In which the pond embarks on a Sunday meditation with Polonius ...

 

They don't really get cancelled - they're narcissists full of self-regard speaking out about 'Orwellian' attacks, and drawing attention to themselves, and the reptiles assiduously track them down, and on a daily basis, make sure that they still have their moment in the sun, like a Confederate flag practising freedom of speech.

But what do you know? Only a few days after the reptiles celebrated the dubious Dow, he was cancelled ...

Dearie me, and the pond wasted valuable space in the hope that he might get fucked …and there he was, cancelled, accompanied by the usual bit of window-dressing for cancelled pride. So much cancelling, so little time ...

But some things never get cancelled, like prattling Polonius, always on about the ABC.

Could we have some truth in labelling. Surely it should be called "Paranoid obsessive compulsive ABC  Media Watch Dog"?

Never mind, the pond had held back prattling Polonius for a meditative Sunday, and as usual, Polonius delivered the goods …

The Royals? For a minute there, the pond thought it had stumbled on the Royals-obsessed Daily Beast, which regularly uses them as click-bait fodder. 

But that note "Donald Trump's position is to focus on the positive" reassured the pond it had landed in the world of Polonial delusion and high comedy. A reference to Xianity in the opening line would be the hundreds and thousands on the icing on the cake ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, it's Sunday, but suddenly the pond was back yesterday, just a world away, with the bromancer rabbiting on in the same way about the wonders and glories of the Donald and the malaise afflicting the western world …

And now, like a rampant time machine out of control, the pond was back with Polonius, and discovering the dear old thing was a jingoistic militarist, with a deep love of military parades and flyovers …

Substitute which ever figure you like watching Foxtel's Fox News (remember, always plug the Chairman's products) …

Watching Adolf/Benito/Kim/Vlad the impaler's event live on state propaganda television, it was difficult not to be impressed by the occasion, with the songs, music, military parade and flyovers …

Oh it was a grand affair, and the pond did so love the uniforms, and the film that covered the event ...

  

And not content with his proto-fascist leanings, Polonius then went on to quote Orwell, just as the pond had done the day before … not this one exactly

“Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.”

And not given the makeover that the pond had helpfully suggested…

“Donaldism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.”

But yes, Orwell would turn up in the next gobbet, just below the Donald, because the reptiles love their ironies cranked up to eleven.

And so, like the bromancer, Polonius prattled in praise of the Donald, apparently not realising how the country was deeply, comprehensively fucked, and getting all the more so on a daily basis, thanks to the Donald's attitude to science and virus …

Every time the pond reads the reptiles it wonders how they all manage to get to drink the same kool aid. 

Do they ship it from 'leet Surry Hills to the Sydney Institute's leet HQ bunker in the heart of the CBD? How else to explain Polonius sounding just like the bromancer, though admittedly he lacks a little of the ranting steroid-fueled power?

Damn it, did the pond score, or what? Talk of the fall and Adam and Eve and Polonius taking on the tone of an Elmer Gantry and at the same time, with a cleansing of Holy Water, wiping clean the British Empire of all its sins, so it might spend only a short time in purgatory, otherwise known as the Commonwealth, and the Donald praised, and with only a few minor flaws, and …

… yes, despite the bromancer's best efforts, Polonius hands down wins the Lowe cartoon of the week award …

And so to a dubious pleasure the pond had promised never to do again ...

Promises, promises, but you see the pond had been trolled, baited, and perhaps switched, punked and puked by the splash …

Come on, who could resist? Mr Potato Head on the scrap heap, into the graveyard, with the peelings?

The mutton Dutton thrown into a  stale stew, the old bèn dàn (Dumb Egg), potato brother, and super spud bro on the way out?

Why that's like waving one of those old-fashioned Aldi lollies, the cone with the sherbet and the marshmallow, in front of the pond's nose, and fragrant reminders of the Dungowan general store flooding back into memory.

Yes, the pond knew it was just another click bait victim, but what the hell, toujours gai Archie, click away ...

Oh no, not pure Angus 'beef' Taylor, but was that talk about the mutton Dutton? Where did that go? The reptiles knew the pond was getting impatient, so they flung in a cult master offering which the pond valued so highly it made it a standalone ...

By golly, there's hours contemplating that, and what treasured memories and comparisons it brings back …

But enough of the fun and the memories, what about Mr Potato Head?

Oh to dream the impossible dream … but what of the cartoonists? Well at least we'll have the memories …

   

 

And to suggest that the wretched mutton Dutton be replaced by the singularly incompetent, inept and foolish Robert is a whimsy that almost justified the oscillating fan trolling the pond ...

Well it's all idle speculation and jolly good fun, and then the pond decided it must end with a bonus, Dame Slap in serious mood ...

One thing you have to say about the reptiles, they never give up, and they love defending the indefensible ...

Now this will be familiar to readers of Dame Slap, and devotees of the IPA mentality. The wringing of paws, and the yearning for older, better days, when it was a jungle, and the fittest survived, and the rest provided a feast of road kill, but the entire point is to build a case where the indefensible can be defended ...

See how Dame Slap built her case, see how she carefully put inverted commas around "believed", in much the same way that duplicitous lawyers double deal with the English language …

Quotation marks can also highlight that a word is being used somehow peculiarly – a writer may wish to indicate irony, inaccuracy, or scepticism, for example; used this way, they’re called scare quotes. In the line: At the party I met a teacher, a journalist, and an ‘artist’, the scare quotes around artist act as a distancing device, probably signalling doubt about the person’s credentials as an artist. The effect is similar to the Irish phrase mar dhea.

The Oxford Manual of Style says scare quotes may serve ‘to hold up a word for inspection, as if by tongs, providing a cordon sanitaire between the word and the writer’s finer sensibilities’. It’s a technique that quickly wears thin, so style guides sometimes caution against its excessive use. And there’s a related problem: non-standard emphasis. (here).

But Dame Slap loves the smell of excess and napalm in the morning.

She also loves a smear,  a way that Dame Slap can hint she doesn't believe the women without having the guts to come out and say it directly, but that's the way the sisterhood goes down in the lizard Oz … "scare" being the "modus operandi" of the "IPA" "mob" ...

Unfair rules and mob rule? Again smears, hints and innuendoes … and it wasn't so long ago that the pond published a piece by our Gracie which tackled this sort of claptrap. It might be tedious to repeat it in full, but here's a last gobbet, as a reminder that what's being taught in Dame Slap's school above the faraway tree is a dodgy curriculum…

Well yes, there are procedures and processes in place, and in larger institutions, HR folk who don't know about them, or who think Dame Slap has sensible things to say, will soon end up mired in scandal.

So what was the real reason for Dame Slap attempting to defend the indefensible? 

Well the man in question was one of the IPA pillars, a union basher of renown, and a member of the club, and so worth preserving, even if given to flatulence …

So what better way to celebrate and wrap things up than with a flurry of Wilcox?