood computers and had the hardware to do things (except for Mandata - never managed to get that going).
That sounds like the right 'Mythical Man Month' if you get around to reading it.
The doggy sheds crocdile tears for 18 reporters lost from the reptile house. They could have kept them on and hired a couple more for the money he's on.
ReplyDelete