Who better than prattling Polonius for a Sunday meditation?

The pond has settled on prattling Polonius as a firm favourite to lead off its Sunday meditation … somehow it reminds the pond of the good old days when the pond would always have the Pellists to hand …

The reptiles always set up the weekend with a double dose of Polonius, but the pond never pays much attention to the Friday offering, perhaps on the basis that the pond could never understand why eating fish was banned on a Friday …

In it, Polonius pretends to do a survey of the media, when in reality it's a chance for him to lay bare the inner bitch. Frankly, the pond's favourite queen envies Polonius's capacity for bitchiness, which he usually hides, by pretending to be a dullard boring sobersides intent on sending anyone watching The Insiders back for an extra hour of snooze…you know, the yin and yang of the kindly English doctor Jekyll, and the club-wielding Hyde ...

No more! The ABC let the dear old possum go, and so Polonius's obsession with the ABC has cranked up another notch, and so it was on Friday, with the usual bitchiness and bleating ...

At that point, since Polonius thought so much of the need for diversity, the pond wondered how the Sydney Institute had fared over the years on the diversity front …

For a wheez, the pond thought it might check out the list of speakers which the anally retentive Polonius had organised for the institute's site here … weirdly organised on a first name basis ...

The pond soon gave up that game, though it was pleased to see that in just those first few names there was our original Adam, and Alan Dupont, and Geoffrey Blainey and the like…

The pond decided to cheat with the google and did come up with a few indigenous themes … featuring white speakers ...

Ah good old Gazza, is there nothing he doesn't know about sorting out those uppity, tricky, difficult blacks?

There were a few black names that popped up in the google, a scant few, but when it came to Jekyll bitching about ABC diversity, maybe Polonius should heal himself, or at least his institute, before rabbiting on too much …

But please, this was meant to be a proper Sunday meditation, and surely Polonius would extend his range, and address something more interesting than the ABC ...

Oh fucketty fuck, not more of the ABC, and what's more, after cheekily beginning with crocodile tears about the poor buggers who lost their jobs during a pandemic, he then joyously moves on to how the public broadcaster is self-obsessed.

If anyone is obsessed here, it surely has to be Polonius. 

He's half-crazed about it, or maybe full-on crazed, like a jilted lover, or a wild-eyed Glenn Close. What is it with this fatal attraction, what Satanic magic has the ABC weaved so that this Polonius dashes himself on its rocks, lured on by the song of the cardigan-wearing sirens? Does he too yearn for a patch on his elbows?

The moment he begins to scribble, yet again Polonius reveals that he seems to do nothing other than obsessively track the ABC and all that it does. 

Is someone talking to that misleading, deceptive ABC bitch? Polonius will have words, and oh no, not the old diversity rag, he's not going to drag the diversity cat in again, is he?

Actually, scrub that talk of obsession. There's a lot to be said for Polonius being diagnosed as paranoid. Who else would see the world in such a binary way? What's clever about sorting the world, and the ABC, into 'enemies' and 'friends' categories?

It takes the pond back to the good old days when B. A. Santamaria stalked the earth, then left it …

The pond doesn't know why it slipped that in, though it does remind people that Polonius's Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man, can now be sampled on Google books for free, which beats lining up at the remainder counter ...

And it does continue the theme of friends and enemies and Pellists, and at least there wasn't a single female at the altar - hie thee to a nunnery, and stay there ...

But now the pond must return to the original paranoid obsessiveness, and more news of the ABC, and to its astonished delight, talk of Sky News providing a viable alternative outlet to the cardigan-wearers - ssshh, please no mention of having to turn over your shekels to the Chairman, and please no mention of the cable cutting that's been going on of late …or the sufferings of a business under dire pressure, as noted at the Weekly Beast here …

Sheesh, distracted again by the sight of a climate science denialist, please do go on with your paranoid obsessive observations ...

Actually it's indicative of gutless politicians who don't feel any need to communicate with a sizeable proportion of the population who don't share Polonius's politics or paranoid obsessive delusions … but please, do wrap things up ...

Yes, you can be totally secure in the assurance that some of you will be given the chop … but as for why conservatives don't bother with the ABC, perhaps Wilcox had a better clue than our paranoid obsessive...

And so to the second course, and for once the pond has decided to go with our Gracie, not because she's taking her usual stands, but because for once she's talking dirty, at least in the way that the reptiles understand dirty talk ...

But why is she talking dirty? Well again the pond must wander down a sidetrack, a detour with the meretricious Merritt who has been diligent of late in the business of raising saucy doubts and fears …

A sampling will be enough to establish the cut of the malign Merritt's jib ...

And again, as his his wont ...

Now it will be easier to see why, in reptile terms, our Gracie is talking dirty …lordy, lordy, the pond could almost imagine the malignant Merritt's ears turning humbug pink…

Perhaps the pond should acknowledge some skin in this game. The pond's mother hated going out to the farm for weekends because the rich uncle who owned it had a nickname …

She didn't like being groped, and it came as something of a shock to the pond that there were gropers in the world, swimming about as freely as some of the fish you could find in the Peel river … mud-feasting catfish and yeller bellies and the like …that such a thing should be! Roving hands, roving eyes, always with the roving, and yet married, supposedly in fidelity for life ...

Sheesh, distracted again, please Gracie begin your tale of fish roaming around the High Court ...

Phew, in reptile terms, our Gracie went right off. The only consolation the pond can offer to our Gracie is that these are troubled times for the law in many parts of the world …

50% off for friends of the reptiles and John Howard?

But our Gracie refused to be consoled, and kept on going right off ...

Ah, she does industrial relations consulting, that might explain it ...

Dammit, does our Gracie ever bump into the meretricious Merritt in the corridors at Surry Hills? The pond would love to be a fly on the wall, and in the meantime, offers this Wilcox and infallible Pope as consolations ...

Still not consoled? Well times are tough around the world …