In which the pond celebrates "Ned's" service to the pharmaceutical industry, and walks a familiar planet fucking path with Dame Slap ...

 

 

 

It's getting so weird that everyone is now making nattering "Ned" jokes. This one came courtesy of Charlie Lewis at Crikey and irritated the pond immensely. 

"Ned" is the pond's turf, "Ned" is the pond's bread and butter, and besides, the pond didn't get the joke. 

The share price for a prescription sleeping pill is falling? The stock should have been soaring, and for good reason, as "Ned" is about to demonstrate ... because apparently there are people out there in reptile la la land, who get wildly excited by "Ned" and need something to calm them down and make them nod off and achieve the zen-like soma-laden state most come naturally to after a dollop of "Ned" ...

 

For some reason whenever "Ned" turns up, the pond is reminded of that wag who dubbed Scott Hicks' truly boring Snow Falling on Cedars as Head Falling on Shoulders ...

The pond can't honour the name of the wag - indeed a google search produced zip - but the pond can report that its head did indeed fall on its shoulder at the sight of that snap the reptiles used to illustrate "Ned's" latest outing, and the head drooped even more at the thought that the topic of the day was to be climate science ...

 

 

Uh huh. So the choices aren't between accepting the extremely serious implications of climate science, or preferring to fuck the planet, it's to blather on about economic injustice?

And what about that standard reference to "climate believers"? Is that just "Ned" doing his usual whispering to the climate science deniers in the lizard Oz readership?

Must it always come down to "belief"? Possibly, when you're a doddering old fart reading your column into the microphone ... but the pond prefers the notion of accepting the science, rather than treating science as some half-baked quasi-religious venture. 

Besides, there's all sorts of weirdness in the world, including a billionaire imagining that getting people to piss into bottles to fund a space junket is part of the solution ... rather than being the problem ...

 

 

Oh hang on, perhaps a bit of Kohler here before getting back to "Ned" ...

 

Hang on, perhaps a Wilcox cartoon too before getting back to "Ned" ...

Sorry for the interruptions, but never mind, this isn't the podcast version, and so at last it's back to "Ned" nattering away, and on we go ...

Now at this point the reptiles themselves must have nodded off, because they inserted a video clip running 3'58". The pond had already managed to avoid pictorial flatulence by not including a head shot snap of Scotty from marketing speaking during an unspecified, and totally irrelevant press conference at Kirribilli House, and another snap of SloMo meeting up with Bojo and jolly Joe way back in June.

But then the pond began to wonder. What happened in the podcast? Did "Ned" read out the content of the video clip?

"Australia’s current response to the pandemic shows “premiers are still running the show," according to The Australian’s Editor at Large Paul Kelly," read the tag, but weren't we already reading "Ned"? What on earth was the pond to do with this redundant serve of "Ned"? What does "Ned" do with it, podding away like an invading body snatcher?

The pond guesses it might never know the answer,  and so plunged on ...

 

Again, with ineffable tedium and an astonishing capacity to bore, "Ned" drags himself and Barners and no doubt beefy Angus himself to the table, to arrive at the remarkable insight that we might need a road map to achieve a target.

It might help explain why Premiers are still running the show when it comes to a Covid response ...

 

The financial wolves from the door? How about keeping a fucked planet from the door?

As usual, the pond had no need to debate the matter further, because the infallible Pope this day provided his usual irrefutable visual proof ...

 

 

 

And now at this point the pond likes to survey the reptile dropkicks who didn't make the cut ...

 

 

The reptiles padded up a "senior cricket writer", and sent him out to silly mid off to make a silly point about villages? Is this the reptiles way of making a serve of "Ned" seem more palatable? 

And wasn't Fergo a day or so old? And the pond notes that the Swiss bank account man had no time for Bob Hawke as a communicator ...

And then there's a couple of lizard Oz editorials as filler, and it seemed that the glory days of the reptile commentariat had faded, rather like the aunt's aged curtains ...

Speaking of aging aunts, that sampling left the pond with no option but to turn to Dame Slap yet again, though with an inward groan ...

 

 

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, no wonder there's no credit on that terrible illustration. And yet curiously the pond was reminded by the pose of the glory days of the reptiles, when the commentariat had the cult master at their beck and call ...

 

 

 

You see the similarities in the same sniggering, furtive poses? What does that say about the reptiles and their intuiting of the Dame Slap psyche?

The pond left in that slab of text below the illustration, because it will come in handy later on when Dame Slap explains she doesn't much mind pussy gropers or the like ... but for the moment, we must begin with some TG bashing ...

 

 

If the pond might speak for a moment on a personal note. One TG friend has lots of tales to tell about the dark days, to which the bigots of the Dame Slap kind would like to return. There were lots of shrinks, and shock treatment, and times in lock-up, and perhaps worst of all, the uncomprehending bigotry of the Catholic church.

Eventually she got past all that - yes, he became a she - and has since led a happy and productive life, give or take the usual notions of happiness and productivity.

But the horror stories were a little like some of the horror stories the pond has heard from older gays about their abuse.

They didn't suffer in the way that Alan Turing was made to suffer, but they did suffer, and they decided to take to the streets. 

Meanwhile, bigots in the tradition of Dame Slap thought nothing back in the day of chemical treatments, and alterations to the body ...

The punishment for homosexuality was chemical castration, a series of hormone injections that left Turing impotent. It also caused gynecomastia, giving him breasts. But Turing refused to let the treatment sway him from his work, keeping up his lively spirit.
“He dealt with it with as much humor and defiance as you could muster,” Hodges said. “To his close friends, it was obvious it was traumatic. But in no way did he just succumb and decline. He really fought back … by insisting on continuing work as if nothing had happened.”
He openly talked about the trial, even in the “macho environment” of the computer lab. He mocked the law’s absurdity. In defiance, he traveled abroad to Norway and the Mediterranean, where the gay rights movements were budding.
Homosexuality was considered a security risk at the time, and the conviction cost Turing his security clearance. That was a harsh blow, and Hodges believes that when he was restricted from leaving the country anymore, it ultimately led Turing to suicide... (PBS here).

Yes, back in the day, bigots of the Dame Slap kind had no problem with hormonal injections, and didn't mind peddling their own notions of what constituted right, proper and fit sexuality, and these days, they take their stand on the matter of gender dysphoria ... which helps explain why the pond's TG friend resolutely refuses to read Dame Slap ... 

Not to worry. After a few more bits of TG alarmism, it will be time to move on to a bit of black bashing and climate science denial ...

 

 

It is of course bullshit. First the guff about black people, written by a woman without the first clue or sympathy for assorted black predicaments, not least in Australia the chance of ending up in the clink, compared to the chances white folk face...

As for the guff about climate science, the pond has walked down that planet-fucking path any number of times with Dame Slap.

For starters, anyone with an awareness of the science is also uncomfortably aware of the implications for lifestyles. The pond's solution will be to cark it before the planet gets too intolerable.

Sorry young 'uns, but then the mess is your problem. But if you want an explanation of why the planet is fucked, just take a read of Dame Slap, and see how climate science denialism was a staple of Dame Slap's scribbling for decades ...

 

 

 

Ah it's a hits and memories day ...

For its daily dose of hypocrisy, the pond could have juxtaposed Hannity with Tucker on the matter of vaccines, and Chairman Rupert getting his shot way back when, or the Donald getting his fix quietly in January, or perhaps best of all Fox News devising a vaccine passport for its employees ... but the pond can only cope with so much weirdness and hypocrisy in a day, and so it's on to the joys of pussy groping and the benefits of old people dying ... which reminds the pond of waking up this morning to be startled by the BBC's world news service offering up another blast by the eyesight testing man of BoJo ...

Boris Johnson was reluctant to tighten Covid restrictions as cases rose last autumn because he thought people dying from it were "essentially all over 80", Dominic Cummings has claimed.
He also said the prime minister had messaged him to say: "I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff."
Mr Johnson had wanted to let Covid "wash through the country" rather than destroy the economy, Mr Cummings said. (BBC here).

Well the IPA chairman can match Bojo in her love of death and the killing fields, and stubborn old farts who refuse to depart the scene ...

 

 

What's the point of not fucking the planet? Who knows. What's the point of living? Who knows and who cares. Here have a dose of Covid ... and thank Dame Slap for caring, and if you die, just consider it part of a form of mass Murdochian psychosis.

But who will remain as Dame Slap's readership? Why worry, bad ideas and a fanatical fundamentalist fool's bad ideas are given unseemly, unsightly and unhealthy protection by Chairman Rupert and by the IPA, so that they might survive... and contribute to the general ruination of life and the planet ...

And so the pond turns with relief to its usual serve of the immortal Rowe as a way of wrapping up proceedings, with more serves here ...