Yes, the pond has reptile coping mechanisms, and isn't ashamed to confess to them. Reptile wrangling on a daily basis can be emotionally exhausting, intellectually draining, and result in negativism and pessimism.
Each week, usually on a Monday night, the pond takes a dose of John Oliver. Regrettably, in Australia, there's only one cable service, so the pond has to use other ways to access HBO, but then the rich fantasy life follows - make the Major sit down and watch John Oliver on the situation in the Palestine gulag; make the reptiles watch John Oliver sending up Andrew Giuliani as a terrifying clown in a car full of clowns; watch Oliver observing absurd homicidal US gun laws; watch John Oliver send up local news with a sexualised magnetic blanket in a way that would make Paltrow weep with envy for an opportunity missed.
Then for light relaxation, the pond takes in Mare of Easttown. It's by the numbers in terms of plotting, but Kate Winslet has a great screen presence and the other performances are solid. Sadly, the pond has to use other means to watch the show, but never mind.
Then, for something truly weird, showing just how dysfunctional the Danes are, the pond might turn to a show such as Riders of Justice.
By the time all this, and more, is done at night, the pond is ready to wake up to a dose of the lizard Oz ...
At the same time, the pond will admit it's becoming more selective in its reptile tastes.
Simplistic Simon is such a fuckwit, it's hard to waste time on such a gormless propagandist doing his bit for Joel and coal ... and as for that blather about inner-city cafés, how does a mob bunkered down in the inner suburb of Surry Hills manage such nonsense on a daily basis?
Do Greg Brown and David Tanner ever look at themselves and wonder how they became involved in a reptile assassination squad as a way of making a living? Wouldn't playing a serial killer in Mare, predictably coming out of the blue, be a more honest way to make a living.
As for that photo of Albo, do either Brown or Tanner ever have a cup of coffee? Do they only do it in Wilcannia on the way to the black stump in the quest for authenticity, or do they only do it in the privacy of their own home?
What is this crap?
The reptiles are your guide to coffee shops and dining spots and such like around Holt street?
Oh okay the pond has played that sort of cheap shot too, as recently as the weekend, with this portrait of the dog botherer ...
But the pond is just a failed blogger, just like the Donald. Aren't the reptiles supposed to be a bit more subtle and nuanced?
Never mind, it's all by way of explaining why the pond yet again ended up in company with the bromancer this day, because he turned up below that embassy "EXCLUSIVE".
As usual, the bromancer was plaintive and whining, and talking of honour, as if that had some meaning to the reptiles ...
Who on earth thinks of Australia as an honourable nation? Why just last night, the pond had to interrupt the latest Oliver-Clooney gag to head off to Media Watch to endure the latest news of the latest Star Chamber secret trial, in Collaery's secret trial, perhaps one of the most appalling abuses of the legal system ever mounted in order to save Lord Downer's shameless skin.
The pond also had to endure the appalling sight of the needling HUN on the warpath, but there was at least an Oliver moment when that Gold Coast hairdresser turned up on ... local news ... proving there's always a media loon handy when a Gold Coast loon offers the chance to score a view or a click ...
Luckily the bromancer blathering on about honour - how much honour is there in spying on a neighbour to get a good deal on oil, Lord Downer? - was running short, so there was room to feature the bromancer in a comical situation ...
An evening with the bromancer, and it looked like the rubber chicken - or was it the wide angle lens to get in all the men in shirts? - was having an effect ...
Never mind, back to the bromancer, and a quick gobbet, and that idle talk of honour can soon be forgotten ...
Yes, you can organise a spying operation on a poverty-stricken friendly neighbour in order to screw them right royally, and then organise a secret Star Chamber trial to hide the matter and yet somehow it's the Whitlam government that's the most dishonourable in history ... as if the intention in Afghanistan hasn't always been to suck up to the Yanks, and as soon as the Yanks slink off, it's time for the traditional Oz slink...
Bullshit from the reptiles doesn't amount to much, but it's something the pond has to deal with on a daily basis, so is it any wonder the pond has to look elsewhere on occasions just to survive the experience?
Look at this wretched line-up below the fold ..
Ancient Troy has the cheek to ask whether fact-based journalism still matters at the ABC?
The pond looks forward to ancient Troy's piece on the shameless crusading of the monstrous Murdoch tabloids, with the HUN and the Terror vying each day to be the worst of the worst ...
The lizard Oz editorialist rabbiting on about Labor and Fergo rabbiting on about a third wave, spreading fear and panic, when the infallible Pope noted all that needed to be said on the matter ...
Killer Creighton hates such talk and hates masks too ... and so the pond ended up once again in Killer's deadly embrace ...
The pond should note at the outset that it hasn't the slightest interest in the subject matter at hand, nor Killer's determined effort to spread fear and loathing about inflation, but the point of the pond is to fawn and to pander to the reptiles' obsessions, confused and confusing as they might be ...
In this sort of Killer outing, climate change will inevitably get a mention. Will the effects of climate change, if left unchecked, get a mention? Of course not, all there'll be is a mourning for coal, gas and nukes, because that's how Killer plays the game ... with the added bonus of world war III with China as a good way to get inflation on the move ...
What matters is fear and uncertainty, so that loons might be persuaded to join the GOP ...
Meanwhile, in the spirit of Riders of Justice and coincidences, the pond was reminded of this ancient 2017 text in The Graudian here ...
While accepting the Nobel prize for economics, Friedrich Hayek made an astonishing admission. Not only were economists unsure about their predictions, he noted, but their tendency to present their findings with the certainty of the language of science was misleading and “may have deplorable effects”.
This revelation, made about 40 years ago, is a crucial one and yet it has been largely forgotten or ignored. One of the most striking comments before the EU referendum was from Michael Gove. He claimed people in Britain had had enough of experts. This has since become something of a mantra, and polling does indeed suggest that most people place little trust in expert predictions and pronouncements.
One of the problems with economic forecasting is that a small change in a few variables can make predictions almost impossibly complex. To understand how quickly the maths can become complicated, Prof Sir Michael Berry tried to forecast the path of a snooker ball after it was hit. Guessing where the first ball would go was easy; the second impact became more complicated, but still possible. The problem was that to correctly forecast the ninth impact, you would need to take account of the gravitational pull of someone standing nearby. To predict the 56th, you would need to include the effect of every single particle in the universe..
That's worth bearing in mind when the Killer turns to mocking vulgar youff for not having a clue, the implication being that the Killer isn't clueless himself ...
That's where Killer stops? Surely he could have gone on to mention how the world's economies were being ruined by the Olympics and by more Zack Snyder movies of the Army of the Dead kind ...
Never mind, in a perverse way, our Killer proves the pond's point. The planet is fucked so many ways come Sunday already, that reading the Killer somehow provides the pond with relief ... because things are fucked, no doubt about it, but imagine having to live inside Killer's head, with all the fears and phobias running around like hares on the loose ...
But when the pond has tended to the reptiles' whining, there's also relief to hand with other whine tours of the Joel kind, thanks to the immortal Rowe, with more Rowe always here ...
Killer C's preaching about the evil dangers of inflation might be improved - and maybe he could predict the path of the 10th ball - if he was prepared to quote an 'expert' or two and not that grand goose Larry Summers. But I must admit that I could never, for the life of me, understand why central banks want an inflation target, and of at least 2 percent. If prices rise that's inflation, and then wages have to rise to compensate and then because of the increased wages bill prices have to increase and that's inflation again. All that seems to do is to increase the denomination of the fiat currency banknotes that we all use and to seriously devalue savings. So I now pay $5 for a coffee I once upon a time paid $1 for, but I have as many $5 notes as I once had $1 notes (before coins replaced them because you couldn't actually buy anything with a $1 note any more and you had to stuff your pockets with them to be able to buy anything).
ReplyDeleteOr is it that if we don't have inflation then we must have deflation ? After all thinking about wages and prices staying the same over a period of time is just delusionary, isn't it ?