And so to the first Sunday meditation of the year, and who better to set the pace than prattling Polonius ...

 Fundamentalist rabbit deep in a fundamental rabbit hole ...

The startled gaze of a gazelle, a goat or a lamb confronted by a tiger in the night ...

 

Breaking? Deeply broken more like it ...

And so to the first Sunday meditation of the year, and for those who came in late to the story, last year ended with the pond noting the Weekly Beast noting Polonius's deep, dire obsession with the ABC ...

 

 

 

Clutching his father's skull, Polonius took an unrelenting vow to defeat the ABC pirates ... though anyone with a hint of self-awareness or irony, or just the need to get that bloody needle out of the LP groove that it's been stuck in for decades, might have begun the new year on a different note ...

Not our Polonius ... with the very first letters in the header a tribute to the very large mote in the eye ...

 

It speaks volumes, of course, that Polonius in his piece won't bother to go anywhere near the interesting aspect of the story ... the strange melange of black activists, anti-vaxxers, white supremacists, SovCits and assorted grifters at play ...

 

It also says a lot about Polonius that he keeps on seeking to downplay the riot in the Capitol ... he's always been a closet Trumpist, a bit like his none too carefully closeted climate science denialism ...

Of course all this puts Polonius right alongiside his Fox kissing cousins ...

 

One of Polonius's patented tricks is a form of historical whataboutism ... distracting from the present by brooding about the past ...

Being deeply conservative, the pond is against the destruction of property. The planet is rapidly burning through its reserves like a start-up on a cash binge, so it's better to save what was done in the past, and if appropriate relocate or add an interpretation to sculptures celebrating fascism and colonialism and sexism and racism, and yes, even Polonialism...

But sadly Polonius shows no signs of being interested in what really happened during the summer break, including the role barking mad SovCit people played in it ... and as for the mango Mussolini and his dupes, whataboutism simply doesn't cut it ...

 

 

 

Yes, Polonius is somewhere behind that door with the caucus ...

Never mind, on with the next, and the Angelic one gets the nod because the reptile cupboard has been pretty threadbare this weekend, and there's nothing like a dose of hysteria to set the pond's nerves jangling ...

The pond should have seen that one coming. It's another case of whataboutism and shedding tears for the rich, but then the Angelica one really cranks into overdrive with a nightmarish vision of a world ruined by  pop music or fashion or films or anything else ...

What happened to the good old conservative days, when, if you did the crime, and got caught, you did the time, and you didn't invoke the decadence of They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as an excuse for criminal acts, or worry about others yet to be brought to justice as a excuse for those not yet in the docks...

 

 

Hmm, seems to be able to sweat a little ...

Now here's how to let off lightly a toff ...

 

Uh huh, but did she do the crime? If she did, a conservative would tell her to do her time, and let it go at that ...

Perhaps it's the Angelic one trying to run cover for all those priests who went the fiddle ... while Rome fiddled and burned when it came to holding the fiddlers to account ...

And so to Dame Slap, simply because she's there, and stray pond readers will have noted that this early in the New Year, "Ned" Kelly isn't about, and so there's no "Ned" weekend Everest to climb ... though these days Dame Slap constitutes a similar kind of Everest, made more difficult by it being a very weird read, a bit like a Loony Tunes cartoon influenced by Dali ...

 

 

 

Warners did a couple of Porky Pig's fabulous searches for the Do-do, and the pond thought it might just mention them because, of late, Dame Slap has been big on cultural references ...

As for the meat of #When women are just as guilty, the pond gets it. 

There are many women who work for Chairman Rupert and his son, and many of them are blonde, though in this particular case, that's no excuse, because you'd think even blondes would understand #When blondes are just as guilty ...

It's no news to the pond that women can be deviant. 

A correspondent reminded the pond of Akker Dakker's Xmas list of relaxing book larnin', and a couple of women were at the top of the pile ... (the pond has edited out the book covers, lest a stray reader pluck out their offended eye) ...

 

Still reading Plimer? 

Another Don't Look Up moment for the pond ... and what about Akker Dakker promising to finish Sharri's tome by Australia Day? By golly, that sounds like a compulsive, addictive, compelling, can't put down for a nanosecond read ...

Of course it doesn't have to be like this ...

There are women who fit the meme #When women possess incisive wit ...

 It's cruel to put Dame Slap up against Marina Hyde - you can see why Porky Pig was needed as a cultural reference - and hasn't the Hyde been in top 'give them a hiding' form. She must have marinated in juices over Xmas ... and better still, she looks vaguely blonde, proving that there's a life of the mind for blondes outside News Corp ...

First there was that right royal bollocking of Prince Andrew ...

...Epstein knew the code better than anyone, which is presumably why he took care in his 2009 settlement with Giuffre to exempt others from being named as “potential defendants” in the future. What a thoughtful legacy to his bros. And how remarkable that Prince Andrew should regard seizing it as his best defensive shot. Swerving court via a loophole provided by one of the leading international paedos of the age … Well, if that isn’t staying classy, then I really don’t know what is.

Then she was giving the wallpaper man a right common bollocking ...

...Still, like me, you probably cannot get enough of brilliant prime ministerial investigator Lord Geidt, whose ability to piece together highly complex cases such as “who paid for this £840 roll of wallpaper and why?” marks him out as one of the most fascinatingly unconventional detectives of the era. You’d stop just shy of comparing Geidt with Sherlock Holmes, perhaps – but in the decorative mystery of the Downing Street flat refurbishments, his lordship was certainly Ideal Holmes. Only Ideal Holmes would somehow be able to conclude absolutely nothing from the fact that in the very message in which the prime minister asked for a huge sum of money from a Tory donor, Johnson felt moved to add, apparently ingratiatingly, “PS am on the great exhibition plan Will revert”. Nor from the fact that in the very message in which the Tory donor told the prime minister the money was on the way, he replied – apparently ingratiated – “Thanks for thinking about GE2”.
This reboot of the Great Exhibition seems to have been something of apet project for Lord Brownlow, whoinitially met £112,549 of Johnson’s decor bills himself. Less than two months after the above WhatsApp exchange, according to official ministerial records, Brownlow was – according to official ministerial records – meeting the then culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, “to discuss plans for Great Exhibition 2.0”. Just one of those weird instances of Jungian synchronicity that attend this government’s way of doing business, I guess. Something branded Festival UK is now happening instead, and Downing Street yesterday simply refused to say precisely how that event differs from the Great Exhibition 2.

The pond has begun to think that Britain is having all the fun, especially when the reptiles at this point flung in an illustration to pad out Dame Slap's piece ...

If they were in England, and worked for a more useful rag, they could have trotted out a Rowson cartoon ...

 

 

Oh how that restores the spirits, and there's many more restoratives to be found here ... (come back infallible Pope, immortal Rowe, there's much humour to be found in the dead of January).

Now back to Dame Slap, rabbiting on ...

The pond will leave the Angelic one and Dame Slap to sort out the matter of Maxwell. 

Everyone enjoys a good cat fight, especially when it's a pair of reptile cats, and so the time came in Dame Slap's piece for the reptiles to show off their taste with another photo distraction ...

Ah yes, that fits, that suits, and "Ned" is with us, if only in spirit, this day ...

..Rogers said she had been consistently told not to take pictures of “pigs in lipstick” while the appearance of male subjects was never raised.
In 1994, when Paul Kelly was editor-in-chief of the Australian, she was told to take photographs of attractive women to increase female readership.
“During a news conference the editor Paul Kelly indicated to the news conference staff that the Australian wanted to increase female readership,” Rogers said in her submission. “His argument was that women buy women’s magazines and that they like to look at attractive women.”
In 2011, a picture editor at Queensland’s Sunday Mail ordered social photographers not to take any pictures of any “pigs in lipstick”, which was interpreted to mean any middle-aged women or those who may be overweight or not conventionally attractive.
“While working on the Courier-Mail, I was encouraged to seek out attractive women to photograph to ‘get a better run’ in the Courier-Mail,” she said. “This meant the photo would run in the earlier pages of the paper if the subject was attractive.” (Graudian)

And so back to Dame Slap, now blessed with comely women to help her get a better run ...

 

We all make mistakes, at home, at work and in life, and the pond has been Krogered at times with the best of them ...

 

But really, Morning Wars as a reference point? That's like holding up J. K. Rowling as an exemplar of literary art ... 

However the pond will admit that the best person to recognise bullying doing down is a bully, and has there been a better bully over the years than Dame Slap?

 

 

When is she going to get back to donning the MAGA cap, spanking the UN's world government, and giving climate scientists an expert IPA caning?

Sadly of late she seems to have lost her mojo and drifted back to her very own planet, brooding about the perfidy of women ... unless it happens to be the perfidy of J.K. Rowling, and then she's right on board ...

Luckily Dame Slap hasn't managed a full truly tedious and epic "Ned" Everest, so this is the final gobbet ... 

 

Indeed, indeed, and as for the pin up girls in the Faux Noise, Fox and Friends, News Corp's fake-it-and-compulsively-lie-til-you-make-it culture, with legal action the belated remedy ... that's for another time and other publications ...

 

 

Instead of going over old #When News Corpse is just guilty stories,  the pond will end with a few cartoons, celebrating Polonius's contribution to a meditative Sunday ...

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the pond's garage sale is still on, final offers accepted, avoid late rush ...

 

 

 Darwin Awards closing soon, but the Herman Cain awards are still accepting entries ...