In which the pond wraps up another postmodern year ...

 

Of course the fix was in. This was always going to be the last pond post of the year. If reading the reptiles hasn't taught the pond how to nobble a contest, what's the point of it all?

And that allows the pond the chance up front to wish all the pond's readers all the best Xmas and Saturnalian wishes, and the best for 2021, because 2020 has sucked mightily ...

The pond has struggled with existential ennui and an overwhelming sense of tedium and repetition in its reptile handling this year, and it's only the comments that have kept the pond going. It's a select band of regular contributors, but how much more fun to read than the reptiles ...

The pond might stagger back into action in the New Year, but it did hope to leave a few memorable seasonal thoughts for anyone who stumbled past in the interim, and the Monday reptile A-team delivered ...

And so to business, and first the pond would like celebrate its favourite reptile word, a word intimately bound up with the deviant leftist march through the institutions, so feared and reviled by the reptiles: postmodern, and all that postmodernism breeds.

That's why, as a postmodernist, post-ironic, post-millennial, post-meaning blog, the pond was vastly amused by historian Charlotte Lydia Riley's piece in the Graudian, here.

Amongst her targets was the haplessly named Liz Truss, and interalia it went down this way:

...I would feel uncomfortable marking Liz Truss’s homework in public like this, except that she was never really trying to understand Foucault. In fact, on the right, it is a badge of honour not to understand or care about these thinkers – much as Dominic Cummings proudly dismissed “Oxbridge English graduates who chat about Lacan at dinner parties”. (In typical fashion, Cummings managed to signal both his own cleverness – he went to Oxford, don’t forget! – and his lack of familiarity with what actual humans discuss at dinner parties these days.) The Conservative party needs these lefty intellectual bogeymen, to act as a helpful shorthand for everything that they find most alarming and infuriating.
There are many ironies here – postmodernism was a response to Marxism, not an embrace of it, and in fact has been described as the “cultural logic of late capitalism”. In many ways, the defining condition of post-modernity is neoliberalism, so there is no reason for Conservatives not to embrace it. But for politicians, “postmodernism” has become one of those zombie ideas that cannot be killed by facts, no matter how many times academics explain that it does not in fact mean what they say it does. For a historian like myself, what is especially ironic here is that it is the contemporary right that tends to embody its own false caricature of “postmodernism”, falling back on interpretation and subjective feeling in response to uncomfortable accounts of our own history.
Truss’s speech came in the wake of unforgettable headlines in the rightwing press lamenting that a painting in the Queen’s collection of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift – in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu war – would now be described as “connected to colonialism and imperialism”. This is demonstrably a rejection of objective truth. Rorke’s Drift was unquestionably a battle in the empire, but the papers were horrified that it might be described as an act of “colonial violence” because that would involve challenging our idea of what the empire really was. Similarly, adding detail to National Trust properties about their connection to slavery is bad, because this undermines British identity as the good guys and changes our understanding of empire’s legacies in Britain today, even if it is entirely accurate. For the right, this is not writing history, but “rewriting” history – which is suspect, because it chips away at their interpretation of the past, even though what is being added in these acts of “rewriting” is true. It’s not what Foucault would have wanted. But it might be what he would have predicted.

Why start this way for the final pond post of the year? 

Because the enormous stupidity of the reptiles has led postmodernism to be a favourite reptile, and so pond, word. Oh sure there are many others in the lexicon of identity politics the reptiles love to play, but look at the evidence …

It's a favourite term of abuse by the Caterists, Major Mitchell, and such like. Here's the Major: 

Media sceptics fully signed up to the anti-colonialist, postmodern, identity politics view of history and literature should apply some critical thinking to the ANU as well as to Ramsay.

Here's the Caterist:

The roots of the crisis in empiricism run deep. The cult of post-modernism propagating the view that there is no objective truth accounts for some of the rot. (anyone bold enough can visit the cash in the paw institute for that one).

The pond would love to let Riley loose on them, but she'd flay them alive, and then the pond would have to hang their skins with the rabbits and the 'roos in the shed out the back, and who wants the bother?

Even though truth and knowledge is changeable over time - fewer believe these days that Eve was just a spare rib - the judges considered their verdict, and it was thought that were worthy reptile contenders who could stand tall and proud as discussion starters over the break, and give any passing stray reader moments of vast amusement, especially as time put an even greater distance between their thoughts and what might be construed as reality.

What do you know, the Caterist even joined in the pond's word game, though sadly he ignored the tremendous virtues of "postmodern" for other verbiage, but then when it comes to actually working out the movement of flood waters in quarries, we can always rely on the Caterist to fuck it up, and stick out his paw for another government grant, while bemoaning bureaucrats and their work...

 

 

Yes, as his contribution to the pond's joining the ABC in taking a break, the Caterist was going to play the word salad game too ...

 

 

Sadly the C****ist has thus far avoided joining the Major in celebrating a pro-colonial, pro-imperialist, anti-modernist reptile mindset, but to be fair, he did work in "word police", even if the judges had to deduct a technical point for his failure to link this to "Orwellian".  Sometimes the pond despairs at the reptiles' incompetent inability to live down to their standards of abuse ...

As for his celebration of coon, it shows that being a sociologist in England might have been inadequate preparation for the way they played (and probably still play) the game up Tamworth way, where "coon" has the same basic strength as "cunt", though it lacks the consonantal thrust ... 

Ah what fun it is to be in the company of a fuckwit one last time for the year ... (no, not a purely Tamworthian term, but one worthy of Tamworth) ...

 

It is, of course, remarkably stupid of the Caterist to celebrate a refusal to wear masks, even as New South Wales goes into a panic, and the wearing of masks would be an obvious, medically endorsed response.

But that's how you get climate science denialism, and blather about flood waters in quarries and the joy of coal over renewables, and all the other Caterist games ... a vast horde of delusions and conspiracies so grand that only a few other grandmasters can play the game with more skill ...

 

 

And so to the final Caterist gobbet for the year ...

 

Pardon the expression, and pardon the pond for perhaps having observed it already, but what a fuckwit the Caterist is. 

As Mick himself was wont to say, that's not a moron, this is a moron. Or was that a knife raised in anger? Or as a deterrent? Or something?

Did the Caterist ever actually see the movie, or its sequels, with Mick regularly showing his virility by sending hoodlums and villains packing? Silly pond, that's like asking if the Caterist has a grip on reality and flood waters ...

As for that talk of reasoned opinions on virology, gender, climate and race, shove some bleach up your nose, and go tell it to the flood waters ...

The pond has its own favourite conspiracy theory as it hangs out for its shot ... (the Morrison government having set a very SloMo pace when it comes to the shots) ...

 

 

 

 

And so to the Oreo, because the pond couldn't help but notice that the NY Times had provided the pond with the perfect introductory graphic ...

 

 

 

Only in America would an allegedly mainstream newspaper worry about addictive shit of the Oreo kind, and yet down under we must ask, why does the Oreo keep on publishing the same old wearying tripe? No new flavours, just the same tired old brand of chewing gum left on the bedpost overnight.

Is this what happens when you become a recovering, perhaps even fully reformed, feminist?

 

Ah the Xians, the long suffering Xians, who've never done harm to anyone over the centuries, and instead, in the manner of Tony Perkins, sat wrapped in a blanket explaining how they'd never even hurt a fly as the movie came to an end.

How fitting is this, how right and true and just for a reformed, recovering feminist ...

 

The march of modernity!

Well it isn't quite up there with postmodernism, but the judges awarded the recovering, reformed feminist a few marks for trying ...

As for the rest, all that blather about assorted forms of sacred, and militant atheism, the pond was reminded of that old line by Richard Dawkins: "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one good further."

Ricky Gervais re-worked that line in a debate with Catholic Colbert ...

GERVAIS: … Atheism is only rejecting the claim that there is a god. Atheism isn’t a belief system. So this is atheism in a nutshell. You say there’s a God. I say, “Can you prove that?” You say no. I say, “I don’t believe you then.” So you believe in one God, I assume?
COLBERT: Uhh…. in three persons, but go ahead.
GERVAIS: Okay. But there are about 3,000 to choose from… Basically, you deny one less God than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more. (here)

But at this time of year, the pond does spare a thought for all the religious fanatics persecuted by other religious fanatics, and minorities persecuted by religious fanatics ...

 

 

Oh there's nothing like postmodernist capitalism, is there? And so to the last Oreo gobbet for the year ...

 

Yes, they shall overcome, and smite and smote non-believers and gays and women wanting to control their bodies, and there shall be complimentary women scattered throughout the land, and there you have it, there's where recovering from feminism, and reforming into a full blown reptile twit lands you ...

And now speaking of verschworungserzahlung, as it seems we must, the pond would like to honour the Major's attempt this day, but only with a headline ...

 

 

The Major lathered up a ripper of a conspiracy theory - it seems everyone in Victoria is somehow involved in the persecution of the Pellists - but the pond had its frock fest yesterday, and is now well over the Pellists. 

If only a scintilla of reptile energy had been devoted to the victims of the Catholic church these past few decades, how much better the world might have been ...

Instead the pond turned to the lizard editorialist for its last mystery of the year, and what a deep and teasing mystery it is ...

 

 

 

 

Well yes he did, the pond can swear to that ...

 

 

 

 

 

It raised a question that has taunted and teased the pond all year.

Just what has Vlad the impaler got on the Donald? 

He's clearly got something. The reptiles always walk around it, they never ask the question, but surely it's obvious by now, even in the dying days of the presidency. Is it money, is it a sex scandal, is it possession of sensitive paperwork? Did they pull a sting and land a bloated whale?

Likely enough, the pond will never know what it is. It'll go down as a mystery, just like the JFK assassination, too deep even to turn up in a John le Carré novel, if only he'd been allowed another year to write about the Donald ...

It's a bit like asking what Vlad has on Miss Lindsey, something he might have given to the Donald, which turned Miss Lindsey from an independent child (or so he would pretend) into the most craven and sycophantic of Donald supporters ...

 

 

 

Again the pond will likely never know, and it doesn't expect the final lizard Oz editorialist gobbet to provide an answer to these deep mysteries, but it does provide a timely reminder that the Donald is the result of all that News Corp has tirelessly worked for over these past decades ...

How funny that they should suddenly turn Frankenstein's doctor and bemoan their monstrous creation ... "perplexing" indeed ...

 

 

 

You know, once upon a time, the Donald's aversion to criticising Vlad was put down to his sensitivity to the way the Russians helped him win the election; now it seems his sensitivity is due to his election loss.

That's the way it goes in this post-modern world, and should, during this year's seasonal fun, Scrabble seem a bit taxing, might the pond propose Xmas decorations as a way of producing domestic peace and joy ...

 

And with that joyous thought, merry Xmas and happy new year to all, oh and fuck the reptiles too, just for the fun of it, because the pond is out of here, because surely next year can't get any worse, though the pond suspects it might manage it easily, if we keep on with the reptiles' and their rabid premodernist, coal-loving ways ...

In which the pond wheels out a couple of reptile heavyweights for a showdown with the Monday reptile mob ...

 

This should put accusations of the pond cheating, putting a thumb on the scale, to one side, trying to give the Monday reptile mob an easy inside run to becoming the last pond posting for the year.

The pond has lined up for its Sunday meditation two of the finest reptile professionals.

What a top notch challenge, how intimidating.

Admittedly these experienced reptiles are showing the signs of wear and tear. They tend to repeat themselves endlessly, over and over, incessantly, in a non-stop way, regurgitating again and again, but that's entirely the point and befits the season ... because who hasn't swallowed a bit of Xmas pud and regretted it immediately, or was it the custard whipped up by the pond's long lost favourite aunt?

Never mind, let the pond begin with Killer Creighton, just to show it's serious. 

Anything that Stevo dished up yesterday in the way of staying safe surely couldn't match the Killer in a killing mood ...

 

 

 

 

Now the pond will play fair, and remind punters of why the Killer gets so agitated below ...

 

You see not so long ago, the Killer came out with this famously fatuous piece. No need to read all of it, just the opener is needed as a reminder ...

 

 

Poor Killer ... no wonder he's still brooding, so let the brooding begin ...

 

Good old Killer, never give in, never surrender, a genuine Buzz Lightyear in his own way ... a little thick, so predictable in his emissions that the pond finally at last understood why people argue for social distancing, and perhaps also mask wearing ...

 

 

But enough of seasonal jokes, at least for the moment, because the reptiles have provided Killer with his own illustration as a way of starting off the next gobbet ... and what do you know, they've rubbed his reindeer nose in a picture of jolly Swedes ...

 

 

 

 

Ah your good old cost benefit analysis regarding death. For some reason, the pond was reminded of Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death ...

Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.

We have odd ways of coping with death, given its finality, and no voice, or even an echo, returning from beyond, but we do have a clue as to why Killer was so indignant.

That damned useless king, coming out and spoiling Killer's perfect thesis ... bloody Swedish royalty, shouldn't they be off hanging around with Epstein in the English way?

 

 

What's worse, the reptiles snuck in a video, which the pond appends only for academic interest, because, being a screen cap, it won't play ... but the message is clear enough ...

 

And so poor Killer is left to brood, about deaths and lefties and the hapless private sector, and poor old News Corp, hanging on for hand outs from the tech heavies. 

Oh ye long absent lord, oh ye of little faith in News Corp, hear now the plaintive wail of your humble emissary of death ...

 

Et tu Sweden? Historians will struggle to see a public policy disaster in Sweden?

Never mind, Killer Creighton will struggle to understand that people prefer to live a quiet life than experience an agonising death. Memento mori and all that, but better later than now. Still, if the Killer wants to boost the funeral industry, let him feel free to add to the death toll in the Roman way ...

Let him die, and the sooner the better, so that in a stoic way, he might show us that the spirit of Marcus Aurelius is not dead ...

“All that comes to pass”, he tells himself, even illness and death, should be as “familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn”. Marcus Aurelius, through decades of training in Stoicism, in other words, had taught himself to face death with the steady calm of someone who has done so countless times already in the past.  (Graudian here)

Yes, and the stock market will boom and Sweden will be great in the spring, and Killer will enter the terribly Swedish house of the long absent lord justified (but did She have to use so much white on all the walls, and as for the Ikea trimmings, and those dreadful bright colourful Scandinavian curtains, so 1960s ...)

And now to prove that the pond wasn't kidding and that the Monday reptile mob would find this meditative Sunday line up a major challenge, please come on down prattling Polonius ...

 

 

 

 

The pond can already hear the sighing, the moaning, the gnashing of teeth, the wailing and the sobbing.

 

Not the bloody Pellists and the bloody ABC and the bloody tykes again. How can Polonius keep on churning out the same tired old crap? Will there be a line in it about the way the ABC doesn't have a single decent conservative in its ranks?

 

Yes, all that, but the pond has traditionally been a haven for the Pellists, ever since the dear lad scribbled for the Sunday Terror little homilies on the best ways to provide excuses for the molesting of children. Ignore the children, let them suffer as they come unto him, and berate others for their many mortifying sins! It's the Catholic way, what a winner guilt has been over the centuries, while the gropings can carry on behind the arras ...

 

 

Dearie me, Polonius is a touchy, needy thing, and it seems that almost anything will set him off these days.

A sensible person, if so frail and inclined to take a fence, would swear off the ABC, why boost their ratings?, but not Polonius, because he's obsessed ...

The reptiles tried to distract him with pictures of men wearing frocks, but luckily these are pictures that don't move because the pond only uses screen caps ...

 

The pond has no idea why the reptiles decided to add all that text, but those men in frocks reminded the pond, in a fit of nostalgia, of the good old days when it always took every chance to celebrate trannies and the joys of wearing decent, handsomely expensive frocks ...

Oh it's the Xmas season, so where's the harm?

 

 

 

By golly, the pond just loves the sight of men in frocks. Trannies rulez ... but back to Polonius for a little more indignation and outrage ... 

 

Indeed, indeed, and so to the matter of Ridsdale. It turns out that's all the fault of the Victorian police, and nothing to do with his good, endlessly supportive and caring chum, seen here ...

 

 

Of course all this is a nice distraction from the behaviour of the Catholic church, its minions and its relentless desire to ignore its victims and hang on to the moola, so on we go ...

 

 

Did not the pond deliver? Are not the Catholic church, and the Pellists entirely blameless?

Did not the pond confront the Monday reptiles with a major challenge?

In case they fail, the pond wishes a merry Xmas, or a happy Saturnalia, whatever rocks your boat, to those faithful readers who keep the pond going by providing amusing comments. 

You select band of miscreants know who you are, and the pond reminds you yet again that the pond now never reads the reptiles it presents, only the comments they evoke and inspire...

Have a good one, and if the Monday reptiles rise to the challenge, why the pond will be happy to repeat those seasonal wishes again ...

In the meantime, here's a seasonal hope for all ...

In which the pond cheats and stacks the books for the Monday reptile mob with the help of "Ned" and Stevo ...

 

 

The pond realises that there will be cries of ballot-tampering, cheating, setting up the Monday reptiles with a late-breaking chance to turn up in a final pond posting for the year ...

Why, if nattering "Ned" had been held back until Sunday, the Monday reptiles would have been blown out of the water, they wouldn't have stood a chance. A long tedious bout of hand-wringing and ash-cloth donning from nattering "Ned" would have been an invincible closer.

But be fair, the pond has to play by the rules, and there was "Ned" at the top of the digital page on a Saturday, as the reptiles set about lashing Gladys in the frenzied way they lashed comrade Dan - the pond keeds, it keeds - and so "Ned" had to lead the way ...

 

 

 Sheesh, and what a ripper of an illustration, up there with the cult master. How could the Monday mob compete with that tragic 'roo in the maw of the dragon?

And so to "Ned". Now it's true that the pond no longer actually bothers to read "Ned, or care much what he has to say, it's enough to serve up the portentous, pompous, predictable bloviator, and feel that duty has been done ...

The reptiles promised this was just an 11 minute read, but in the pond's experience, one minute of "Ned" time can be an eternity to another ...

 

 

The chaotic mismanagement of the Donald?

Oh come on, "Ned", be fair. The Donald was only following Fox News orders, or are you suggesting that chairman Rupert has had no finger in that pie? And that right now in the lizard Oz, there are loons in the lizard Oz still wanting to build a herd mentality and open up and let her rip?

In fact "Ned" there's one such loon to follow, doing a Killer Creighton, but first we must wade through the morass of your verbiage, the swamp of your tedious prose ...

 

 

Well it wouldn't be a "Ned" piece without him copying copious notes as a form of padding, would it? And has there ever been a "Ned" piece where at some point poor "Ned", the country or the world is "moving towards an existential dilemma ..."

Such is life, the original "Ned" is supposed to have said,  and Joseph Furphy took him at his word and wrote a book of that title...

The successful pioneer is the man who never spared others; the forgotten pioneer is the man who never speared himself, but, being a fool built houses for wise men to live in, and omitted to gather moss. The former is the early bird; the latter is the early worm.

The two greatest supra-physical pleasures of life are antithetical in operation. One is to have something to do, and know that you are doing it deftly and honestly. The other is to have nothing to do, and to know that you are carrying out your blank programme like a good and faithful menial.

By golly, it's a long time since the pond thought of Furphy, but "Ned" will do that to you, and who knew there'd be an actual site dedicated to Furphy?

But of course the pond only offered that as a small distraction from the main game. Back to that existential dilemma man...

 

Sheesh, more copious copying of the words of others, but using filler does pass for insight. There's nothing like padding to cope with existential dilemmas. The pond demands a return to the virtues of Victorian England ... though the pond should confess in passing that it derived much pleasure from reading Cintra Wilson's The Pleasure Crafts in the NYRB, "a new history of pornography before it became commercial".

Sorry, inside the paywall, so not much of a distraction for many, and they must instead return to brooding on that existential dilemma, which seems to encompass just about everything, in "Ned's" relentlessly joyless way ...

 

Fuck the pond dead, yet more borrowings by "Ned", and yet another damned evocation of the Donald, and still no mention of Fox and Friends?

It's around this point that the pond usually gives up on distractions and plows straight ahead, just to get to the finish line ... and fortunately the last few gobbets are shorter ...

 

Still more blather about Trump, and no credit to News Corp or Fox News for their masterful role? Come to think of it, no real mention of climate science either, but that's the way that chairman Rupert likes the game played ...

 

A cooling of the temperature all round versus a stack of troubling omens?

Well "Ned" has played his part, because the pond feels like it has supped on a double serve of soma, and yet there is another pleasure to come.

Oh there'll be shrieks and howls, because with this pairing run on a Sunday, the Monday mob wouldn't have stood a chance, and the pond could have ended it all, but no, the proper order of things had to be respected, ancient reptile warriors held in reserve, and this newbie given a good run ...

 

 

Oh fuck it, as soon as some new chum Pom starts talking about the dinkum larrikin spirit, the pond feels the royal order of the prawn coming on ...

 

 

Here we go, the pond thought, the cheap tease of a 9 minute read, when in reality it would be another bout of stupidity served up by someone who thought attending the Bourbon & Beefsteak to inhale drugs besides crims and boofhead thugby leaguers was a way out of having to deal with "Ned's" many existential dilemmas.

Out of getting as pissed as a newt comes much wisdom, or at least a technicolor yawn and Stevo's insights ...

 

 

Ah, fuck the old Killer Creighton routine the pond warned "Ned" about ... 

Of course, of course, we would have done so much better following the Killer Creighton and Donald model and developed a herd mentality ...

Never mind, on we go ... trudging down this all too familiar reptile path, working on that herd mentality ...

 

Oh fuck,  not another mad uncle, or grandpa or old fart down from the attic to do a rant. Of course the classic response would be to suggest a return to the old country because things are going so spiffingly well there ...

 

As usual, there's more Graudian cartoons here, and the pond concedes that now is the right time to head off there, because things aren't going to get any better here ...

 

Yes, Perth grandma, have a hit of Covid, and have a pleasant death, and just remember, it was the reptiles that helped you on your way, all in the interests of you enjoying time with your family, short though it was, and with an agonising end to follow, but at least you died with a smile on your face at the thought of the reptiles so pleased at the sight of a booming stock market ...

Indeed, indeed, compare our empty skies to booming deaths, because you know, Europe, United States, way to go team ...

 

Never mind, it turns out the pitiful Pom can't go home at the moment to the joys of Boris ...

 

In the meantime, please stay safe?!

That's the larrikin spirit? 

Well in the larrikin spirit, why don't you just head off to the bush and fuck yourself silly and save us the benefit of your masturbatory rants?

So yes, the pond has stacked the books. 

The Monday mob wouldn't have stood a chance against the combined onslaught of "Ned" and Stevo, and to cheat even more, here's the infallible Pope the pond could have saved for tomorrow ...