In which the pond begins by fixing holes in buckets, listens to a man in search of bragging rights, and ends with a conspiracy theory ...

 

 

Devastating, shattering news today, and even the reptiles were forced to report it ...

 

 

 

 Coal and gold standard Gladys both cruelly snuffed out in a single day? No, never, says the defiant pond ... why we only learned the other day from Lloydie of the Amazon that dinkum clean coal with zero emissions was just around the corner ...

What's the point of living if we can't fuck the planet or send a golden warrior to Canberra, especially one who'd fit right into the culture of the place?

The pond had only one consolation ... it was hole in the bucket fixing time with our Henry ...

 

Thank the long absent lord, once again those bloody wicked secularists are lining up for a well deserved caning by the hole in the bucket man.

Some might whine and mope and wonder how much they can stand, what with the bromancer going full tyke recently, but the pond loves the spectacle of a public secularist caning ...

 

Yes, the pond is all for freedumb, and an ongoing belief in Adam and Eve, burning bushes, and the appropriate attitudes to the eating of shellfish and the mixing of fabrics, not to mention a firm stand on the matter of deviants and preverts... but the pond must confess that serious doubts began to dawn when it actually bothered to check one - just one, because the pond is lazy - of our Henry's freewheeling quotes.

Patience, please, it will take some time to get there, and there's still much secularist caning to go ...

How foolish of the pond. 

Of course the reptiles were going to seize the chance to insert a click bait video celebrating the bromancer going full tyke. 

The pond regrets that its screen cap defanged this important message ... but surely we can be content knowing that our Henry blames himself, being somewhat of a pretender, throwing quotes about in the manner of all-knowing doctors, and hinting that Jesus provided the philosophical foundations that shaped the American revolution. 

As to what shaped the French revolution, and the guillotine, and new attitudes to religion, and come to think of it, the American revolution, the pond cannot say ...

 

 

 

 

Not the perfidious French! Damn you, perfidious French, you'll get yours ...

 

 

 Oh yeah, sez who?

 But now there's just one gobbet to go before the pond notes the serious doubts produced by our Henry ... though his mention of the Stoics, Greek pagans of the worst kind,  a school founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the third century BC, or so the wiki says, did make the pond wonder just how much Xian thinking was truly original ... 

But then the pond remembered that the Creation Museum featured dinosaurs mingling with humans, so why couldn't Stoicism and Xianity roam wild and free together ...

Sorry, sorry, on with it ...

Indeed, indeed, how could anyone seriously think there was homophobia abroad in this grand sunbaked, or completely sodden if you rhetorically will, land. 

Toss that bastard into the river Torrens, and if he drowns, why then surely he was a witch ... or perhaps there's a cliff handy in Sydney for the tossing ... or a park for the bashing ...or perhaps a few NSW plods available to go the brutal biff and so inspire a march in the streets ...

Ah, it all seems so quickly and easily forgotten, the bigotry, the hatred and the fear, but our Henry is an expert in ignoring and forgetting ...

But now to that pond spoiler alert ...

You see, the pond is too lazy to do much fact-checking on our Henry's hole-mending, but one quote stood out and it sent the pond scampering to discover this ...

 

Now that's easy enough to google ... and the Webbs were notoriously often away with the pixies or the New Statesman ... and yet, here's our Henry cutting them out of the picture ...

 

Would it have been too much for our Henry to scribble "redolent of Lenin's alleged dictum, quoted by Sidney and Beatrice Webb as having once been overheard observing ..."

It quite added to the shattering of sundry dreams this day, and so the pond quickly moved on to a bragging matter ...

 

The pond has previously mentioned the bizarre way that politicians think that the only right and proper way to access their thinking is for punters to give their precious shekels to Chairman Rupert ... and yet here we have a bragger, bragging away behind the shelter of a paywall ...

It's the Chairman's politics at its absolute worst, persuading a doltish bragger to brag, in a way that might intrigue some, but only if they splashed some cash in the direction of the Chairman ...so that he can keep on fulfilling his weirdo, bizarre, Fox News agenda (by golly Colbert was on fire with his takedown of the burning of that Xmas tree, YouTube here).

Back to the insolent bragging by the servile Chairman Rupert devotee ...

Indeed, indeed, though it seems to make the bragger's bragging entirely moot. Why bother to run an opinion piece in our very own version of Kodak?

Is there not something sublimely perverse about celebrating the complete impotence and irrelevance of the Chairman and his minions, while at the same time humbly tugging the forelock, and other parts of the body, behind a paywall, with the intent of influencing the thinkers around the land, already mightily inspired by the thoughts of our hole in the bucket man ...

Something didn't add up, and the confused pond was relieved to have suddenly arrived at the last gobbet ...

The reptiles are a wretched, irrelevant waste of space, already lost in the digital rear-view mirror, and so all the pond's study of these wondrous creatures is a complete waste of time?

Faced with such cynical nihilism, and perhaps the imminent bankruptcy of News Corp, the pond needed a lift, and so turned to the immortal Rowe, as it often does in hours of need ...

 

 

 

 

Ah that's better ... if the pond had to mention the member for Tamworth, and his fabulous deeds, at least a Rowe was the way to do it ...

And now to a freshly patented pond conspiracy theory ...

Keen observers will have noted that the reptiles have been wildly excited at news of the mutton Dutton in action ...

Sure, some will be drawn to that ad showing that the reptiles have yet again accepted cash in the claw from the freedumb party, but look closely at the digital splash at the top of the digitalpage this day,  and the lead story in the tree killer edition, and that talk of the Morrison government taking yet another bold step...

Did the pond say SloMo?

Sorry, actually it's the the mutton Dutton that gave the thumbs up, or so the lizard Oz editorialist says ...

The pond will allow two schools of thought here.

(1) The mutton Dutton and the reptiles are keen to give the Australian film industry a break, and the chance of a sequel ...

 

 

By golly, we could import Hans and what a fine old racket there'd be ... and it's jolly decent of the reptiles and the mutton Dutton to care about giving the locals a chance to show their stuff with Black Hawk Down in the South China Sea ...

Or

(2) The reptiles are pumping up the volume for a mutton Dutton coup. 

Look at the reptile rhetoric. The mutton Dutton is acutely aware that the reptile war with China might happen, if not by Xams, then surely in the New Year, and he knows how to deploy ironic humour, always necessary in war movies, and he's a man of action after years of drift and inaction ... and he's a man of history, capable of blunt historic speeches ...

 

Yes, he's a plain speaker, this humble plod, unlike some the pond might mention ... and if he can ditch the odd chopper, might not he be able to ditch a few bullshit artists standing in his way on his long march to the ultimate prize? Might we not need our very own Churchill to replace our very own dithering Chamberlain as the war with China, and perhaps world war three, approaches?

Is it too late for a coup? After all the election might not be until May, and January, a time of slumber, is just the right moment for a derring do plod to strike, while the Black Hawk, or at least the reptile iron, is hot ... 

Then we'd see off all that nonsense about the reptiles existing in the twilight zone of the rear view mirror ...

What with Boris in trouble with Xmas parties, and reportedly, gold standard Gladys disinclined to head to Canberra, is it too late to organise a changing of the guard?

Why the very presence of the mutton Dutton would terrify Xi into submission, and might also see our Henry out in the streets slaying the odd stray secularist ...

The alternative? Just look at the infallible Pope's offering this day ...

 Some might say it's a reboot of the little shop of horrors ...

Oh yes, the impotent, wretched, only visible in the rear view mirror reptiles might yet have their day ... and then there'll be bragging rights aplenty ...