In which the pond joins nattering "Ned" in the age of leaden podcasts, Dame Slap in the return of the lying helmsman, and the reptiles in a lot of hootin' and hollerin' ...

 

 

 

 

What a mess. How tedious it all is. And just look at that bloody meaningless reptile illustration, with not even the sign of a desktop, just a blank screen, the sort of mock-up you might find in a furniture store. No wonder there's no need for a credit...

On the other hand, to be fair, a blank void is a pretty fair representation of nattering "Ned" blathering on about golden promises and digital ages and all that jazz ...

 

 

Oh fucketty fuck. The pond was just about to get going on how it did remember its grandparents. 

One lot were in the bush, and there was no bathroom, just a roaring open fire kept running 24/7, with a system of pulleys and levers for cooking the eggs and bacon and making a cup of tea so strong it required a half a cup of sugar, and with the pond's mother straying too close one day to the flames, and her dress catching fire, only to be saved by her quick-thinking mother and a blanket. 

That's where the pond learned to milk the cows and separate the milk and churn the butter and feed the chooks, and sit on a butter box, and listen to a valve radio the size of the Titanic ... but it did have short wave, in the old valve way, and so you could listen to the world on a good night if grandpa was out of the room, which had a picture of the sacred heart of Jesus looming over the good table for fancy receptions (well you wouldn't want to invite anyone into the rooms where the cracks in the woodwork were sealed with newspaper).

Then there was the city mob, with an electric button hot water system and an actual bath, and a drunken grandfather roaming the halls terrified by pink elephants and reliving the Somme as he locked us out of the house.

What's that? Who cares? There's something even more useless and tedious in the offing than the pond wandering down memory lane?

 

 

Oh "Ned" was right. To think that the alleged golden age of technology is simply there to deliver "Ned" by way of a podcast? It truly is the age of lead ...

As for being a guru, Claire, the pond is pleased you get paid for writing guff in a gushing way, but these days, "Ned" spends his time doddering about, recycling the thoughts of others, and when the pond had so rudely interrupted, he was just starting on ripping off a disappointed Gordon, as if the pond should somehow care about "Ned's" industrial-scale recycling program ...

 

 

Why do loons find favour with other loons by seeking out assorted golden ages?

The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the Works and Days of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the Golden Race of humanity (Greek: χρύσεον γένος chrýseon génos) lived. After the end of the first age was the Silver, then the Bronze, after this the Heroic age, with the fifth and current age being Iron.
By extension, "Golden Age" denotes a period of primordial peace, harmony, stability, and prosperity. During this age, peace and harmony prevailed in that people did not have to work to feed themselves for the earth provided food in abundance. They lived to a very old age with a youthful appearance, eventually dying peacefully, with spirits living on as "guardians". Plato in Cratylus (397 e) recounts the golden race of humans who came first. He clarifies that Hesiod did not mean literally made of gold, but good and noble.
In classical Greek mythology, the Golden Age was presided over by the leading Titan Cronus. In some versions of the myth Astraea also ruled. She lived with men until the end of the Silver Age. But in the Bronze Age, when men became violent and greedy, she fled to the stars, where she appears as the constellation Virgo, holding the scales of Justice, or Libra.
European pastoral literary tradition often depicted nymphs and shepherds as living a life of rustic innocence and peace, set in Arcadia, a region of Greece that was the abode and center of worship of their tutelary deity, goat-footed Pan, who dwelt among them. (wiki here for the footnotes and a lot more).

Well, the pond isn't going to be sucked into an argument about which era is better, though there's a fair argument that the current age of the Murdochian reptiles, and "Ned" recycling the thoughts of others is an age of useless silicon, wasted chips ... even if no knewz is good knewz ...

Oh the pond just had to slip that one back in again, it's harmless fun, and now they're putting "Ned" out in a podcast, just to get hip and get with the digital age, and ramble on about the good old days, while recycling at great length the thoughts of another nostalgic scribbler, and we're not done with the nonsense yet ...

 

 

Glacial speed? Say what, there were glaciers in those days? Did someone mention climate science? And so to end with a final surge of nonsense, and another plug for "Ned" as a pod lurking in the basement like a return to the 1950s in the invasion of the body snatchers, stealing the thoughts of others ...

 

 

That's an American analysis? "Ned" might yet offer up his own brand of fatuous nonsense, dinkum down guff about higher productivity and less inequality, and never mind the Chairman?

We can agree on one thing. The sublime banality and bathtub ring mark level of "Ned's" "analysis" ...if his recycling the thoughts of others might be called that. A second hand, slightly soiled and grubby guru, stored in the reptile attic, and let out so he might bore the readership into thinking there'll be a brighter future somehow, someday, somewhere ... somewhere, a place for reptile readers ...

Sorry, the pond almost burst into song ... but when has there not been a great uncertainty about the future? How was it in 1914, or in 1939, or at the start of the great depression? Or any of the Napoleonic wars if you happened to be in their way? Or perhaps the French revolution? Or perhaps during the great plague, or at any point in the hundred years war? Or if you want a Chinese moment, what about when any of the emperors got grumpy and ordered a head-lopping?

What you see is a complete lack of imagination regarding past lives and past times, and a certainty that "Ned" is not the sort of person you'd ask to pen a sci fi story about the way the future might unfold ...

Sorry, the pond had to have a restorative infallible Pope before proceeding, just to remind the pond where we are actually at ... and why "Ned" and the reptiles would prefer not to notice ...

 

 

 

 

And so to Dame Slap, with a note that some days Dame Slap goes out of her way to celebrate the despicable and the loathsome, perhaps because in her own way Dame Slap is infatuated with the despicable and the loathsome, and even be that way herself ...

It explains why she donned the MAGA cap and headed out into the night streets of New York to celebrate, and it explains her latest effort ...

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, the lying helmsman? What monstrous Dame Slap stupidity is this? And even worse is the notion that the lying helm has some connection to the centre, and might be construed as centre-right, and aims to fill a vacuum, as if a vacuum can in fact fill a vacuum, as opposed to generating an even bigger void ...

But that's how you get to be mindlessly moronic and don a MAGA hat and head out into the night streets, trying to look like you're in a Hopper painting of the alienated and the unhappy ...

 

Dame Slap pumping up the far right? He couldn't even win a defamation battle in the High Court, he's a useless loon and a loser and a dropkick, and yet suddenly he's the one Dame Slap turns to in her hour of need?

 

Look, the pond gets it, Dame Slap (and so the IPA and Gina and her mob) are deeply unhappy with SloMo, a man who got sacked from his marketing job, and then showed the petulant Peta principle in action by getting promoted to a job where he was even more deeply out of his doggie-loving depth.

But seriously, the lying helmsman? Seriously, "there is some serious financial backing from Australians who are distraught over what happened to a once great country."

Seriously, what does that mean? The IPA and Gina are going full lying helmsman? A man deeply in the grip of irrelevance, an irrelevance only matched by terminal stupidity, is suddenly being brought back into the fold by the IPA chairman?

 

John Ruddick? That's the best they've got, along with the lying helmsman? He can cause a stir? Where's the joy in that. He already keeps trying to be a stirrer, and routinely turns out to be a dismal loon. 

If the pond might be so bold, and a little vulgar, but only the vulgarity induced by an anti-masker loon ...

 

Yes, a dope thinking he's in a position to berate dopes.

On the other hand, perhaps Dame Slap is only trying to help. This is, after all, loon pond, and the pond needs a regular supply of loons and their loonery ...

And so to end on a light note, after the turgid "Ned" and the MAGA cap madness of Dame Slap, how about a reptile tag team fight?

Yes, such is the madness of the times, such is the mood of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" that the reptiles are feuding and fussing and fighting with each other ...

“This was one day the pond had no reason to be morbid, but she was more morbid than ever.”

 

Look ma, is that how reptiles make babies?

No dear, that's the reptiles bunging on a do ... now please, be quiet, just eat your popcorn and watch the reptiles fight ...

 

Gee, the Bolter's off defending the Pellists again, ma ... just the sort of thing you'd expect from a man who purports a sort of rationalist agnosticism ... because, you know, the Pellists had absolutely nothing to do with the moral depravity of the Catholic church over recent decades, even when in charge of the whole pathetic show ... distilled essence of child-molesting innocence, and off to court with one of the biggest molesters of all, as a character reference and because you can't let a child-molesting brother down ... at least not if it's a Catholic brother ...

 

 

But why drag in the Pellists, why are those reptiles hugging each other in a deathly embrace ma? Hush child, just enjoy the show ... would you like a choc top as well?

 

 

The pond only left in that video distraction as a screen cap because of that line.

One thing you won't get from the parrot is truth. You will get products shamelessly promoted without disclosing the arrangement because the parrot loves cash for comment and cash in the shameless paw ...

 

 

And so to a final bout of reptiles feuding and fussing and fighting ...

Look at us, look at what they make you give, said the professor, but perhaps more to the point is that line in The Wire ... 

“When does this shit change?” Bunny asks Parenti. Carcetti still has his own school-related problems, since he’s going to have to “eat shit” since the governor is still insisting on making him beg. Later, Norman meets Royce’s former chief of staff Coleman Parker (Cleo Reginald Pizana) for a drink and they watch a news report of Carcetti’s cowardice. They always disappoint you in the end, Parker tells Norman. (borrowed Ned-style from here).

The reptiles always disappoint, but the immortal Rowe rarely so, which is why the pond routinely refers readers to a supply of reliable Rowe here, and finds a Rowe cleanses the palate after over-indulging in reptile stew, or too much popcorn (waiter, I said icing sugar, not slabs of butter and salt) ...