So another theory ... perhaps a travel blog for the silly season, with an honourable mention of talking tampons ...

 

Now that the pond has become a briefly become a travel diary - here no reptile content, this is not the reptile content you were looking for - a few thoughts on Melbourne.

Back in the day, the pond's father hated Melbourne and Melburnians with an undying fear and loathing. Never having been there, he seemed to think it entirely consisted of Toorak and when the jokes about Toorak tractors started doing the rounds, he was all in. 

Melbourne's chief crime was to have spawned Ming the Merciless and his ilk, though the DLP also rated high on the list. Then there was AFL but as this meant he supported thugby league, this can be discounted - any form of men playing with their balls is inherently comical.

When the pond first visited Melbourne it can remember those years of training in fear and loathing and being assailed by a new relative about poker machines in NSW. 

Never happen here, they gloated, but we know how that went down. Later the ironies grew richer when the pond spent time living in Toorak. The ironies grew even richer because when the pond's father visited, and he discovered he actually liked the town. In those days, it was very British, a quaintly picturesque town with a whiff of the Victorian about it, cobblestones still in the back lanes, and a lot of fine bluestone buildings, and more than a hint of Sherlock Holmes about them. 

Sure, you can still find a Sherlock Holmes feeding hole if you look hard enough, but these days the town has a vastly different and inferior feel to it.

To be blunt, it has been RMITed. This is a polite way of saying it's been fucked. Imagine a thought experiment. The pond isn't in to violence, but if you could have travelled back in time and assassinated the entire RMIT department of architecture, would it have been morally and ethically sound? A bit like killing a young Hitler?

The pond isn't going to show examples of the assorted abominations that have erupted from the town being RMITed. The gaudy and flashy colours that developers stick on high rise buildings are all over the place, and have transmigrated to Sydney, where they suit the inherently vulgar Rum rebellion convict tastes of the citizenry.

It could have all been nipped in the bud, but now everything is RMITed!

The pond will only cite one example of a building which would send Prince Chuck into a frenzy ...

That's a Spencer street view, and it's clear the building doesn't want to to a useful, sensibly proportioned building. It wants to be a preening, idiosyncratic, ostentatious, hideously pretentious work of art ...

It's not as awful as Jimbo's erection in Sydney, but it gets pretty close.

So the pond and the talking tampon have something in common, a yearning for the good old days of the solid burghers of Melbourne ...

Speaking of Prince Chuck, the pond had thought of becoming a movie blog over the break, but will be content just to mention one movie - Spencer. 

The notion that the pond could find a movie about Lady Di compelling was about as remote as it joining in Colbert's delusional worship of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but there it was and the pond was compelled. 

One particular moment stood out - the useless in search of a killing field, slaughtering pheasants, a few to be eaten, some to be thrown to the hounds, and a lot thrown away. Lady Di couldn't understand it, but it reminded the pond of Ken Loach's hard to find masterpiece, The Gamekeeper, wherein a reformed poacher attended to pheasants and poaches and lorded twats, and then returned home to eat a pork pie.

By the end of the show, the pond amazingly had discovered some empathy for silly young princess Lady Di, flung into a deep pool of monstrous absurdity, and finally understood why Harry had fled to a Hollywood lifestyle, and why William was doomed, and all thanks to a deeply anthropological movie which observed the bizarre rituals of the titled, using, funnily enough, German settings to evoke the madness of the English. And a special mention should be made of Jonny Greenwood's excellent music score, which was deeply unsettling and evoked the atmosphere of alienation and repression superbly. Before the pond had been a little suspicious of Greenwood - too much vibe for what the pond had heard - but this time the pond was completely sold ...

Poor talking tampon, it was almost possible to feel a sense of pity, but time to move along, and the pond left the city to drop in on the tyke cathedral, as you do, and was pleased to see that the fleecing of the flock had been made extremely efficient ...

Bingo, Catholic Church style. 

Of course Catholicism ran rampant through the town, as shown by this ancient ad, revealed by a recent demolition ...

Back at the cathedral, the pond went into training for its usual teasing of the gay priest in the family about the exceptionally dull windows on either side of the building. Here no stained glass, or some extravagant Leonard French folly illustrating the 14 stations of the cross, in the manner of NGV (just explain how it's a National gallery, apart from a Victorian delusional Napoleonic sense of grandeur).

Instead there was just an array of ordinary dirty glass ... they'd run out of money, and the fleecing of the flock failed to get the wherewithal for something better ...

And inside the Cathedral there were signs of demonic possession ...

Note those wreathes ... we all know about how wreathes started off ...

In the Greco-Roman world, wreaths were used as an adornment that could represent a person's occupation, rank, their achievements and status. The wreath that was commonly used was the laurel wreath. The use of this wreath comes from the Greek myth involving Apollo, Zeus’ son and the god of life and light, who fell in love with the nymph Daphne. When he pursued her she fled and asked the river god Peneus to help her. Peneus turned her into a laurel tree. From that day, Apollo wore a wreath of laurel on his head. Laurel wreaths became associated with what Apollo embodied; victory, achievement and status and would later become one of the most commonly used symbols to address achievement throughout Greece and Rome. Laurel wreaths were used to crown victorious athletes at the original Olympic Games and are still worn in Italy by university students who just graduated. (wiki here).

Later the Lutherans picked up on the notion of wreathes, and now it seems the tykes are happy to be in on the game. Of course they featured red berries, supposed to be a symbol for the blood of Christ, but we know how berries got into the racket ...

Of all the holiday traditions, decorating with holly branches is probably the oldest. It all starts with the ancient Romans as they would dress their homes with holly during the celebration of Saturnalia which was observed in December before the winter solstice. Actually, it was a good idea to have hollies around all year long — thought ancient people.

Pliny the Elder (AD 23-70), a Roman naturalist, tells us that holly planted near a house or farm would defend it from witches and lightning. Romans also thought that the holly flower would cause water to freeze and that wood from holly, thrown at an animal, would make the animal return and lie down. Wow, that would be handy. (here)

Then the pond took a squint up behind the counter where the gluten is served to believers, and what do you know ...

Yes, there at the back were a couple of Xmas trees, and we all know how pagan Xmas trees got into the game ...

During the Roman mid-winter festival of Saturnalia, houses were decorated with wreaths of evergreen plants, along with other antecedent customs now associated with Christmas.

The Vikings and Saxons worshiped trees. The story of Saint Boniface cutting down Donar's Oak illustrates the pagan practices in 8th century among the Germans. (wiki here)

You can imagine the dour old Mannix lurking at the front door being shocked by the signs of all this paganism rampant inside ...

... though it has to be said that the hideous building behind was a suitably Melbourne revenge for the silly old bugger, whose mindset can still be seen in the likes of the bromancer and the onion muncher...

But no reptiles here, here no reptiles.

As the pond left the church, it made sure to step on the sign embedded in the floor ...

Successor St Peter ... as if, but speaking of statues and signs, the pond stumbled across this one, near the old Treasury building, and realised that Melbourne wasn't as woke as the reptiles liked to pretend ...

The empire lives and now has reached peak Boris ...

What else in this travel blog before heading off into the wilds where there is no broadband and the splendid Malware internet but a dream?

The pond did happen to pass the old Waiter's Club, food poisoning a speciality at a very reasonable piecing the old days, and spotted this piece of vulgarity ...

From there it was on to old haunts, with Smith street first stop. In ancient times when the pond was around, it was a junkies lair, full Pure Shit ... but now it has caught the hipster vibe and is a happening thing and even has a full hipster butcher, with lavish hipster pricing.

By comparison, poor old Brunswick street was a sorry down market sight. Yes, you could still get a decent lashing at the bottom end of the drag, but it had completely lost its mojo and its vibe to Smith street. The pond spotted a young thing in a passing attempt at '70s gear, clutching a large stuffed Bart doll, in celebration of a series devised before she was born and long past its use-by date.

Happily, Mario's was still there - food poisoning at an economical price in the old days. It was, in the day, the place where Film Victoria bureaucrats gathered to lord it over struggling film-makers, and the pond did spot a place where a commune of film-makers still got to hang together, but ever since the strip lost RRR and Open Channel, it's lost the vibe ...

Talk about depressing ...

So don't let the odd bit of street art fool you, as the pond spotted in Spencer street ...

Instead note those hideous red balconies. This is a town that has been comprehensively RMITed, which is to say FUCKed, and as for art, let the Catholics show how it shouldn't be done, with a display of cathedral art that looks like it was put up against a wall at Pentridge, but nobody had the decency to do a Henry Bolte, hang it or shoot it, and put it out of its misery...

And that's it ... again seasonal cheer to all, and all the best for those who chanced upon this travel blog, and as the pond heads off to a land where Malware's astonishing internet vision is but a dream, here's hoping that with a bit of luck the pond will return, and with an even bigger bit of luck it will revert to being a herpetarium in the New Year...

And so to a reminder that an old David Rowe never grows old ... with more eternally young Rowe here ...