In which the bromancer maintains the war on China, Polonius maintains his war on the ABC, and to escape all the war, the pond takes a train trip with Barners ...

 

 

Even though the pond works within the limited palette offered by the lizards of Oz, still there have to be limits within the limits. 

Spotting a welling up of maudlin, narcissistic self-pity is an immediate turn off ...

 

 

 

 

Have you not abundant shame to match your abundant self-pity sir?

Van Onselen is a long-time friend of Christian Porter’s but did not declare this in the story. (New Daily here)

 

And then for a nanosecond the pond thought that the fossilised faux leftie Murdoch panderer had gone a tad reflexive by borrowing a pond line about the lizards of Oz ...

 

 

But it was just a tired riff on the old gag of the lizard people, and the pond quickly moved on. But move on to what?

Occasionally the pond yearns to break out, run wild and free, experience the sunburn on offer in the outside world ...

 

 

You won't see that flashed on the front page of the lizard Oz ...

 Or how about chortling away with Marina Hyde as she references a classic text here ...

We know he likes classical texts, so let’s assume he’s familiar with the 1995 cinematic epic Showgirls. Readers of this column certainly should be. Undoubtedly, the prime minister should take comfort in the scene in which understudy stripper Elizabeth Berkley pushes leading stripper Gina Gershon down the stairs, causing her to break her hip and exit the stage. Yet despite Gina being an old trouper who spent years thriving on the limelight, it all turns out to be quite a relief for her. As she remarks philosophically: “There’s always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you.”

Showgirls! The meisterwerk by the meister!

Be still beating heart, if only she'd thrown in Starship Troopers, the pond's day would have been complete ...

Of course there's a skill to watching Showgirls. Take it in small doses, ten minute bursts, and then you need only to return to the highlights, the moments of sheer mastery, a bit like selecting Hamlet's top speech for a read every so often...

All this is by way of an elaborate apology and an excuse for where the pond actually ended up ... back in the war with China, courtesy of the bromancer. 

So many other things out there in the world - the pillow guy and his turd data, Fox pumping up the volume for Killer DeSantis, Gladys hitting daily new records of incompetence, and so on and so forth, and yet here we are ...

 

 

As the news from Afghanistan gets bleaker by the moment, and those who helped are dumped like rats by western rats, and a sense of impending chaos and slaughter looms, what better distraction than a war with China, conducted with exemplary force by Australia's hard power ...

Such are the dreams of a fundamentalist Xian, famous for his service to armchair generalling ... but be warned, the reptiles rate it a nine minute read, not counting stomping out to get a cup of tea and smashing the cup in exasperation...

 

Yes, the Chinese are fucking the planet big time, but pointing the finger at them while shipping coal to them and anyone else who will buy it, not to mention an abundance of iron ore, just produces cognitive dissonance in the pond ... but the bromancer thinks that a little finger pointing and both siderism will get him off the hook ...

 

Indeed, indeed, and the pond has spoken to almost no one, and yet the United States is now so comprehensively dysfunctional, thanks to Faux Noise and its elevation of the orange one and his toxic divisiveness, that it provides acute security concerns ...

So quickly they forget, and yet how important it is to remember when the bromancer is gripping the throat and indulging in full-on hysteria ... 

 

But right now, every GOP leader and official now has an audience of only one. What's the point here? 

At one point the US fancied it would lead many nations out of the wilderness. Now it's abandoning Afghanistan to the mire while leaving its troops comfortable in cushy German postings, and other cushy postings elsewhere in the world ...

In any case, does the world really want to engage with a country promoting the likes of Ron DeSantis as a future president? Or more to the point, Faux Noise ... Daily Beast here with a link to the Tampa Bay Times ...

Does the bromancer have the first clue how the Murdochians have conspired to fuck the United States ...

Never mind, back to the war on China ...

Irreversible decline? Nothing that the dissolution of News Corp couldn't fix, but do go on ...

 

Ah yes, a chinwag, totally effective, but the pond seems to remember a promise of hard power being deployed in a headline. Are we there yet? Perhaps a little lobbying instead?

 

Yes, yes, all that, talk and levels of engagement and what not, but where's this hard power? The reptiles answered with a snap of the emperor ...

And then there was just one gobbet to go and the pond had the sneaking feeling that the bromancer's war on China hadn't yet got out of first gear ...

Eek, there it is in the last few lines. Trust in mutton Dutton, blather that hard power is indispensable, complain we don't have near enough of it, and end it there ...

But what form of hard power?  How will we take it up to the Chinese when the shooting starts? 

Will the pond's new patented line of Tamworth shanghais finally get a market in the defence forces? Should the pond offer to equip our army by belatedly replying to 1950s comic book ads?

US$3.98! There's a power of hard power there ...

Or does the bromancer have a better idea? He is, after all, a top notch armchair military expert, and a dab hand as arms acquisition officer ...

Let's see his proposals for spending, and strategic hard power that will give the Chinese a stern lesson when the shooting starts, and we line up to halt them at the Brisbane Line ...

Meanwhile, as the pond waits for an answer, it decided it would fill in time with prattling Polonius ...

 

 

 

It's only the usual Polonial rant about the ABC, and there can be only one reaction ...

 

 

 

 

 

 ... but the pond has regular Sunday duties and this is one of them ...

 

Why is it that when Polonius launches an attack on the ABC, it's always on behalf of drop kick losers of the Andrew Laming kind?

Who knows, apart from the birds of a feather syndrome ...

 

It will be noted the number of times that Polonius has prattled on about the many deficiencies of News Corp.

Indeed, his astonishing assault on the misinformation peddled by News Corp during the YouTube Sky News takedown lark is now legendary ... nay, mythological, indeed so mythical that some doubt that they ever saw it, and every so often go searching for it, and the lost ark, and the missing golden fleece, and sundry other ancient treasures ...

 

Here the pond should note that it didn't see that show, and can't comment on it. In fact, the pond rarely watches the ABC, and how much quieter and more pleasant the world would be if Polonius adopted the same strategy and ceased his incessant squawking, which has been going on for decades, a bee buzzing around in the old noggin, but with the sound cranked up to eleven.

The pond is perfectly happy to listen to ABC news radio, and let the rest go hang ... because there's more to life than what happened in the Ghost Train fire ... and if you really wanted to go after Nifty and the deep stench of corruption in NSW, a stench that has hung around since the Rum rebellion, all you'd need to do is recall Nifty's role in the 'mates' saga ...

 

 

That's behind the reptile paywall, but there's another one accessible via the SMH's limited paywall under the header Bombshell corruption claim about former premier Neville Wran ...

You'd think that'd be more Polonius's turf, but no, if defending Nifty to attack the ABC is what's needed, then Polonius is up to the task ...

 

The pond is ever so pleased Polonius has cleared Nifty. Time for him to move on to Murphy? How about assaults with baseball bats? The possibilities are endless, all that's needed is a chance to give the ABC a pounding with the same baseball bat ...

But now it's time to leave the obsessive compulsive, deeply fixated, remarkably neurotic Polonius for a moment of personal indulgence ...

 

 

Why trains?

Well it's got Barners, for starters, and so far as trains go, the pond is a bit of a mix of jolly Joe and Tim Fisher.

Trains were for a long time a symbol for the pond of getting out of Tamworth. We didn't have a car so there was no chance to dream of stealing it and hitting the road, route 66 style. Instead the pond would take a short walk down and watch the trains - one in the morning, one in the evening - that took people elsewhere ...

Much later, before the pandemic, the pond would take the XPT and toddle down to Melbourne at a snail's pace, not realising it was risking life and limb ...

 

 

It wasn't just Albury-Melbourne. Going through sections of the southern highlands was painfully slow, with many stretches reminding the pond of the days that the wags would jump off the Northern Tablelands express as it tried to tackle the steeper gradients, running alongside the train before clambering back on board, not having raised a sweat while keeping up the pace ...

Tediously slow trains have been part of the pond's heritage for yonks - a large part of the extended family worked on the railways at Werris Creek - so it's on with new dreams and fresh delusions ...

 

 

The pond should have acknowledged that, just as it is a child of Tamworth, so is Barners, and if that doesn't explain why the world is fucked, nothing will ...

 

 

Only $5.5 billion over? Why that's exceptionally modest, almost worthy of praise. When the pond last checked the humble Sydney Metro was some $4 billion plus over budget, while each day the pond walks down Parramatta road it's reminded of the billions being squandered to turn it into an urban paradise, a delirious dream of transcendental beauty ...

 

 

 

Oh what a dream, what a vision.

It would be too cruel to show a snap of the actual sordid reality, the rows of boarded up shops and slums, so it's time to get back on the train with Barners ...

 

Ah John Anderson, say no more, and at this point, the reptiles stopped the saying to show a snap of someone who would turn up later in the piece ...

 

 

The pond only stopped for that snap with the reptiles because it likes to be true to the reptile presentation, but now, having paused for that shandy at Werris Creek, it's back on the train ... (oh the catering, the catering, so long ago now) ...

 

There we go, that dirty word coal. 

Didn't the pond just feature the bromancer railing at China for its love of coal? 

And yet here we are, and here's Barners, and here's the plan to ship more and more coal to more and more places, because, what hottest month, what climate science, we have always got the Bjorn-again man to explain that a hot planet is a good, life-saving planet ... and besides, what better use of government money than to subsidise private coal companies so that their profits might truly be maximised. Can't get the planet truly fucked without a little agrarian mining socialism ...

 

 

At this point, the reptiles stopped briefly at Woop Woop to run a snap of Barners grinning like a cane toad ... when really imitating a Cheshire cat would have produced a happier result ...

 

 

But the pond must respect the reptiles' order of presentation, and besides there's only two gobbets to go ...

 

Hmm, that sounds like it has all the makings of a classic Australian clusterfuck ... but then we've been down that path before ...

 

 

Good old Tim! 

Who else could transform a motley collection of rail gauges and tedious changes at borders into "great Australian railway gauges" ... and now we want to do a set of ship to train to ship to train to ship to train to truck to ship to train to truck to ship gauges ...

Oh it's a grand world, and the pond was ever so pleased to be distracted from the news of Afghanistan, the war with China, the pandemic, and all the rest of it, but now the distraction must come to an end ...

 

Streaky bacon? How dare he scribble that way? It's coal, coal, coal, and it put the pond in the mood for Kudelka's cartoon, to be found here ...

And it was Barners' coal-shifting line that helped us get there ...