In which, after an over-dose of reptiles, the pond has an easy Monday ...

 

 

The pond overdid it on the weekend, far too much reptile stew in a gulp, so it was a relief to start the week with the reptiles in a low key.

Of course the Djoker was all the go, but the pond isn't much interested in the Djoker, or his beliefs, though the pond must confess that this passage in a New Yorker story (currently outside the paywall) produced much hilarity, what with a certified coeliac in the house ...

...Belgrade, the city where Djokovic grew up, is home to a spirited alternative-medicine scene, a seventies-Big-Sur underground of biofeedback, radiesthesia, and healing. Djokovic has for some time vibed with its holistic Weltanschauung. There was his encounter with Dr. Igor Cetojevic, a Bosnian Serb, who, while watching Djokovic on TV during the 2010 Australian Open, became convinced that the player’s need for medical time-outs had nothing to do with asthma, as some thought, but with too much gluten in his diet. Not long after, Cetojevic met Djokovic in Croatia, during the Davis Cup, where he asked Djokovic to raise his right arm twice, once while holding, in his left hand, a slice of bread to his belly; the exercise convinced Djokovic that his muscles were weaker when proximate to wheat. There was also, in 2016, his hiring of Pepe Imaz, a Spanish coach who evangelized about the transformative power of long hugs. More recently, there was Djokovic’s friendship with the wellness entrepreneur Chervin Jafarieh, who talks of having lived in jungles and among shamans, sells supplements and elixirs, and, in May of 2020, listened approvingly during an Instagram Live conversation as Djokovic explained that polluted water can be purified by human consciousness, because water molecules “react to our emotions, to what is being said.”  

... proving you can be a great tennis player and a certified loon all in one go. 

Throw in the news that Coco-pops had gone gluten free, and the pond spent the weekend in a cackle fit worthy of the ages ...

 

 

At last, sugar is gluten free ...

But now it's time to get down to work, and without the Major or other major reptiles, it was very slim  pickings ...

Jolly Josh trying to provide a boost to the country from behind the Chairman's paywall? 

We had to fork over a few shekels to the Chairman to be told the future was bright? And if that didn't appeal, there were a couple of lizard Oz editorials which put all their predictable content in the header?

That's how the pond ended up with the Caterist blathering about the woke, though you have to be pretty woke to work out how to put out your strong right arm, hold that slice of bread to your tummy, and get a load of federal government cash in your institute's strong-gripping paw ...

 

The pond must apologise, because from the get go, the pond knew it wouldn't have the slightest interest in what the Caterist was scribbling, no more than the pond would take the Caterist's advice when it came to working out the movement of flood waters in quarries ...

It was time for a cartoon-led recovery even before the Caterist got going ...

 

 

 

Simply put, and with due regards to the pond's New Jersey correspondent, the pond thinks the United States is deeply fucked, and so it's no help to realise that the Caterist is deeply fucked too ...

As well as that reference in the headline to the woke, the Caterist threw in a reference to the weak in the header. 

That profound contempt for the weak is a sign of fascist or authoritarian thinking, but the pond can avoid the Godwin's Law trap by dragging in a wiki link to Nietzsche ...

Master–slave morality (German: Herren- und Sklavenmoral) is a central theme of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, particularly in the first essay of his book On the Genealogy of Morality. Nietzsche argues that there are two fundamental types of morality: "master morality" and "slave morality," basing his theory on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Master-slave dialectic. Master morality values pride and power, while slave morality values kindness, empathy, and sympathy. Master morality judges actions as good or bad (e.g. the classical virtues of the noble man versus the vices of the rabble), unlike slave morality, which judges by a scale of good or evil intentions (e. g. Christian virtues and vices, Kantian deontology).

Of course there's also the master morality of scoring government cash in the paw, but enough of an introduction, it's on with the Caterist Übermensch goods ...

 

 

Indeed, indeed the virus ...

 

Sorry, sorry, it's just that the Caterist is clueless, so what else could the pond do?

 

Ah, the climate science denialism is strong in this one ... but the pond has been there and done that over the weekend, thanks to Lloydie of the Amazon, and the permafrost of Siberia, and besides, there's much still to celebrate in the current condition of the United States ...

Maestro, keep on with the cartoons ...

 

 

And so to the final Übermensch gobbet ...

 

There's nothing like the sight of a man with government cash in his paw scribbling about the woke elite to get the pond going... it's even more certain than gluten-free Coco-pops to trigger a bout of the cackles, and the snaps, and even a pop in the pond ...

At the same time, the pond realised that it was in error. There was much joy to be had punishing, reviling and hating the weak, while throwing in a bit of planet-fucking for good measure ...

 

 

Cucker Tarlson as the wielder of the paddle bat of truth?

Strange times indeed, and yet another reason the United States is deeply fucked ... and so on to a bonus offering, one which is even more bizarre than gluten-free sugar ...

The pond thought long and hard about whether to insert the Oreo, because the reformed, recovering feminist sounded like she was scribbling for the New Idea rather than the lizard Oz ...

There were plenty of other curiosities around to distract the pond, such as the sudden welling of sympathy in the lesser Kelly for refugees trapped in a Carlton hell hole ...

 

 

Indeed, indeed, how poignant that the lesser bushranger should discover that you can be locked up for nine years without a by your leave, or even manage a full federal court shindig, assembling to consider your plight over the weekend, such is the concern for your nine years in a hotel hell hole ...

What was even more astonishing is that the pond can remember an assignation at that fleapit hotel many years ago which led to a wild-eyed fuck ...

Strange, how the world works ... even stranger that the pond should be paying heed to the Oreo's plight ...

Dear sweet lord, is this the best the reformed, recovering feminist can do? And yet the reptiles took their New Idea duties seriously and flung in a snap of the sort of footwear that might be found all over Big Sur, or perhaps Belgrade ...

 

All the pond can do is apologise and jog along with the reformed, recovering feminist ...

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, the pond has finally been made barefoot and speechless, which is admittedly better than barefoot and that other condition ... 

And now, thanks to a reader, the pond is delighted to update this post with astonishing and pleasing news that the pond had completely overlooked ...

 

Double the Oreo stuf, gluten-free!

And now with that update done, all that's left is party time, with that master of parties, Boris the totally unique* fun-lover ... (*ABC licensed) ...