As promised, a Sunday meditation dedicated to Dame Slap, the Angelic one and assorted rants about Comrade Dan ...

 

For those who came in late to the story ... the story so far ...

Yesterday the pond went full on with the climate denialist reptiles ...omitting a celebration of Kudelka, because the pond likes to allow a day to lapse after the premiere in The Saturday Paper ...

 

 

 

Window satisfied, the pond can declare a temporary truce in the reptiles' climate wars, ignore Katharine Murphy's talk of a climate farce,  and move on to fully woke business and cancel culture and such like, and what better guide than Dame Slap?

 

 

Speaking personally, the pond would dearly love to cancel the reptiles' current addiction to wretched images from iStock ...

Sure, a second rate graphic echoes and evokes the second rate hackery of Dame Slap, but couldn't there be at least one positive element to aid in a Sunday meditation?

Never mind, because it gets worse ... while there was no sign of a podcast for "Ned", these days the reptiles are peddling Dame Slap's ...

 

Um, could the pond at least cancel one or two images it absorbed over the last few days while tuned to US media?

 

 

Deeply weird shit, nauseating and vomit-inducing, and another reason to think the US is deeply fucked, but enough, because we're about to hit the point where Dame Slap's cancel culture routine puts the pedal to the metal and the loon rubber hits the road ...

 

What's hilarious about this? Dame Slap rabbiting on about cancel culture when she notes her own rag was amongst the cancellers and for good reason ... as you might have read in the Graudian long ago ...

There's endless more fun to google, but this'll do pig, this'll do ... thanks to the venerable Meade ...

 

 

But some notorious publicity seekers can never let go of their desire for fifteen minutes of fame... with rogues the first to sob and weep about being cancelled, or worse being exiled to the AFR to share space with the likes of dear Prudence ...

 

Ah yes, but back in the day the lizard Oz purged the rogue ... and for good reason ...

 

Oh indeed, indeed, the suffering, and of course Dame Slap chose this loon hill to die on ...

 

Or it could just save us from narcissists craving attention ...

 

 

Nope, still doing it, feeding that monster of comment known as Dame Slap ...

And speaking of narcissists, that provides a nice segue into the next meditative piece, featuring the Angelic one.

The pond has already covered the matter of Leunig, and has agreed with correspondents that his wretched whimsy is generally a waste of Nimbin space, but this is Sunday, so where's the harm in going over it all again?

That said, the pond does wonder what the Leunig of Nation Review, The Digger and Oz would have made of the Leunig of today, bringing out conservative Canberra tykes in valiant defence of his right to be a singularly stupid man ...

 

 

 

Look, before we carry on about the loon being sacked from L'Age, could we just pause to remember that they're still flogging his calendar ...

 

Sheesh, sixteen cool smackeroos. Now that's the sort of ban the pond could take to ... what's more the lizard Oz included this note on the fuss ...

...When Diary reached Alcorn on Sunday, she maintained she still viewed Leunig as “quite brilliant” and noted that his lifestyle cartoons would “continue to be published” in its Saturday Spectrum section. “I’m not surprised Michael is upset,” she said. “He’s entitled to be upset if he wants to be.”
Alcorn confirmed she had censored a number of cartoons by Leunig this year: “I have pulled multiple cartoons by Leunig, almost entirely on the grounds that they expressed an anti-vaccination sentiment. We don’t mind cartoonists challenging the readers. We encourage diversity of thought, but I had a concern with cartoons perceived as anti-vaccination.”

Well yes, that's what we have fuckwits like Tucker Carlson and the lizard Oz reptiles and Sky after dark to do, and ensure hearty sales of hydroxy, horse paste and bleach ... and besides he still gets to do his nauseating whimsy for the Saturday page if he wants to, though if he stormed off in high dudgeon, it would be never no mind to the pond ...

Sorry, the pond jumped in prematurely, almost as if it knew what the Angelic one would scribble ...

 

Ah yes, fundamentalist Catholic and fundamentalist loon at one, and at this point the wretched cartoon turned up ... though before getting there, the pond should offer the loon's defence ...

Leunig has defended the offending cartoon: “The Tiananmen Square image is often used in cartoons around the world as a Charlie Chaplin-like metaphor for overwhelming force meeting the innocent powerless individual. In my view, it is a fair enough issue to raise in the most locked-down city in the world.”

Charlie Chaplin? You should be so lucky, you overweening git, but glad to see you're doubling down on the Godwin's Law element with that sly wink to The Great Dictator and the holocaust ... why, 'tis but a leap and a jump to compare getting a life-saving jab to a massacre ...

 

And so to the next cartoon example offered up by the Angelic one, though in a fit of whimsy the pond thought it might first offer up a koan to set the mood ...

 

Now on with the wretched dose of whimsy, which manages to ignore glasses, mugs, flutes, canteens, glaskrugs, and jues ...

 

 

Sorry, sorry, must move along, can't talk drinking vessels, why, we haven't even got to the raging about comrade Dan ...

 

Oh, one last koan before moving on to prattling Polonius ...

 

 

Yes, it was time for Leunig's cartoons in The Age to die ... it was way past time in fact, because he'd cruised along in self-congratulatory mode for decades, a kind of stuffed in amber reminder of a long lost cartoonist ...

And so to the 'raging against comrade Dan' section of the Sunday meditation, with prattling Polonius leading the way ...

 

Now the pond has no dog in this fight. If Polonius would rather share a lobster with a Mafia figure, who is the pond to try to stop him?

No, this is more by way of therapy for Polonius, a chance to let off steam, and at the end, a chance to see if Polonius can match Leunig with a rich Godwin's Law breaking reference ...

Ah the guy, and not just Guy Fawkes ... how the pond loves a good lobster ...

 

 

Sorry, as Colbert says, that link to a Facebook story requires a visit to Facebook ... the pond best get on with Polonius's prattle ...

 

Once upon a time, conservatives of the Polonius kind would have been outraged by yahoos and yobbos carrying on at the Shrine of Remembrance, but these days if it's a riot in a good cause ... and the cops are dressed in riot gear, cue righteous Polonial indignation ...

And so to that Polonial stab at a Godwin's Law nod ...

 

He's not like Mussolini or Stalin or even East Germany's Erich Honecker, but he just behaves like them, like any decent dinkum self-obsessed authoritarian?

Sorry, the pond has to rule that out of order. 

Polonius balked at the jump ... all he had to scribble was "there are more than a few similarities between East German's Erich Honecker and the Stasi and even Stalin and Mussolini and that self-obsessed authoritarian leader Daniel Andrews," and he could have been a contender ...

But at least the pond can offer an invite to a lobster dinner with a mobster as second prize ...

And so to a final comrade Dan rant ...

 

Ah yes, the usual imagery as if the coalition and its law and order rhetoric had nothing to do with this sort of parade ...

But leaving that predictable libertarian visual flourish about fascist police aside, the pond should explain that this rant is more therapy than anything else, and it's also a very lengthy piece of therapy.

Still Stevo studied Spanish and French at Oxford and so is eminently qualified to rant away on just about anything ... so it's off to the couch with him, and let the ranting begin ...

 

Fuck the pond dead, Stevo cranked into rhetorical Robocop stormtrooper overdrive from the get go. What a fever dream, what a ripper. And he studied Spanish and French at Oxford ...

Oh okay, it's not Robocop, but it is Starship Troopers and surely you'd like to hear more ...

 

Phew, Stevo seems to have settled down a bit ... though the pond does yearn for that high testosterone opener ...

 

Now on with the outrage, albeit in subdued form ...

 

Hmm, that's all reading a bit desiccated coconut ... how about an image of some wayward loon to stir the imagination?

Hmm, what's Stevo and the reptiles celebrating with the snap below?

Conspiracy theorists, virus deniers and anti-lockdown advocates defied repeated warnings from Victoria Police to protest against COVID-19 restrictions at the march around The Tan track on Saturday morning.
More than 100 officers from the Critical Incident Response Team, Public Order Response, Highway Patrol and Mounted Unit formed a ring of steel around the popular exercising track and the nearby Shrine of Remembrance, where violent scenes erupted at last week’s demonstration.
Fourteen people were arrested for shunning police orders at the protest, including a woman who was restrained on the ground by several officers at the Observatory Gate.
She claimed that she “had information” and had written a “road map on the day they called stage four”, before she was ushered into the back of a police van.
“They’ve arrested me because I won’t say my name. I’ve been in Melbourne all my life, I just want to go for a walk,” the woman said... (HUN, but paywall protected, so no link).

Excellent company for Stevo to keep ...

 

Ah yes, masks, so hard for libertarians to handle, the big sooks, though the pond was pleased to hear some suggest that masks might have had something to do with Japan smashing its latest Covid wave ...

Mike Toole, an epidemiologist at the Burnet Institute, said no-one could point to one single reason for the sharp fall in infections.
"The decline has puzzled most Japanese experts in public health and in COVID," he said.
Professor Toole said Japan has adopted a "vaccine-plus" strategy that combines vaccines with other infection control measures.
The authorities' success in suppressing the virus was likely thanks to a combination of measures such as compliance with social distancing directions, mask-wearing and a high rate of vaccine uptake, he said.
"I think everywhere it [vaccination] has been the most effective tool to reduce cases [but] vaccines alone are not enough," Professor Toole said.
"That’s why some countries like Denmark and Portugal have done really well, and other countries that eased restrictions too soon like the UK and Ireland have not done well."

Well yes, the Japanese have a long history of mask-wearing, but not to worry, manly Stevo will be out and about not wearing a mask and making sure to intrude on your personal space, because that's what French and Spanish Oxford students do when parading as epidemiologists ...

 

Sorry, the pond has already discussed masks, and besides it's all getting vaguely tedious, especially when Stevo gets to doing a Leunig with the unvaccinated ...

 

What a relief. Let the unvaccinated produce an another epidemic. What a great way forward. Fuck the medical system, fuck the country, all in the name of Stevo's freedumb ... though the last the pond checked, fuckwits of the freedom kind didn't much care for the y'artz ... so why should they give a fuck about the entry requirements, when they and Stevo could just fuck off and do something else. There's always porn on the intertubes and you could sing along to the Avenue Q song while doing a Tobin in your mad uncle garret...

And now, at last the final reptile gobbet for this Sunday meditation, and not before time too ...

 

 

Now there's a fuckwit who clearly hasn't suffered long Covid, or perhaps thinks erectile dysfunction is a usual condition .... but the warning the pond took to heart couldn't be found in Stevo's rant. 

Beware the long reptile, especially long reptile French and Spanish Oxford students who think that qualifies them as epidemiologists ... ripe to head up to the rooftops to shout freedumb ... (and down with comrade Dan).

And so to end on a note of bemused puzzlement. We've had endless rants about authoritarian comrade Dan, but whatever happened to reptile ranting about gold standard Gladys?

Gladys produced some great work on Friday, but not a single reptile featured in the pond felt the need to mention her noble effort.

For that the pond had to turned to Rowe, with more Rowe always to hand here ...

 

 

 

Dear sweet lord, does he keep referencing the classics, or what ...

 

 

 

In which the brightest reptile minds sort out the planet at tedious length ...

 

The pond is giving serious thought to a re-branding. 

Initial thoughts that have been kicked around, workshopped and field tested include Metaloon, Lunaverse, and Metalunaverse, though the last one was thought a little unwieldy. 

Not to worry, it's just a way of indicating that the pond is expanding to a place where you can play and connect in 4D. Some loser dropkicks without imagination have limited themselves to 3D, but the pond's 'verse is just like what Robert Lansing did in 4D Man. 

Of course the energy from virgins will be needed to power the pond's interactive field, but perhaps clean, dinkum, virginal Oz coal will suffice. Rest assured, whatever name the pond arrives at, it will remain a completely virtual world, with a virtually astonishing, ethereal capacity to float through the ether like a weird dose of meta-ectoplasm. 

In short, welcome to the next chapter of social intermetaconnectivity, and lordy lordy, as a side benefit, the pond will have many things to sell you. We might well make Covington House look like a hack second rate brand, and as for the Goopaverse once known as Facetwitch, say no more. 

This will be pioneering stuff, not just your old 2D blogging, and the pond is relying on the reptiles to lift their game, put their shoulder to the clichés, and join the pond in its 4D post meta wurst, and together we can put many more shekels into the chairman's purse.  

Oh okay, Colbert did it much better  in his weird nerd featurette (beware the ads), and what a relief to discover that someone else is an out and proud Facebook refusenik ...

Meanwhile … what a pity it was too late for the reptiles to get this note before they put out today's tosh. 

You see, the reptiles have gone all-in on climate science, and perforce the pond must follow. 

The pond has winnowed out sundry distractions - Dame Slap feeling the woke, the Angelic one feeling the Leunig, prattling Polonius feeling the comrade Dan. These can be tackled on a meditative Sunday.

That leaves the pond to concentrate on the reptiles concentrating on the science, but the result is a stupendous epic, involving the bromancer, the dog botherer, the Bjorn again one, and nattering "Ned"…

Who should go first in this astonishing parade?

Well the bromancer has turned almost as prolix as "Ned", but the pond has always had a soft spot for a man who can spot nuts in a squirrel's paws from a mile away. 

Take it away bromancer ...

 

 

The pond should note from the get go that it's not going to argue with the reptiles. It resolved some time ago that it was better not to argue, better just to observe the reptiles in their natural habitat and see how they are adjusting to the notion of climate science and climate change.

The tortured twists and turns are a wonder to behold and sufficient unto themselves ... as the news team prepare astonishing EXCLUSIVES ...

 

 

 

And the commentariat lather themselves into a frenzy. Lather away, bromancer ...

 

 

Observers will note the particular relish with which the bromancer celebrates the way the United States, West Virginia, and the planet, are comprehensively fucked ...

Please, more relishing, lots of it, and if the bromancer does it long and hard enough, likely we'll completely forget about the land down under and the lizard Oz's sterling climate science denialism over the decades ...

 

There's nothing like dancing on the grave of the planet for undiluted pleasure, and the bromancer perfected these skills long ago, back in the days when he was in a deep romance with the onion "climate science is crap" muncher ...

Keep on with the dancing ...

 

 

 

Indeed, indeed, and the lizard Oz reptiles really have no intention of going to go pure green, preferring to wallow in indolent luxury. 

Set an example to others, avoid killing the planet as a way of backing up the notion that murder is wrong? Certainly not, no need to take a high moral position here, instead just a certain relish at the doom ... because that'll teach the woke, and to show how the reptile game is played, there's nothing like lying that Australia's record is perfectly respectable ...

 

As the bromancer comes to a close,  the pond was reminded, as it frequently is when reading the bromancer, that it's seen this movie before ...

 

 

 

 

One more quick wave of the hat please ...

 

 

Yep, the planet is surely fucked, and so next in the conga line of reptiles dancing in delight comes the dog botherer, because when you want to do something about climate science, always first turn to a climate science denialist ...

 

 

Well it's a strategy. Shape yourself into an inconvenient questioner, rather than a denialist, and then act hurt about being branded a climate denier or when allegedly receiving some other inane slight, as if calling the dog botherer was some sort of slight, not when it's so taxonomically accurate ...

But if we must speak of slights, how about this one ...

...Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”.

Phew, that's some slighting going down, and all the better as it's a flesh and blood slighting ... but softly, because the pond is only here to observe, and of course the dog botherer is totally on top of the complex array of multidisciplinary sciences involved ...

 

At this point, the reptiles decided to insert an image of remarkable banality, as it to evoke the banality of the dog botherer endlessly repeating himself ... in his usual bom-bastic way ...

 

What does the illustration illustrate? For all the complexities, the dog botherer is, under his 'inconvenient questioner' pose, a staunch denialist ... willing to refuse to take the knee just to prove that he's a stubborn, pig-headed, dickhead ...

 

The pond would like to offer some good news, perhaps discuss the coalition modelling used to devise its non-policies, but instead we're just left with the usual conflation of Covid and climate, and blather about wildly inaccurate modelling ...

And that's why the pond must keep pressing ahead, because there's a lot more to come, not least the Everest known as "Ned" ...

 

Indeed, indeed, there's no doubt about it. Fucking the planet will produce great side-effects. At last all those apocalyptic movies will feel like exercises in neo-realism, and think of the whole new generation of disaster porn that Hollywood might be inspired to produce ...

Think of it as evolving Hollywood, to match the varying and evolving climatic, ecological and geographical history of the planet, and at last the pond will be able to grow bananas in Sydney, while frolicking down at the beach just outside Marrickville Metro ...

But all such splendid dreaming with the dog botherer must come to an end at some point, and so to the usual inane ending...

 

Indeed, indeed, and the pond certainly has seen this movie before, only we seem to have advanced a few frames thanks to the dog botherer ...

 

 

 

 

And so to a little taste treat before attempting "Ned's" Everest ... a Bjorn-again technology sorbet ...

The one thing that can be said for the Bjorn again one is that he keeps it short ... and simplistically simple, because he has the simpleton lizard Oz reader in mind, always ready to swallow whatever meaningless statistical flourish the Bjorn-again one flings into the air ...

 

It's around here that the pond gets to play its favourite game. 

You see the pond has a Bjorn-again jar, sitting aside its Godwin's Law swear jar, and the pond shoves in a little cash each time that the Bjorn-again one scribbles a line along the lines of "what is needed is a much stronger focus on green energy research."

The pond is allowed to stuff in more cash if that's followed by an excruciating abuse of English, along the lines of "If the world could innovate green energy ..."

If the pond could innovate a world without the Bjorn-again one, then it would have solved global warming. Everyone would simply switch, because they'd have suddenly understood the benefits of being free of emissions ... Bjorn-again emissions being a prime example of the dangers ...

 

Well the pond didn't expect anything else - in fact all the reptiles have played true to form.

But instead of watching the same old bomb-riding movie before moving on to the "Ned" Everest, how about a break with an infallible Pope?

 

Oh yes, it's a time for rich and splendid ironies ...

 

 

But that's enough of a break, too many Cormann Kit-kats and the tum starts to blow out... and we must be in peak form to climb the Everest known as "Ned" ...

 

By now everyone's eyes must have glazed over, and that shot of Scotty from marketing holding up a report might have passed unnoticed.

But it created an immediate quandary for the pond. Which was the best joke? A reference to another paper clutcher, or a reference to Scotty's own proud history of claw-clutching?

Oh heck, why not both?

 Yes, that works a treat, and what a progression ...

And so back to the trudging ...

Perhaps the pond should toss a few rum-soaked currants into the mix, to help "Ned" go down a little more easily ...

How about this nice little note in Crikey (paywall affected) ...

 

 

Well you're not going to find any PowerPoint slides with "Ned", nor even a mention of his famous podcast, and so onwards we must plod ...

At this point, the pond started to get desperate, and reverted to another rum-soaked Crikey currant ...

 

But enough of comedy, because "Ned" is still droning on, and that infallible Pope feels like an aeon ago ... and even the reptiles knew it was time for a break with yet another click-bait video ...

Thus far the pond has managed to avoid mentioning "Ned's" Chicken Little tendency to hand-wringing and roaming the backyard like a headless chook, but then the reptiles, in a desperate attempt to break up "Ned's" sackcloth and ashes routine, introduced an image which so frightened the pond, it thought about racing upstairs and clambering under the bed ...

 

Eek. What could the pond do to possibly match that terrifying image?

Well it's no match, but Crikey did offer a splendid sighting ...

 

 

 

Yep, the thought of Tucker and Miranda the Devine creaming their jeans over M&Ms surely erases that terrifying SloMo image from mind ...

But that still leaves two gobbets of "Ned" to go ...

 

By this point, it will have become obvious that the pond won't be commenting on "Ned's" many and varied insights, but that's simply because, once having said "what a boring, tedious old fart", what else is there to be said?

There might be a note about the methodology - boring, tedious old fart bores readership into submission or a deep slumber - but even that's taking the analysis a little too deep for what's required ...

You see, at the end of this elongated journey, "Ned" ends up with a classic "Neddism" ...

 

All that to land on the pond's favourite line, one it once included in a documentary: "much has been done, but much remains to be done."

And don't you worry about the planet. It has to be all about meeting our particular economic, energy and political needs, and if that happens to mean fucking the planet, why much has been done, but much remains to be done ...

What a tedious old fart he is, but to end on a high note, it seems that Wilcox has caught the Bjorn-again spirit ...