In which the pond keeps getting distracted from the siren song of the reptiles. Is it because our Henry sings out of Kantian key?

 

 

 

 

Take one Henry on a Friday and you will, without fail, have a good somnambulistic weekend. You will walk around in a historic or historical, whatever, some kind of history, fog ...

 

Only our hole in the bucket man could revert to peculiar originalism when it comes to the ABC, via Lord Reith and the BBC, but the pond should never underestimate the power of delusion when an old fogie and an idle fart is let loose with a reptile column ... 

 

 

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, did our Henry in his infinite wisdom just embrace the Reithian notion of 'leets, and the need to redeem the common herd with high-minded 'leet wisdom?

A high minded vision of feeding elevated swill to the generally swinish population? He did, he did, and the pond would have expected reptiles everywhere to indulge in an epic fainting fit at the outlandish nature of the notion. 

A return to decency and sprightly P. G. Wodehouse comedies came the cry. Confronted by awkward changes to the moral landscape, and women refusing to take it any more? Let us return to the delights of Enid Blyton, where girls knew their place and prepared the cheese and cucumber sandwiches for the adventure of the day, and nary a person of colour could be found in the enchanted woods ...

Ah but wait, our high-minded Henry isn't into all that ... prepare instead for a dose of Locke and a deal of cant about Kant ...

 

 

 

Reading our hole in the bucket man is likely to induce a sense of alternative reality, of a feeling of living in the eighteenth century ... so it's worth remembering that there are other stories out there ...

 

 

 

Crikey! But all the pond can do is note the alternative realities out there, and plunge back into the world of Henry ...

 

 

 

Elsewhere in the lizard Oz, the reptiles were busy preparing fortifications for the shocks that will follow the report on war crimes, released at a leisurely pace so that the reptiles can do their thing, while the ongoing shame of the East Timor affair and its elaborate and vicious cover-up proceeds, and our Henry is so far up himself and his Kantian bullshit and his blather about the inner voice of conscience that he doesn't have the first clue ... but it does prove that the fog of history has its purposes for useful Reithian idiots ...

Such is the world the pond dwells in when it frolics with the reptiles ... a kind of dinosaur world beyond the bounds of civility and enrichment ...

And so to what was at the top of the reptile digital page this morning ...

On the left hand side, there was a warning about the impending SAS explosion - so much softening up to do, so little time, with an editorial backing up the report - and on the right hand side - the far right side - there was this ...

 

 

Yes, on a day when the man child's ongoing temper tantrum has handed Hong Kong to fascist dictator for life Xi on a platter, the pond's best chance of hearing about it is to turn to an infallible Pope ...

As for the rest, the beer-swilling and the worship of Joel and the assaults on Labor, what was that really all about?

Fortunately the bouffant one is always mercifully brief when he puts on his thinking cap ...

It is of course just a chance to put the boot into our Henry and his blather about Reith and moral visions and 'leets and such like, and the notion that blue collar workers, and farmers, and rustics and such like are unaware of changing realities ... call it the luddite yell of the reptiles ...

And it's the perfect distraction from another awkward event.

Again you'd have to look elsewhere to become aware that the CSIRO has just released its biannual report on the State of the Climate, though you could turn to the Nine rags if you haven't used up your allowance to read Climate change is already here: major scientific report. 

A few samples for the fun of it, since there's nothing like a little frying and flooding for fun ...

Here's the thing. Science doesn't really have to take notice of Joel's desperate desire to save his seat, and to save jobs that are going to go if something is to be done about the state of things ... and the state of things is clear enough ...

 

There's a much better, more detailed - with graphs! - summary at the ABC here.

But nobody seems to have bothered to provide a link to the actual report, which can be found here ... 

 

 

 

Well you won't find any of that at reptile HQ. 

Instead you'll just cop the last gobbet of Shanners' guff ...

 

The pond humbly suggests that anyone who wants to understand the world should avoid paying a single cent to any Murdoch publication or outlet. Time to cable cut that outdated pay channel, time to toss away your tree-killer subscription, time to subscribe digitally to almost any other available publication, because you're guaranteed not to be funding ostrich-level head in sand shit ...

What have you got to lose? Joel's navel-gazing and fluff gathering, and his role as useful idiot for reptile climate science denialism? Our Henry blathering on about a moral conscience, stuck somewhere between ancient Greece and the eighteenth century, and without a hint of the comedy that might be found by having an excellent time travel adventure with Bill and Ted?

A life where there's more information and insight to be found by the simple expedient of attaching a cartoon or two to reptile guff?

Well, there's no need to hang on, or you might end up looking like the unseemly figure in this Rowe outing, with more unseemly figures always to be found at the immortal Rowe here ...