Can anyone fix a viral bucket better than our Henry, or perhaps Plutarch ...

EXCLUSIVE: the pond must apologise to the onion muncher for yesterday's outburst. 

How could the pond have got it so wrong? The onion muncher's astonishingly generous offer to donate 20 per cent of his ridiculously generous parliamentary super scheme to the homeless is a sublime example to us all …

And so to other stories of flying pigs, and for this, who better than our hole in the bucket man?

Is it just the pond getting weirder by the day, or is it our Henry who has jumped the shark and nuked the fridge? Was it something in his diet, or was it his new work for the Caterists, explaining how much better it is to die so that the economy and the rich might thrive yet again?

Dear prudent Henry, why did you come out to play, dear prudent Henry did we need to greet the brand new viral day with blather about Auqinas, dear prudent Henry open up your eyes, see the sullen overcast Sydney skies, the wind is high, the birds don't sing, and you aren't much a part of everything, dear old prudent Henry, won't you open up your eyes … at least to what's happening in Donald land …

  

A doubling up of cartoons already?

Well it's troubled times, and of course the pond already knew where all this hole in the bucket guff was heading, with assorted classical references as pretentious, portentous window dressing of the kitsch kind …

And there'd also be fine examples of billy goat butt syndrome … 

As in, it remains sensible to invest heavily in controlling the disease, but, billy goat butt, all Henry's arcane academic reading of the ancient ones could be summarised with sublime simplicity … let 'er rip, because the economy, don't cha know ...

Indeed, indeed, the Donald's approach has shown the stunningly effective alternative solutions that are to hand …

How soon before our Henry gets on to the full Caterist agenda? 

You know, alarmist climate scientists who've done actual field observations and written peer-reviewed papers on what's going down? Or alarmist talk of coal producing Armageddon, when really we can never have enough coal, what with carbon dioxide being so loved by plants and creatures?

How foolish of the pond to wonder, or even to ask … your after-dinner mint is ready for the eating, and primed for the outburst or the explosion ...

Just as the pond was delighted by the onion muncher's generous offer, it is even more ecstatic at our Henry's offer to die, or perhaps get a good dose of the virus and suffer assorted agonies, just to demonstrate that there's really nothing much to the experience, and we should all join in the American ride …

And speaking of things getting weird, how did the the reformed, recovering feminist the Oreo end up in the lizard Oz on a Friday?

Monday used to be the Oreo's turf, and yet after a little absence, she's returned this day to show that we are all Melburnians now …

The pond keeds, it keeds …

When we last heard from the Oreo, it was all Labor's fault …

Now the Oreo has returned to explain,  in best recovering, reformed feminist fashion, that it's all Comrade Dan's fault  ...

Where did she go for those missing 18 days? Did she sit in her room and gorge, recovering feminist style?

Mega tedium, this intermittent bashing, this routine partisan hackery, and besides the infallible Pope had already sorted out the issue …

So the pond refused its chance to munch on mega Oreo stuf, and instead turned to other matters … and a sublime example of EXCLUSIVE reptile delusion …

Woulda coulda shoulda … and with plenty of chances to have offered that advice if the palace had had the slightest interest in offering same …

How paranoid and defensive can the reptiles get. But good old Troy - there must be some sort of reference there that the hole in the bucket man could use - does provide a cue for the next reptile sampling …

Well, if we can't have a decent bashing of the monarchy at the hands of the reptiles - doing their very best to maintain monarchism in all its delightful forms - at least we can give the drunk a good going over ...

For years the pond read elaborate explanations as to how the drunk's behaviour wasn't part of a grander conspiracy involving the High Court …

And now it seems the aim of the exercise is to excuse the monarchy from any involvement in the behaviour of their representative … as if indeed, we did have an unelected, undirected, un-instructible, uncontrollable wild cannon doing it all on his own, with perhaps just a bottle of spirits as comforter and companion … as if that was the best example of why monarchism should be the preferred drop, when for years it has been the chief argument against becoming a quaffing republic …

And yet here the argument is presented in undiluted form thanks to the venerable Sexton … 

It was all the fault of the secretive, conspiratorial drunk, in service to the original intractable Malware, and never no mind the matter of checks and balances,, and the mystical wonders of the Queen having a representative, and oh why oh why did we stop consulting the Privy Council? 

Well the pond is always happy to celebrate the drunk …

 

You can find him being drunk on YouTube too ...

But if having a secretive, conspiratorial drunk at the helm, answerable to no one but himself and the bottle, is the best that monarchism has to offer, why are the reptiles so down on republicanism? Would it be so tough to have a conspiratorial, secretive republican drunk?

The answer's pretty obvious … the reptiles and the chairman got their original Malware, and made out like bandits before he got a dose of the dire guilts, and turned greenie leftist, no doubt to the horror of the Oreo and our Henry … and now somehow for some arcane reason, the Queen must be given a cleansing of the woulda, coulda shoulda kind ...

But as we're speaking of monarchies this day, why not finish where the pond started, with the American example, and what seems to be a case of the George the IVs, though the pond accepts the NYRB argument that the original was A Discriminating Dissolute … (sorry, inside the paywall).

Besides, these days Marie Antoinette seems a better reference point …

Oh dear, getting in a cartoon even before beginning to rove with rambling Rove …

The pond has generally ignored Rove amongst the reptiles, if only because it's a re-tread of WSJ offerings (and that Firefox add-on means you can go to the original source, or you can just blow your brains out and end it all now), but of late the pond has noted an irresistible glumness creeping into the Rovian universe ...

"Unless COVID-19 retreats …"

Such sublime optimism even as the house is on fire, and the fire people don't seem to know what to do with their hoses …

It seems it's slowly dawning on even fabulists of the Rovian kind that things are now a little different …and might go on being different ...

It's up to Rove make some kind of digestible porridge out of these lumpy oats …

And so to a pond confession. 

As the pond has said a number of times over the past few months, the United States is comprehensively fucked, and if the Donald gets back in, it will be even more comprehensively fucked, a failed state of massive proportions … so it's a win-win situation for the pond….

Meanwhile, the only way to deal with this folly isn't to read Rove, it's to use his digital waste as filler for Rowe cartoons doing a Godot and evoking the end times in a way that our hole in the bucket man can't, because he has no imagination, and no sensa huma, and instead rambles back to ancient times …apparently unaware that he's kissing cousin to Fox News and its follies ...

It has to be said that Rove does a better job creating space for Rowe than the newspapers the pond's grandparents used to fill up the gaps in the wooden walls to stop the wind howling around the room back in the old days ...

Sure, the alleged mastermind pretends he has some grasp on reality and on the campaign and what the Donald must do, but what if the Rovian planning works out, and the Donald actually returned for a second term?

What would Rove and the US do then? Who would insert their finger in that particular dyke? 

Only the immortal Rowe, gaily inserting away, with more Rowe insertions here …

And so to the quintessentially important question that insertion raises …

Do we prefer traditional Dutch Hans Brinker kitsch, or traditional Dutch kistchian camp of a Sontagian kind? The pond only asks the question so that others may decide ...

  

And with that question sorted, perhaps there are other nightmares to endure …

Yes, secret Star Chamber trials, secret states furtively spying on poverty-stricken neighbours, criminal conduct in the field, and remarkable conspiracies in the assorted cover-ups, but none of that to be found in the reptile dreaming … and so none of it to be found in the pond, except by way of cartoons offering a guide to the alternative reality out there, known to others as the actual world ...