In which Dame Slap and Polonius provide sterling examples to the wayward Gracie ...

 

 

Over the past few weeks the pond has become increasingly disturbed by the unreptile characteristics being exhibited by our Gracie.

The pond has suggested the reptiles attempt some gentle correction - surely there's a camp somewhere, where the reptiles are given training in the benign way that chairman Xi sends Uyghurs to camps for a transformative understanding ...

Empathy? Empathy missing? We need Empathy the most?

Gracie, Gracie, what are you thinking, what are you saying, what are you scribbling?

 

Sheesh, reading our Gracie when she's in this sort of mood is like looking at a Wilcox or an infallible Pope cartoon ...

 

 

 

Would Gracie relent? Would Gracie find a shard of reptile light in her final gobbet?

 

 

No doubt our Gracie has looked abroad and seen the state of things elsewhere ...

 

 

The pond apologises for being a tad out of date ... records have been shattered ...

 

The Noosa News? The Nambucca Guardian? Oh Google, google ... but the pond guesses you couldn't find it in the lizard Oz ...

The United States has set a new record for the highest number of new coronavirus infections in a single day, hours after President Donald Trump insisted once again that the virus was "going away".
America reported 77,640 new cases on Thursday, according to NBC News, surpassing its previous record of 75,723 set on July 29

It's the pond's solemn and sad duty this meditative Sunday to provide a healthy reptile corrective to our Gracie's wilful, woeful bleating about emotional intelligence and empathy and all that jazz, and who better to show by example than the majestic, magisterial, schoolroom disciplinarian Dame Slap!?

 

 

You see Gracie, this is how it works, a litany of whining and moaning, of paranoia and persecution complex ... no need to think or report outside the reptile bubble, with faux EXCLUSIVES of this deplorable kind...

 

Not victims? Outrageous. Of course they're victims, oh how they suffer.

Here's your running sheet, and make sure you shoot the sheet ...

 

 

 

 

Now please, stand back, and watch as Dame Slap shows you how it should be done, and she won't even need to go into overtime to get the right sort of coverage ...
 

 

You see, Gracie? And then the pond can run a cartoon...

 

 

 

That's how it is, that's how it's done, that's the natural order of things. There's no reason to fight it, or to blather on about empathy, or emotional intelligence, or quotients, though the pond will admit that Dame Slap isn't the most perfect role model, because she once donned the MAGA cap, but now she shies away from the Donald ...

Still, she works very hard at her bigotry and lack of empathy, and so she's always admirably reptilian ...

 

 

 

You see Gracie, it's the old transference thing at work. Talk of donning the MAGA cap, and then scribble with righteous indignation and fury about authoritarian traits ... 

You also might wonder if the ends justify the means, but Dame Slap really doesn't give much of a fig for deeply ethical questions. It's just a form of argumentative authoritarianism ... but in the end, donning the MAGA cap always justifies the executive action means ...

 

 

 

 

Remember, Gracie, that it's important to draw up a litany of moans and whines, the more contradictory the better, like bemoaning secularists and secularism, while at the same time supporting the funding of a religious education, and then complaining when religious fundamentalism suddenly rears its ugly head ... in honour of Sophie, it's called secularist choice ...

 

 

Yes, what if your whole self includes a Nazi view of Jews? Is it fair to discriminate? What if an employer famously told a neo-Nazi not to bring his whole self to work? Where would this nightmare of discrimination end?

What if you couldn't slag off poofters and pillow biters in a traditional way? What if you couldn't stone them to death, or throw them off buildings or behead them? What a tragedy that would be for self-expression and social harmony ... wouldn't it?

What if you couldn't bring a distrust of science to work? What a tragedy that would be ...

 

 

 

What if you couldn't bring climate science denialism to work in an institution interested in climate science?

 

 

The pond hopes that this has helped you Gracie, helped you take some small tottering steps towards the reptile light ... remember, in a choice between science and denialism, always embrace your inner Monckton and your inner Donald, and all will be well ...

 

Sorry Gracie, the pond hasn't quite finished with your meditative Sunday lesson ... because the pond has a bonus for you.

The pond offers up prattling Polonius as a further corrective to your wilful behaviour, a positive example the pond hopes you can find it in your heart to embrace ...

Polonius's lesson? Get yourself a paranoid obsessive hobby. 

Polonius, for example, is obsessed with the ABC in the way that Nabokov was by butterflies and the pond is by reptiles. 

Not everyone can be a lepidopterist or a herpetologist, and it's true that Polonius has a lock on being an ABCologist, but Dame Slap has shown you a veritable parade of things to be obsessed about ...

Now you might say, instead of being obsessed by the ABC, why not just switch it off? The pond has to admit it's not that much of an ABC user, especially as it seems to have more self-promotional ads of a nauseating kind than even a commercial channel might offer. 

Polonius could easily do the same, but that's not really fair to Polonius. Next thing you might be asking why doesn't the pond just stop looking at the lizard Oz, and go about a useful life?

But really that misses the point. Everyone needs a hobby, but it must be of the right kind, a deeply paranoid, obsessive compulsive hobby.

To be a true reptile, you must have some sort of wild bee in your bonnet, and it must keep buzzing all the time.

Please, observe the paranoid obsessive delusional style of Polonius, a master of the form, listening to his inner ABC bee ...

 

You see? The pond long ago retired to a life of indolent luxury, when it cashed in all the coins it had put in the jar each time Polonius scribbled his line about the ABC being a "conservative-free zone without a conservative presenter"... yadda yadda, so on and so forth and endlessly etcetera ...

That's the good thing about being a reptile with a hobby. You can wank on about conservative-free zones endlessly, and no one will mind. 

They'll just chuckle, a little indulgently ... good old Polonius, still at it, still doing the hard yards, what a trouper he was when he got sacked from The Insiders, and could no longer do his amiable old uncle bickering duo with David Marr ... put down because it bored people witless ... but he took it bravely, without a shred of Polonial bitterness, or confirmation bias, as if any confirmation was needed, because Polonius's bee already knew everything that needed to be known ...and has for decades ...

And Gracie, please remember that your primary obsession can be coupled with other long-running obsessions, like the cruel treatment of the Pellists...

Of course this requires you to overlook the treatment of children by the Catholic church and its minions, but that's very Pellist too, and so you end up in a virtuous Polonial circle ...

 

You see Gracie, that's how it's done. You can ignore the gender fluidity involved in the Pellist love of frocks ... which leaves room for the pond to celebrate them ...

And you can ignore the Pellists walking shoulder to shoulder with rampant pedophiles off to court ...

 And would be very, very distinguished and Polonial of you ...

All that's required of your obsession is that you maintain a capacity to be completely one-eyed, but as the Bible so memorably said, in Matthew 5:29-30:

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Of course the bible got it slightly wrong. Remember Gracie, you should pluck out your left eye and cut off your left hand, if you want to be truly Polonial ...

If you follow the pond's advice, dear heretical wayward Gracie, you will realise that it is by your scribbling in an ideological way that we will know and deepen our understanding of reptile culture.

Frankly, your current approach is at odds with the whole enterprise, a subversion verging on heresy and deserving of a good burning at the stake, or at least a ritual humiliation in the stocks, of a kind that Dame Slap thinks is a jolly good thing if you happen to be of a fundamentalist religious bent, and there's some poofter passing by who deserves to be plucked out ... no matter what the current Pope might think about having poofters in the family (and you can console yourself that while supping with the gays, the Pope can still share a meal with the Pellists).

At the least, as a first step, in the many steps you must take before you have thrown away your false Uyghur thinking and regained a correct reptile view of things, the pond urges you to adopt the correct and proper Polonial attitude to the Pellists ... one he learned by keeping company with them ...

Keep company with the reptiles Gracie, and soon enough you'll forget all this talk of empathy, compassion, understanding and such like nonsense ...