In which our Henry does his thing, and the pond seeks distractions ...

Confronted by the current state of affairs, we all need distractions … though the pond has begun to wonder whether being trolled by reptiles, the hole in the bucket man, and the demon seed reptilian ruler of the United States counts as a distraction.

By chance last night, the pond's logarithms presented the MSO doing a Bloch piece and that old Rimsky-Korsakov warhorse Scheherazade in a live streaming event. 

The pond started with the Bloch - a fine tone in the cello - but stayed on - a fine tone in the violin and the wind and brass delivered on the surge at the end …

On the upside, there was no coughing; on the downside, the dynamic range was a little too extreme for the pond's not shabby sound system, but even more problematic, it seems few Victorians paid attention to what was being offered for free, when once they might have paid a motza to preen and parade in the hall before the show …

Well it's still here, and the playing was fine, and so all is not lost in Victoria, and if you're tired of reading the reptiles rant about Ridd, why not head off there for your distraction?

The pond sometimes wonders why the reptiles get so hysterical about things. One court decision heralds the abandoning of the point of universities?

Wasn't the Ramsay Centre going to reaffirm the triumph, the supremacy of white western male thinking, and so save universities, and incidentally the known, and possibly unknown, universe? 

And now it's all been undone by a single court decision involving an admittedly recalcitrant employee, and yet our Henry is forced to start off by acknowledging that the Riddster, in an inexplicable decision, chose not to challenge the university's finding he had repeatedly breached its code of conduct …

Did the sky fall in when Sydney University sacked Tim Anderson? Were the reptiles outraged at the lack of freedom to mingle swastika and Israeli flag? Would the pond be in trouble for mentioning apartheid and gulags and territorial theft?

Well it's a long way back from all that, and being Henry, it will be an exceptionally tedious road, though filled with grand rhetorical flourishes and ancient references to show off his splendid learning ...

As usual, the pond began to wonder whether it had made the right choice. So far as the pond knows, our hole in the bucket man isn't a lawyer, yet here was the very archetype of a legal eagle busily lawyering away. He's not much of an academic or an economist either, but on the other hand, things could be worse …

The pond's main complain is that our hole in the bucket man had to this point failed to work in a decently arcane reference to the ancient Greeks, and instead, in the next gobbet had to turn it into a horror show with a geek munching on chicken heads … aka the Bolter …a sure sign that even the reptiles knew that our Henry was a dullard making for exceptionally dull reading

Well a screen cap would stop that Bolter horror movie Sky News nonsense dead in its tracks ...

Ah that's more like the hole in the bucket man, digging up Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics …

What an excuse for the pond to link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the matter of Aristotle …

Now there's a classy distraction.

That's about as far away from dinkum coal-loving climate science denialism as might be managed in these troubled times, and yet still the pond felt seriously the need for distraction … 

But remember, when searching for distraction, and confronted by the sight of peasants forced to eat cake (or nothing at all) and die, it could be worse …

Hmm, should the pond have led with the immortal Rowe so early? 

That means suggesting people toddle off to see more of him here … a guaranteed, sure fire pleasant distraction, but will there be anyone left to endure our hole in the bucket man rabbiting on?

What gets the pond is that there is no sensible Kafkaesque way to shut up our Henry or any of the other  reptiles or indeed the Donald peddling nonsense about demon seed and reptilian overlords … but it could be worse …

But that's now, and our Henry is struck somewhere in 1915 ...

Should an appeal proceed?  Say what? Why the saucy doubts and fears producing that ambivalent "Should"?

What, the reptiles aren't stumping up the cash? Where's our Henry's GoFundMe campaign? Let's get it on, let's keep the tedious fuss going.

The Morrison government ought to intervene firmly and effectively? 

So much for small government staying out of our libertarian lives …

So much for Ronnie Raygun announcing that government was the problem, not the solution …

Now the government should become the arbiter of academic independence? How will that work? Should SloMo start to insist universities pay more attention to teaching and speaking in tongues, and studying the impending arrival of the rapture?

By another irony, the pond woke up this morning to the sounds of RN and Just-in-Time or Just-in-case economy?, and suddenly realised that there was no way to order up some just in time reptile commentary …the reptiles would be blathering on about the Ridd matter for years, possibly decades, possibly until 3015 …meanwhile failing to understand that all their neoliberal blather about regulation and leanness has led directly to the current inability of industry and society at large to cope with the current viral mess.

What else? Well the reptile commentary section was a dismal display of dullness and mediocrity. so the pond decided to revert to a just in time lizard Oz editorial …

Yes, it's as dull as ditchwater, or the as tepid and brown as the trickle previously known as the Darling … but it did offer the chance for the pond to provide another distraction, in the form of prime Angus "Beefhead" Taylor …

Okay maybe music or Aristotle isn't your thing, but surely there'll be some amused by the full story in the Graudian here … given that the reptiles managed a headline talking about murky water, and yet failed to mention prime Angus being full-blown murky …

What a murk he is, but don't expect the murk to float to the surface in the next and thankfully last gobbet for the day ...

Nope, no Angus prime beef mucking away in that gobbet … but thank the long absent lord, the pond isn't the only one to realise that the solution to anything that ails ya and ya murky water is right at hand. 

Who needs music, philosophy, or climate science when coal is standing by, ready to fix the current crisis, and then in due course, the world …

In which the pond does Thursday with the savvy Savva and a theological bromancer ...

The pond can only deal with the material the reptiles serve up. 

Thursday is savvy Savva day for the reptiles, and so it's savvy Savva day at the pond.

It's not that the pond wants to read the savvy Savva or inflict the savviness on the world, it's just the way it is …

The pond could have cut it short by simply running the infallible Pope of the day …

Or perhaps yesterday's Rowe …

But where's the fun in that?

And there are other dangers and temptations. Sometimes the pond drifts off, thinking how it might better spend its time, perhaps reflecting on the meaning of it all …

But then the pond casts aside temptations, abandons the infallible Pope, holds another immortal Rowe in reserve, snaps back, and gets on with its duty ...

Oh dear, she's got her usual bee in the bonnet about SloMo and the man with an unfortunate rhyming name … as if somehow it's got something to do with them …

But surely when it rains, everyone gets wet ...

Experienced medical help in a pandemic? By golly those uppity, demanding, difficult Victorians are always being unreasonable. What they need to do is read Killer Creighton and understand it's no biggie, that there's been an over-rection to an unremarkable case of the flu ...

Yes, there you go, and a lot more of the same, and so the pond wonders what the fuss is all about. Isn't death the natural order of things? Why, the risk of dying while reading Killer Creighton is about as great as understanding the universe by reading a cereal box ...

Indeed, indeed, but Killer Creighton is the pond's great comfort …

Oh dear, another metaphysical question. What the pond needs is someone who can introduce metaphysical notions into foreign policy considerations ….

And so to the other bee in the reptile bonnet this day, and wouldn't you know, it's China, and all the 'leets crawled out from assorted places to examine the state of play ...

Special reporters were assigned to hunt out EXCLUSIVES spotting lickspittle fellow travellers, or to reveal top secret defence plans, so secret that any fool reptile reader could be in on the joke ...

Yes, put vital supplies in Darwin, because heck, why trouble the Chinese by putting them at a distance, why try to keep them out of harm's way? Why not just make them missile friendly and plunk them right next to the Chinese-leased port? Think of what a handy nearby missile might do to a decent stash of oil supplies ...

But enough of the experts, because whenever the pond wants real analysis, it always turns to the bromancer, and what a good week it's been for him, and so for the pond ...

We've got closer to the US? Why was the pond suddenly nervous?

Never mind, it's on with the good news, and the way we're doing a tango with one of the most incompetent presidents of all time, one barking mad enough to channel the alien mumbo jumbo, and obscure ramblings of a cultist, until even Twitter felt the need to say enough already …

Sorry, the pond has it on good authority that sex with aliens is the cause of all the STDs doing the rounds …

Sorry,  this is a day of distractions, please, oh please bromancer, lead the pond in a recitation of the Agnus Dei ...

Does the bromancer ever disappoint? Who else could translate foreign relations into Papist-speak, what with a gathering of Cardinals, talk of theological language and doctrinal precedent, and for a capper "hermeneutics" …

And the Papist didn't stop with it there … because there's even more longstanding, though nuanced theology to come …

You know, the sort of nuanced theology currently going down in the States …

Never mind,  Agnus die, qui tolls peccata mundi, miserere nobis, as they say … and now, instead of talk of a miserable condition in a miserable world, it's time for the bromancer to make crystal clear how brave we've been, and how brave we will be, tackling the unknown unknowns, never saying never, but hardly ever doing ever ...

Another bromancer score! A veritable hit!

Who else could diagnose a condition that was both non-inflammatory and acutely annoying. Speaking personally, if the pond is acutely annoyed, it's usually related to some inflammatory condition … you know, if there's an ingrown toe-nail, it's inclined to be annoying, and it can get pretty inflammatory, and if the bromancer can use theology, why the pond feels free to go medical metaphor ...

Yes, you can be half-pregnant, you can be intimate and socially distant, you can do a dance at arm's length and consider it a romance, you can keep trading with China while poking out the tongue at a safe distance, and meanwhile, in another country, our great ally, everything is going spiffingly well, with the sign posts easy to follow ...

As a bonus, the pond decided to turn to the lizard editorialist to study another reptile phenomenon ...

What had happened? Where did it all go wrong? Can anyone remember when the onion muncher, with a shit-eating grin, was standing amongst the pack celebrating a momentous triumph?

Huge! 

Or at least huge if you could get a lobbying gig … but back to that curious reptile habit, which sees the lizard editorialist beg, steal and borrow thoughts from its scribblers and stick them together in an elaborate nest of conceits like a bower bird.

Thus we began with Cameron Stewart and end with the bromancer, and the pond irresistibly finds the effect akin to an echo chamber, or a vision of Surry Hills as a cult with everyone saturated to the gills on the same kool aid - well when we drink, the innards surely get wet.

Do they ever get out and about, does the lizard Oz editorialist do anything other than read the lizard Oz?

Ah yes, it's all Obama's fault. Four years into the new regime, and yet still it's all his fault. Is there nothing he can't be blamed for? One of his many colossal failures.

As opposed to the colossal triumphs of the Donald and his mob.

But, stay, hole a moment what's this defeatist talk in that penultimate sentence, "Whoever wins in the US in November…?"

And who, apart from the delusional reptile, imagines that be it Mr Trump (respect) or sleep Joe (no honorific for him), that anyone will follow the reptile order "must be resolute", especially when everyone knows the reptiles will crumble and do some lavish boot-licking the moment that precious, dear sweet clean dinkum Oz coal looks like it might be under threat … because we still have a planet to destroy ...

After reading the reptiles, the pond began to experience a mixed-message overload - but surely the country and the world is in the safest hands, and this is no time for defeatism … surely there must be another chance for Dame Slap to don the MAGA cap and celebrate on the streets of New York …surely Mr Trump will march to another triumph, and then we'll see how fucked things can really get.

And as for that alternative view of reality the pond was hoping for, why not an immortal Rowe sending a postcard, with more postcards from the seer here ...

In which freedom fighter Oreo shows how its done, and the cancer culture known as the IPA roams freely amongst the reptiles ...

Lately the reptiles, in a desperate ploy, have taken to filling up pieces with a flurry of internal links and Sky newsreels, and the recovering, reformed feminist's piece was full of it, forcing the pond to fastidiously cut out the nonsense, producing a series of short gobbets …

Given the absurdity of the notion of a "Pax Americana" - has there been a pax the pond hasn't noticed since the days of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and lots of other hot spots in between? - the pond wondered how to proceed, especially as the notion of a 'pax' was linked  at the very beginning with that smiling photograph of a completely mad, fundamentalist, war-mongering loon …

Should the pond resort to cartoons as interludes and interstitials?

Possibly, but let's get the delusions under way …

Of course there's another way to fill in the gaps, because the reptiles had arranged a most poignant juxtaposition with the Amazonian warrior Oreo…

Suddenly, when reverting to that other story, there didn't seem quite the same level of enthusiasm as that shown by the recovered, reformed feminist, a tad too eager to bung on a manly do with the mask wearer …

Uh huh. Of course arguing about an abstract bit of land building in the south China sea is a tremendously easy distraction to feed the pigeons.

The hard issues - the Chinese government's treatment of Hong Kong, the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighuirs, the complicity of western companies of the Nike and Führer - or should that be Volks? Wagen - are a lot trickier to handle …(let us not count the many ways the Donald and his brood have done business with the Chinese, patents and all, and fellow travelled in sundry ways) ...

Brave SloMo standing up to the Chinese dragon? Not exactly, not if the story arising from that poignant juxtaposition was a little closer to reality than the Oreo (let us not wonder if the Oreo has any connection to reality, because the philosophical questions arising could keep the pond going for years) …

Fearing retribution? Why that's not nearly as brave as the Oreo, ready to bung on a do …

But back to the reformed, recovering feminist building sandcastles out of Amazonian delusions of grandeur ...

Indeed, indeed, though it has to be said that the notion of a "pax Americana" seems even quainter … what with the war now being taken to the streets …

And now to the Oreo on the warpath and desperately trying to rationalise, in a retrospective way, the works and deeds of the onion muncher...

Nothing to fear, everything to gain? But it's not as if the nature of Xi's burgeoning surveillance wasn't already known back in the onion muncher's day. 

Shouldn't that have read "We had a lot of greed and we didn't give a fuck, we just had greed and fear", as the onion muncher himself was recorded thinking in these pages only yesterday?

And now we should throw in our lot with a bunch of bullshit artists and carpetbaggers, as if they were the solution, rather than part of the problem?

 

Well luckily there's only one gobbet of war talk with the Yanks to come from the reformed, recovering feminist…

The free world?

And as for the Oreo standing tall, personning the watch and fighting for freedom, here have  a nibble …

And so to what the pond won't be running today …

Dear sweet long absent lord, has Dame Slap jumped the legal shark and nuked the legal fridge, or what?

These days she never seems to don the MAGA cap, or write about the way the UN government used climate science to introduce world government by last Xmas. Instead she constantly bangs on about class actions, doing what her IPA cohorts want … and it's as tedious as all get out, and the pond can't stand it …

The pond should acknowledge that the reptiles brought back the cult master …

It's a pity that it was for a beat-up, whipped up to score a little space because of de Havilland's death. 

De Havilland was just a liberal and she wasn't anywhere near the league of Joe McCarthy and his chums ,and running the beat-up (incidentally promoting the writer's book) saw the reptiles veer dangerously close into the territory of sounding like Louella Parsons …(well at least William Randolph Hearst and chairman Rupert shared an enthusiastic love of Rosebud).

And so there was only solution to the final bit of filler, the IPA done right, rather than done Dame Slap style.

Sure avoiding class actions is important for News Corp, but we should never forget the central mission of fucking the planet…

In recent times, the lizard Oz has become something of a Pravda for the IPA, peddling the right line whenever it can, and in relation to the Riddster, the reptiles have been exemplary …

The IPA has been given free reign to go on and on in a litany of indignation ...

It reminded the pond what a cancer the IPA has been over the years, and how it has done its very best to chip away at sanity.

There's a rational wiki here, which led to this saying, which could be found at the Graudian here ...

The attack on progressive taxation was put forward with the most delightful stupidity by the Institute for Public Affairs this week.

In its submission to the Senate economic committee’s review of the personal income tax plan, it argued that progressive taxation “discriminates against Australians by income. Other forms of discrimination, such as by skin colour, race, or ethnicity, are rightly abhorred, yet the income tax system openly discriminates against people by income”.

Yes, discriminated high-income earners. Someone should organise a telethon.

These days the IPA's support for asbestos and tobacco and assorted other causes have taken a back seat to a love of coal, and climate science denialism, and serving the interests of their chief sponsor Gina …and that only seems to have added to the baleful, corrosive cancerous culture, which yearns to cancel all that it dislikes, and it goes without saying, the IPA dislikes a heck of a lot (just like Gina does) …

There's another good study of the beast here...

Now as for the confusion and conflation between the reptiles and the IPA, note the line that appears in this next paragraph.

While The Australian does not suggest the judges acted improperly ...

That was written by an IPA hack. 

It surely should have read "While the IPA does not suggest the judges acted improperly …", rather than dobbing in the reptiles.

But it does suggest the Tweedledum and Tweedledee nature of the two brands in recent times ...

The Riddster, who wanted a pay out, now finds himself in the middle of the IPA's climate science denialist coal-loving wars … when all he wanted to do was keep on crapping in his uni nest, and getting away with it ...

What's so funny about all this? Well the pond finds the notion that the IPA and the lizard Oz give a flying fuck about intellectual freedom and free speech to be full-blown hilarious.

It's like the wretches at Jonestown sipping on the kool aid and assuring the world that they were believers in intellectual freedom and free speech, as they followed that argument to its logical conclusion… much like the reptiles line up at the water cooler in 'leet Surry Hills for their dose each morning, because how else are the starlings going to fly through the air in perfect unison?

Imagine, if you could, a story in the lizard Oz supporting the university and providing a link to a 

Gofundme operation for the embattled institution … bleeding money on lawyers it could better spend on students, rather than on battling a disgruntled employee who deliberately kept prodding with a stick, aided and abetted by the IPA … 

If you can imagine it, have you thought about a career writing for Hollywood, and valiantly battling the Jewish Marxists under the thumb of Soros that run the joint?

The pond keeds, it keeds, there's freedom and then there's the moronic IPA with all its standard trigger words (woke really does trigger them, doesn't it? Do they have signs in the office warning folk not to mention "woke" for fear of a frenzy of frothing and foaming and ruined carpets?), 

As a result, the pond was strangely attracted to these cartoons as a way of wrapping things up for the day …

And as a capper, here's the infallible Pope, shouting out to Mr Taylor and the IPA …