In which the pond spends sodden time with sodden reptiles, relieved only by a happy chick snap ...

 

 

Some days the reptiles are disturbingly dull and tedious, and it just so happens this Tuesday, they're positively sodden ...

Claire Lehmann is a lightweight, inclined to lines like "my sense is", when the pond's sense is that she's a hackette (she does trade as a quillette)... and Dame Groan on industrial reform? The pond could write a column for Dame Groan in its sleep, provided it blamed the unions, the cross bench and the Labor party (though the pond could also probably go one better and throw in the ABC, SBS, multiculturalism and the failure of the Crusades in the middle ages).

In the end, the pond decided to abandon this motley crew and go with Killer Creighton. Not because of the subject matter, nor what Killer had to say about it, but because of this opening image ...

Anybody who spent a little time with Media Watch will recognise that the Killer has fallen prey to Murdochian happy chick flick syndrome ...

 

Of course he heard nothing back. The reptiles were too busy going through the stock library to find the right sort of photo for Killer's piece. Smiling, nay beaming, at the thought of being at the top of a Killer piece.

Now for those who missed out and who want the actual chick flick items, the show and the full transcript can be found here. 

The only problem for the pond is that having used the Killer as a hook for vacuous snaps, the pond then had to deal with the vacuous Killer that followed ...

 

Indeed, indeed. Why would anyone keep Killer in a job when his silly musings could be replaced at a cent a word by smart Indians and east Europeans? The more that Killer wrote about the non-existent pandemic that had ruined everything, the more it sensed a paranoia in the Killer's keyboard ... because the only real reason to drop into Surry Hills is to (a) remind yourself you're part of an inner city 'leet and (b) drink the kool aid with colleagues:

Luckily Killer had just about run out of paranoid steam, and ended with a whimper rather than a bang ...

 

Yep indoody, a Polish journalist would certainly do just as nicely as a Killer scribbler.  Oh it won't happen overnight ... low-skilled journos of the Killer kind will be in the firing line first, but longer term, the pond hopes that it might get what it wishes for ... a lizard Oz entirely outsourced to productive robots ... after all, could the results be any worse?

And then on the same theme, or perhaps using the same motif, which is to say taking a reptile piece, and then diverting to a more interesting melody, the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorial.

The pond actually has very little interest in what the lizard Oz edtiorialist has to say, because it includes the usual blather about one-in-500-year and one-in-100-year events, as if the past is some sort of guide to the present or the future, when climate science now hovers in the ether ...

But it did allow the pond to throw to a Crikey story ...

 

Well the pond yesterday published BOM in 2017 and so has nothing to add to the notion of extreme weather events, including rain, but should note that Crikey also, rather cruelly, included a shot of the useless Dean, with another of his useless predictions featured ...

Thank the long absent lord the pond doesn't rely on reptile advice for betting odds, or it would have lost its stockings by now ... (and for those who can stand Dean's stupidity, it's on Sky here, but the pond warns against it).

The downside is that the pond then had to finish off the lizard Oz editorialist ...

Not a word about climate, just heavy going in the heavy weather, but then that's the reptile denialist way ... unless it's the descent into absurdity of the Dean kind ...

But at least the useless Dean did give the pond a chance to run an immortal Rowe ...

As usual more Rowe here, and so to the bonus, and sorry, the pond simply can't go the Groan ... 

The pond realises that the Dame has a big fan base, but it was simply too tedious to bare ... there being no happy sexy snaps attached, just an image of a cross bencher inclined to ruin everything ...

It was completely against the reptile spirit of smiling young things ...

 

 

Oh ye ancient long suffering cats and dogs ...

Instead the pond turned to find further evidence that the lizard Oz might easily be put together by a team of monkeys armed with keyboards, working out of Alice Springs ... if they could eventually put together a complete Shakespeare, they could easily produce what follows ...

Sure, there's rich comedy to be found in a denunciation of open letters, while ignoring the sort of nonsense being peddled by a website designed to encourage the collection of anonymous stories ... anonymous stories! As if the full to overflowing intertubes doesn't already have enough of that sort of nonsense .

But the pond's point is more to note how this regurgitation of standard reptile talking points might easily be compiled at home or in some east European town, perhaps one celebrated by the pond's favourite bald and bankrupt east European visiting YouTube video loon ... (check him out some day).

After all, it's all about collecting anecdotal evidence, and quoting from a London report ... and anyone working from home could fling this sort of stuff together in a nanosecond ...

 

 

Of course it's a tiresome reptile meme, as familiar as Polonius prattling on about the long march through the ABC and the institutions and all the rest of it, and in a way, the pond regrets offering it as a bonus, but now must complete the task ...

There she blows: "My sense is that..."

As the pond has already noted, its gut feeling is that this is a prime example of a dreadful domestic pathology, yet luckily we don't seem to heave reached the levels of pathology afflicting Murdochians abroad ... and all that said and noted, and done and dusted, Fox News still stands as a shining example to which the reptiles down under can aspire ...

Surely we can produce more foundational pathologies down under. How else are we going to get the rich irony of a scribbler blathering about a moral and political monoculture in a newspaper run by a corporation dedicated to a moral and political monoculture, with degradation on view on a daily basis, which will take years, perhaps decades to unwind?

In the meantime, there's the chance to slip in an infallible Pope as a closer ...