In which the pond gets Dame slapped yet again, and hears the soothing sounds of the Ley ...

 

 

 

 

 

What a mess. What a disaster. What a calamity. What a cataclysmic misadventure. What a catastrophic mischance. 

 

What a ... Scotty from Marketing ...

 

But luckily the reptiles served up Dame Slap in fiery form as a distraction, a relief, and the pond knew it needed, deserved, a good slapping ...

 

The pond is of course completely onside, there is absolutely no place for provincial pointscoring in a COVID crisis ...

 

The reptiles have shown the way by their complete support for comrade Dan throughout the crisis. No cheap shots from a single reptile.

 

And this very day the unfortunately named Jamie showed how to display calm objectivity when confronted by a provincial toad ...

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, irony has long been dead at the lizard Oz, and irony is the sort of thing that has never been able to pierce Dame Slap's impenetrable IPA chairman's hide ... so it's on with the irony, supping at Dame Slap's table in search of an angry IPA chairman offering uplugged outrage from her putrid trough of incessant, unremitting polarisation ... please, only trash in Murdochian rags is allowed ...

 

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, purveyor of outrage, stoker of division and polarisation?

That's the job of the Murdochian reptiles, and specialists such as Dame Slap herself. How dare that puny upstart try to get in on the gig, and start his own caper. 

Muscle out little boy ... please, stand back, let a professional get on with the job ... 

Sure there have been earlier inspirations for the sort of assaults mounted in the lizard Oz ...

Soon their play turns rough and they are actually hurting comrade Dan, hitting him too hard with their spears. Killer Creighton grabs him by the hair and brandishes his knife. ‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!’ The dog botherer too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.

But the pond has learned pretty much of everything from the reptiles in how to bring out a big cudgel and bash away ... and by golly Dame Slap still knows how to serve it up ...

 

 

And there you go, another serve of bashing comrade Dan and celebrating gold standard Gladys, just as a reminder of how it should be done ...

Irony truly is dead ...

As for the rest, the reptiles were deep into confusion and lack of confidence this day ... 

 

 

 

 

Everyone from Natasha to the lizard Oz editorialist was sounding confused, with mixed jab messages and mixed jabs shifting the goalpost metaphors ...

Don't worry about the Swiss bank account man turning up in that set. The doddery old Gra Gra is apparently unaware that only a day ago he was cheering on Barners and some political bloodletting had taken place, and now Barners is out and about, like a virus stalking the land ...

More of Barners later, but don't worry about SloMo either ... Dame Slap is ready to take him down while still talking up good old "Lockdown" Gladys ...

 

Twitter? Really? Scribbling polarising tirades that play to fear, outrage and envy is easy, and still best done in the Murdochian tabloids and the lizard Oz, where people expect that tripe, and are even, weirdly, unbelievably, willing to pay for it ...

And so to Cathy Wilcox, who assigned a set of questions for the pond to tick or cross ...

 

 

In the spirit of Dame Slap, the pond found it terribly easy to answer ... and without wanting to sound smug at getting the quiz a 100% right,  scratched a mark, a crude John Hancock if you will, in every box ...

 

 

What else? Well that mention of Barners inspired the pond to take a ley day ...

Here's hoping that Brett Lobwein got a handsome payout for having his snap turned into an environmental underwater cliché used to illustrate something or other in favour of Ley's rambling ... you know, reef, whales, whatever ...

Usually the pond would avoid pollies that lurk behind the lizard Oz paywall when they should be out and about talking to constituents rather than supporting the Chairman's business model, but for once, in the spirit of the Nationals, as evoked by the infallible Pope this day ...

 

 

... the pond is willing to make an exception.

Lay it on the pond, Ms Ley ...

 

Oh it's rich, no doubt about it, right from the get go with that line about "sometimes troubled waters" down to "poster child of a wider agenda", though the pond would have preferred, if given a choice, "sinister wider agenda involving nonsensical talk from hysterical climate alarmists, preaching a new greenie religion to the masses."

The pond hopes it got that right. After years of trying to learn reptile speak from the likes of the dog botherer and Dame Slap, the pond still flounders with some of the intricacies, the subtleties involved in learning a foreign tongue ... you know, like trying to learn French from those superior, sneering, smug ponces in Paris ...

But back to Ley, delivering a standard bout of blather, of the kind we'd expect from someone solidly behind SloMo's magickal solutions ...

 

 

Yes, let's hear how wonderful Australia is, how it's leading the world ...

Meanwhile, as Ley lies in her chosen bed, good old Barners has been out and about ... as you can discover if you Graudian here ...

 

Good old dinkum clean innocent pure virginal black rocks ... coal!!

Oh a fallow field put down to clover can be useful in the right hands, but can a ley be as useful as a coal-fired power station, with perhaps a few nukes for dessert?

How they love pure, innocent Oz coal ... what a grand role it has to play in climate and the future of the planet, which is going tremendously well at the moment ...

 46.6? In the immortal words of Dustin Hoffman's producer wagging the tail of the dog, "that's nothing."

Climate science? That's just a slogan ...

They're war slogans. We remember the slogans, we can't even remember the fucking wars. You know why? That's show business. Naked girl covered in Napalm. 'V for Victory'. Five Marines raising the flag. You remember the picture 50 years from now, you'll have forgotten the war. The Gulf War, smart bomb falling down a chimney. 2500 missions a day, 100 days. One video of one bomb. The American people bought that war. War is show business.

Now back to the suss Sussan doing her own sloganeering, explaining how everything is right with the world and the reef, and how it's completely impossible to see the reef from Paris, or perhaps even from Canberra or perhaps even from Albury ...

 

Indeed, indeed, could anyone think of better company to keep than the likes of Poland, Hungary and Turkey?

Truly the planet has been fucked, is being fucked, and will be fucked. 

But all is not lost, because the pond can end on a high note of provincial unity, thanks to the immortal Rowe, with more Rowe to hand here ... proving that there is a use for Twitter, whereas the pond is still trying to work out a use for Dame Slap and the rest of the Murdochians ...