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 ...
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 ...
Waterson: "That's how we end up with unelected health officers..."
ReplyDeleteOhh, there's that new magic word again. A reptile meme very quickly becomes a trope and any input at all of sense and sensibility lags hopelessly behind. What's that trope about the respective travel speeds of lies and truth ?
Then we get to: "...so they [the unelected ones ?] couldn't devise a way to protect the vulnerable from the coronavirus while allowing normal life to continue for those not in danger."
Do you reckon we could arrange a visit for Steve to the Grampians so he could continue his normal life by doing handstands and somersaults on the rocky outcrop ? I'd certainly like to get him there - preferably after a night on the juice. Now, just as a matter of interest:
"In 2014–15, more than 11 million Australians (50%) reported having at least one of the eight selected chronic diseases. "
https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/666de2ad-1c92-4db3-9c01-1368ba3c8c98/ah16-3-3-chronic-disease-comorbidities.pdf.aspx
"Article Summary Line: Overall, 45.4% of US adults were estimated to be at heightened risk of COVID-19 complications due to co-morbidities, increasing from 19.8% for ages 18-29 years to 80.7% for ages 80+ years, with state-to-state variation."
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20043919v1
So, we, and the Americans, already have a comprehensive list of the names, addresses and relatives of everybody who is "vulnerable", yes ?
Finally: "In the meantime, please stay safe." What, does that mean he just vaguely thinks that everybody might be vulnerable ? Because if we aren't one of the "vulnerable", then surely we're already safe.
The Nullified Ned: "The year 2020 has changed history ..." Really ? What has 2020 changed history into ? Silly me, I always thought that "history" meant "the past" and that, space-time hiccoughs notwithstanding, the past is actually quite unchangeable. But of course, one can only bow to Ned's lifetime delusions.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, my recall of Ned was as deadly dull and boring, but not as terminally illuded and deluded. So what's happened ? Is he just substituting other people's words for the realities of life ? No, that can't be it; he never apprehended the realities of life in the first place. Is it just that now Roopie has disowned Trump, Ned must add terms such as "catastrophic mismanagement" to his references to Trump and life ?
I mean, that kind of total, and unmentioned and unacknowledged, turnaround can't be easy for an old fool such as Ned. Now for instance, that Dame Slap is the visible face of the IPA, she can just totally and completely act as though Trump has never existed - for as we all know, if he never again is mentioned, then clearly he never did exist and the preceding four years in America (and elsewhere) are just a fake news con-job.
Here Ned quotes Adrian Wooldridge: "What has made the region [Asia] so successful ? Is it its Confucian tradition ? Or its experience of SARS ? Or its technological successes ? Or is it just much better at running a modern state ?"
Well, there we go: such deep and meaningful questions to pose and what deep and meaningful insights will emerge from answering them. I mean, if it's due to Kung Fu Tzu's insights, then what's he been doing for the past 1000 or so years ? And how did non-Confucian Japan get to succeed long before China ? And why would anybody pay any attention to a Bloombergian anyway ?
Dorothy wrote - "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.
ReplyDeleteOut of getting as pissed as a newt comes much wisdom, or at least a technicolor yawn..."
Gee I love that kind of talk, to quote Ensign Charles Parker. It's been a dark year and
DP's musings are one of the few things I look forward to every day. Thanks for another
year of entertaining blogs. And thanks to the commentators, they are the acme, Grue Bleen
and the rest of your Bush Rangers.
Thanks for that, JM, and thanks for adding a bit of genuine American commentary from time to time.
DeleteAnd Merry Xmas or Happy Hanukkah or Superb Saturnalia or whatever turns you on at solstice time.