Forget your average common or garden English attention-seeking narcissist blow-in and blow-out, for genuine, awe-inspiring loonery, it's impossible to go past the work of the parrot and the furniture salesman member of the Kelly gang ...
And yet here's the irony. All that's left of them to be seen is in the Media Watch report here, and Sky News itself did the cancel culture thing ...
Removed from all platforms! Splendid stuff, and humbling in a way, and the Bolter's rage and support all for nothing, and really, this should be a lesson for all the reptiles at the lizard Oz.
If they want to be taken seriously by loons, they must try harder, they must get taken down for some outrageous misinterpretation of reality if they are to reach the gold standard set by the parrot and the furniture salesman member of the Kelly gang.
As for the rest, the bumbling aspirers to distilled essence of loon, it was a quiet day ... and so the pond turned first to Dame Groan, a favourite among some herpetological experts, though the pond doesn't have the first clue why ...
The pond feared this was going to be a deadly dull bit of Groaning, so the pond thought it might start by setting an example.
Few will know that the pond refuses to accept that it lives in the state of NSW under the iron rule of fool's gold standard Gladys.
The pond is a sovereign citizen and a member of the state of New England, and comes from the capital, Tamworth. Sure there was idle talk of Newcastle or Armidale being the capital; yes, the name is now a tad quaint and perhaps it should be the state of New Dinkum Coal Lovers, but still, it's the loon thinking that counts ...
Now see if Dame Groan can possibly match that ...
You see, Groaners? Incredibly dull and tedious and it's a long way to go to get to the punchline ...
And there at last you have it. Apparently Scotty from marketing's sublime incompetence has nothing to do with the diminishing authority of the federal government and the office of the prime minister.
Only in Dame Groan's convoluted world ...
Outwitted? But first you have to have enough wit for the notion to apply.
When your idea of life involves speaking in tongues and the laying on of hands to heal and the impending arrival of the rapture, you've outwitted yourself before the states have even begun to do their thing ... and as a sovereign citizen of the state of New England, the pond speaks with some authority ...
The pond could probably have saved everyone this Groaning by simply referencing the infallible Pope of the day ...
And so to a sampling of the other reptile pleasures laid out this day ...
Is the pond imagining it, or is this serve of reptile gruel getting thinner by the day?
There was nothing for it but to sample the craven Craven, in the hope that he might match the parrot and the lesser Kelly ...
Essential things? The pond had already run the Wilcox cartoon defining the issue, but there seems to be no harm in running it again, in case somebody else wants to kill their mother ...
The craven Craven is much reduced since being forced to move on from academic life, but the pond knows how to spot if there's life in the old dog yet ...
If he were to speak of the ABC and other health terrorists in the first line of his first gobbet, the pond would take it as a sign that he aspired to the status and dignity and accuracy of the parrot ...
Here the pond must humbly propose a correction to the craven one's rhetoric.
Yes, speaking of health terrorists was a good start, but the pond must mark the report card 'could do better, needs more application' ...
Surely in that gobbet the craven one should have railed at "the new Covid aristocracy of cardigan wearers, woke pinko prevert leftie touchy feely leftie journalists, and health commentariat of the Pravda kind yearning for yet more control over a dim population", unlike the craven Craven, who entirely accepts the premise of transubstantiation and the benefits of drinking human blood and eating human flesh on a Sunday ...
Just trying to be helpful in the usual pond way, because it's hard for the reptiles. There they were railing away at comrade Dan, which was good fun and jolly good sport, and routinely celebrating gold standard Gladys, and then it got snatched away from them, and all that's left is the bitter aftertaste and the need to keep on railing ... with subtle distinctions about the levels of Stalinism that is being scribbled about.
So it goes, and so the craven Craven must do what he can for fool's gold, iron pyrites Gladys, lesser Stalinist that she is ...
Rhetoric? Moi? Indignant? Oui! Certainement, but parrot quality? Sorry, pauvre, mauvais, faible, médiocre, piètre, insuffisant, but luckily there's only a short gobbet go to ...
A coercive mess? Well that's one one to define death and Doors style killing your father and ...
... though it reeks of a hastily assembled value judgement, where shuffling off to Jesus might be deemed a viable solution, but the pond will pass and look elsewhere for a reptile bonus ... and what do you know, lurking at the top of the reptile page, how could the pond have missed the Killer, showing the craven Craven how to do it ...
Ignore that little Gladys heresy on the left. Look, there's Killer invoking the CCP, as only the Killer can, and so much better than mere puerile talk of the levels of Stalinism ...
What the fuck? Another day, another wretched reptile illustration, as if a snap of a Wuhan classroom in May last year has anything to do with the price of eggs, or even the blathering of the Killer ...
The pond at first thought it might have made a mistake, for a moment faltered in its belief in the Killer, what with the reptiles elsewhere in a state of agitation about vulgar youff ...
Shocking stuff, fancy the voters turning on gold standard Gladys, the reptiles pride and joy, and how terrible that that sort of heresy about kids needing to get the jab should make its way into the lizard Oz ... so the pond quickly turned back to Killer, in the hope that his Freudian fear of masks would surface yet again ...
Apart from his deep fear of masks, one of the Killer's pet themes has been the way lockdowns have been killers ... so the pond woke up with a start this morning listening to the news, and hearing something along these lines ...
Suicide figures stable? Well according to the woke ABC here, and would it be fair to ask Killer to show how it's done when he's got more ranting about the Commie swine to get off his chest ...
Did anyone notice it? It was in the very first line, that talk of "mandatory masks", and the pond was terrified for a moment that readers worried by the deep psychological disturbance produced by mask wearing might have missed it ... even though back in the pond's Tamworth days, draping a handkerchief around the face was deemed essential for anyone aspiring to be a cowboy ...
Still, the Killer was in top form, and showing the craven Craven some genuine reptile style, by ending that gobbet with talk of public health control freaks ... though the pond thinks the Killer might have missed a chance by not talking of the fabulous furry freaks ...
Never mind, there's just a gobbet to go now before the ranting and the railing comes to a halt this reptile day ... but wait, there's yet more talk about compulsory mask wearing, because, you see there's so much suffering for the Killer ...
Here's the thing. How can the parrot and the lesser Kelly earn themselves a banishment, and the Killer just blithely carries on?
What's he got to do to get noticed? Isn't comparing the desire to stay alive to a dictator for life enough? Will he have to break Godwin's law and play the Hitler card? Must he talk, MTG style, of the brownshirts dispensing vaccines to get people to pay attention?
The pond can only hope, and wish him success on the killing fields, and end with the immortal Rowe celebrating a moment which seems to have escaped the reptiles, with more celebratory Rowe here ...
And all they wanted to do was keep dinkum pure clean virginal NSW coal flowing ...
By the way, what a ripper masthead Rowe currently has, one the Killer would probably die for ...
It reminds the pond of one of its favourite AGNSW paintings, not that you can head off there for the moment ...
Ah, what a total joy Killer C is; such stunning insight: "Stanford University professor of medicine Jay Bhattacharya says there has long been a tension in public health between advising people how to be healthy and forcing them to be."
ReplyDeleteWell now, all I can say is that if other people's desire to be unhealthy - as convincingly defended by the Killer - costs me one cent in increased taxes to pay for Medicare, then stuff them. Just a weensy little thought that always seems to be beyond Killer's grasp: the cost some people's"freedumb" imposes on others. Like, for instance, the couple of NSW removalists who took Covid home to infect and kill their mum. Wau, that's a Killer C dream of "freedumb" - no compulsion at all to be "healthy" there.
Then he gives us this: "Twenty years after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York [back in 2001 - so long ago there's be nobody left alive who remembers that, is there ?] airline passengers are still removing their shoes and having toothpaste confiscated, regardless of the risk terrorism now presents."
Well of course, terrorism has been eradicated now and for all time. Absolutely no terrorists alive anywhere on planet Earth, is there. After all, the bombing that killed 22 and injured 59 at the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena happened way back in 2017 - several lifetimes ago, ennit ?
No matter what is said or isn't, Killer C will never understand the concept that a little bit of prevention is far better than a lot of failure to cure.
I get the impression, after reading a lot of Killer, that there are some seriously weird people at Stanford. To put it another way, quoting someone from Stanford makes me less likely to think you have got it right.
DeleteYou make a very good point about the costs of a libertarian approach to health, or just about anything really. They are quite happy to make use of vaccines, health facilities and all sorts of public services when it suits them but refuse to contribute when they cannot see an immediate personal benefit. In the old days this would be called 'bludging' but I guess the more genteel 'free riding' would be used nowadays.
DeletePretty clear the 'let it rip' countries have taken the biggest economic hits the same as it is clear that inaction on carbon abatement will cost trillions (not worrying about misery because it's only the economy that matters).
Killer's task isn't an easy one because the real world is full of examples of the policies he is proposing. Since they have failed miserably he has to dream up alternate explanations for the glaringly obvious track from cause to effect. He also has to explain how manifestly successful policies are somehow failures, usually by raising hypotheticals like suicides or the ever useful freedumb.
If you pick this offering apart you find no actual suggestion as to how to respond to a changed and dangerous world other than to continue as if nothing has happened and hope it fixes itself.
GB, Joe and Befudddled - I understand that our Killer is inclined to fall back to the libertarian line that issues are best resolved in the civil courts, and that the decisions in those courts constitute the minutiae of the common law. All this really confirms is that Killer and his ilk (to be found at Catallaxy, Quad Rant, and similar) have little or no personal experience of testing a tort. My own experience has been that such cases can take ten years or more, seldom satisfy the initiators, and rarely set out a significant marker in the evolution of our legal system. But it always looks good in theory, or in very select quotes from Burke or Blackstone.
DeleteAh well, Chad, the problem with human society is an increasing difficulty in operating it and functioning within it, especially given that the vast majority of Homo Saps Saps are not particularly capable nor competent. Personally, I'm inclined to the view that a 'village moot' may still be the best way of terminating cases of "a wrongful act or an infringement of a right (other than under contract) leading to civil legal liability". Not resolving them, mind, just terminating them.
DeleteBut are libertarians really in favour of 'tort law and civil courts' ? I thought they'd prefer to go for pistols at dawn, actually.
The pond is always impressed when readers try to make coherent sense of the Killer's ramblings.
DeleteThe pond's instinct is to head to a shrink's couch, because there has to be something deeply Freudian at work here, and not just that fear of masks, though that has to be a good starting point.
GB - I think I have mentioned this before - but village meetings in the New Guinea highlands, which I observed in the 1970s, dealt with a wide range of matters. As far as I could see, any adult could speak, and, while that was usually in the local language, not Pidgin (choose your spelling) there was no doubt that some ringing oratory was being delivered. And, as far as I could see (always add that qualification) - matters were resolved. The meeting would go on until the matter was resolved, where possible. This was an arrangement that had helped those people maintain their gardens-based, sustainable culture, for tens of thousands of years.
DeleteOf course, it was doomed in our time, because there were indications of gold in them thar mountains, so the area had to be 'civilized' by whitefellas, because - well, those simple-minded heathen were not doing anything with the gold; weren't even digging it out of the ground.
Well we had 'village moots' back in our own anglo history too, and probably something that at least contributed to the development of precedent-based common law. Indeed, I rather think that group talkies to resolve matters have been common around the world at various times - the local aboriginals had them too, I seem to recall.
DeleteIt's more or less the only thing to do if you don't want to be killing each other all the time and having to consequently fork out heaps of weregild.
Some fine advice from John Quiggin:
ReplyDelete"We all get things wrong from time to time, particularly in relation to fast moving events like the pandemic. So, how can you respond when this happens. Here’s a list of possibilities, generally from best to worst in terms of intellectual responsibility and from least to most common in terms of frequency
Admit error, look at why you were wrong, try and do better next time (let’s get real, we are talking about human beings here. this almost never happens
Go quiet for a while, and don’t return to the topic until you have done some rethinking
Argue that you were right, but that circumstances have changed
Claim that, despite appearances, you’ll be proved right in the end
Go quiet and scrub as much of your past track record as you can
Claim you always held the opposite position to the one you previously supported
Keep fighting, focusing on how being right has made your opponents even more discreditable
Double down and claim a conspiracy against you"
https://johnquiggin.com/2021/07/18/what-to-do-when-youre-wrong/
I think being a reptile begins at the fourth item.
Great advice and a fine link, but the pond would settle for the last three as the best help to hand for the lizards of Oz ...
DeleteGB, Befuddled,Chadwick and Joe,
ReplyDeleteYou guys hit it out of the park today. There will be something extra in your pay packets
this week. And a tip of the hat to DP for sharing that great "If" parody yesterday.
Cheers JM, glad you enjoyed it - we all try to live up to DP's example.
Delete