This will be the last post before the pond tackles the demonic reptiles in the new season, and no, the pond is not going to ruin its last few days in training by actually clicking on the lizard Oz.
That said, the pond's pre-season training has reached peak crescendo, or perhaps peak hysteria, and the pond has ranged widely to reach the fitness level designed to cope with daily encounters with the reptiles.
There are not many who would select Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Tragedy of the Korosko (free at Project Gutenberg) as toilet reading, but the pond likes to make sure not a moment is wasted in its reptile prep. High reps, high weights ...
Consider this:
...The great red sun was down with half its disc slipped behind the violet bank upon the horizon. It was the hour of Arab prayer. An older and more learned civilisation would have turned to that magnificent thing upon the skyline and adored that. But these wild children of the desert were nobler in essentials than the polished Persian. To them the ideal was higher than the material, and it was with their backs to the sun and their faces to the central shrine of their religion that they prayed. And how they prayed, these fanatical Moslems! Rapt, absorbed, with yearning eyes and shining faces, rising, stooping, grovelling with their foreheads upon their praying carpets. Who could doubt, as he watched their strenuous, heart-whole devotion, that here was a great living power in the world, reactionary but tremendous, countless millions all thinking as one from Cape Juby to the confines of China? Let a common wave pass over them, let a great soldier or organiser arise among them to use the grand material at his hand, and who shall say that this may not be the besom with which Providence may sweep the rotten, decadent, impossible, half-hearted south of Europe, as it did a thousand years ago, until it makes room for a sounder stock?
Superb stuff, and it might even fit into a bromancer column this very day ...
Now it's true that the war on dangerous, perfidious Islamics is a tad yesterday ...
But still, the the paragraph puts the pond in the right mind set to celebrate the glories of its Anglo-Celtic heritage, and it can easily be adjusted to deal with the current war on China, scheduled to happen by Australia Day, the Xmas-New Year season having slipped by …
...The great red sun was down with half its disc slipped behind the violet bank upon the horizon. It was the hour of Chinee prayer to eternal dictator Xi. An older and more learned civilisation would have turned to that magnificent thing upon the skyline and adored that. But these wild children of the Xian desert were nobler in essentials than the polished Han. To them the ideal was higher than the material, and it was with their backs to the sun and their faces to the central shrine of their religion, their Hong Kong wrecking overlord Xi, that they prayed. And how they prayed, these fanatical Communists in name only! Rapt, absorbed, with yearning eyes and shining faces, rising, stooping, grovelling with their foreheads upon their praying carpets, waving their little red books with deep nostalgia. Who could doubt, as he watched their strenuous, heart-whole devotion, that here was a great living power in the world, reactionary but tremendous, countless millions all thinking as one from Port Darwin to comrade Dan's silken highway to the confines of Arabia? Let a common wave pass over them, let a great soldier or organiser arise among them of the dictator Xi kind to use the grand material at his hand, and who shall say that this may not be the besom with which Providence may sweep the rotten, decadent, impossible, half-hearted world of Europe (and dropkick Clive) away, in ultimate revenge for the Boxer rebellion and the Opium wars, until it makes room for a sounder stock, bred with wild abandon by Boris ...
Or some such thing. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound reptilian Churchillian ...
Such an easy re-write, and so reptile ...
But then came devastating news for the pond's pre-season training regime.
MTG had been banned from Twitter.
Where would the pond get its supply of memes, as essential as garlic, crucifixes, silver bullets and wooden stakes when out on a vampire hunt, or searching for ways to liven up a tediously dull "Ned" column?
Sure there were remnants with the memes still attached …
…but when confronted by the endless, interminable reptiles each day, the pond needs a regular supply …
Of course MTG, being a marvelously stupid creature, routinely cancelled herself, as noted by an ongoing ProPublica service, with some tweets lasting an hour and some lasting just a minute or so ... as in this sample ...
STOPPED!
Then came other bad news.
Poley bears had gone full Ruski and turned Putin lovers …
Sssh, don't mention climate science, it only upsets the reptiles …
Would the reptiles get into a bind, caught between fear and loathing of Putin, and climate change, and yet forcing the poley bears forced to consort with Putin?
Oh wait, Fucker Tarlson is fully on side with Vlad the impaler, so maybe all is not lost...
However, worse was to follow … what with The Bulwark making a few predictions for the future …
Typical navel-gazing, self-absorbed, fluff-gathering Bulwarkians.
Look upon the might works of Iron Pyrites' standard Dom, and then you'll see what for ...
These were yesterday's headlines, and if the pond had bothered to get up early this day, no doubt the headlines would be even better, or worse, depending on your point of view, and your willingness to get infected and die for Dom and SloMo ... think personal responsibility ...
Over a thousand in hospitals, tests in short supply thanks to an abysmal lack of foresight and prep, and was it only in December that we had our fearless leaders showing the way?
Next thing you know, the pond will see you Amish, and up you to Scientology …
Here, have another cartoon, they're more available than a test ...
There was another Bulwarkian prediction that sent the pond into a frenzy:
But, billy goat butt, the pond loathes the Oscars and everything about them.
Should this wayward foolishness come to pass, it would mean the pond must abjure its love of the film.
The pond doesn't mind much that streaming wins - the pond has its own VPN way with streaming - but to be endorsed by the Academy is surely the death knell for a film peddling satire and irony … the only irony left then is the irony of Academy approval …
And now as this is truly the last post before the pond resumes business and tackles the reptiles, a final warm-up in relation to language …
The pond was first alerted by the Daily Beast:
Naturally the pond headed off to CNN to read this gibberish in more detail:
"Say what you mean and mean what you say. Can't get any easier, or harder, than that," said LSSU President Rodney S. Hanley in a statement. "Every year submitters play hard at suggesting what words and terms to banish by paying close attention to what humanity utters and writes. Taking a deep dive at the end of the day and then circling back make perfect sense. Wait, what?"
Almost every one of these banned sayings are reptile, and so pond favourites … and is there anything more fatuous than "say what you mean and mean what you say"?
Except perhaps be mean in what you say, and what's the point of meaning what you say if you can't be mean in the saying?
There was an attention-seeking, needy preamble:
And then there was the full pathetic list, which at the end of the day, only invited mockery:
All that being said, the pond and the reptiles will see about that, as each day we take a deep dive into the woke, and then circle back to do another deep dive into the fully woke … because each day the pond loves to take a deep dive into the shallow end of the reptile pool …
How about a little philosophical warm up? You know, in preparation for the long march through the institutions ...
Now the pond's pre-season training is complete.
Bring on the reptiles, and in the interim, bring on the Wilcox, doing a retrospective on the glories of the past year ...
Surely we can do better this year, and with the help of the reptiles, the pond looks forward to an even greater plunge into the depths of the new abnormal ...
Not to set off any more personal ‘fear and loathing’, DP, but My Source has provided a couple of snippets from not quite random reptiles.
ReplyDeleteShe was much amused to read Akker Dakker (not that we miss A-D, but we take amusement wherever). Seems he offered a list of books one ‘must read’ in this new year. That included Sharri’s work on Wuhan, which Akker said he looked forward to reading before Australia Day. Now - we have all committed to memory the video of someone almost as famous and influential as Akker telling Sharri that he looked forward to reading her - whatever it was that was being waved in front of him - but the wonder with Akker is that he either did not get the memo, or disregarded it - the one sent to all reptiles to read Sharri’s book, because it was now official Foxspeak.
This suggests that Sharri did not have the wit to prepare an executive summary to distribute to reptiles so they could claim to have read her great work, and the ‘Classics Illustrated’ version probably is still with the artists, who are having a bit of a break for the ‘Dreaming of a White Christmas’ season.
Or perhaps they have all been reading Miranda’s even greater exposé of a laptop from - was it also prepared in Wuhan? One loses track so easily.
The other snippets were flying from the rigging of this day’s Flagship. One, attributed to our Dame Groan, aroused the Source’s suspicions, because it looks like a compilation from something prepared and circulated by a shill for the nuclear industry, loosely adapted by the Dame. The amusement came with reference to the alleged unreliability of wind power because of ‘wind droughts’.
Which rather shows how little care these shills take with their collections of anecdotes. There are long-established terms for lack of wind - and they were well known when (would you believe?) trade around the world depended on ships driven solely by - wind. One simple, common, term is - calm. Or a writer with a poetic bent might use ‘doldrums’, but ‘wind drought’ is a sign of how little thought goes into this kind of writing - or the fundamental illiteracy of the writers.
But - we may yet hear that phrase as accepted usage on the ABC, probably with ‘nucular’.
The last snippet comes from our ‘Killer’ - writing about the dreaded ‘Giants’ stifling dissent in the digital public square.
He includes ‘It’s no good to say Google, Twitter and Facebook are private companies so can do what they want.’ and adds ‘they have social obligations to the constitutions and traditions of the nations in which they operate.’
Well - there is the standard response to all those digital ‘letters’ that have loyally responded to any and every suggestion that Limited News had any sort of obligation to be even-handed in what it published. That it was a private company and so could do what it wished, almost always accompanied with condescending observations like ‘which part of that do you not understand?’ directed to the unwise contributor who dared to question his Rupertship.
Over to you DP - the sails are set, the tide has turned at the fairway buoy, the Flagship is about to sail across the sea of dreams.
"That it [Limited News] was a private company and so could do what it wished, almost always accompanied with condescending observations like ‘which part of that do you not understand?’."
DeleteAhem, have I ever mentioned that famed reptile rule: "When you do it, it is evil; when we do it, it is truly good."
"The amusement came with reference to the alleged unreliability of wind power because of ‘wind droughts’".
Yes well at least some of us are aware that international trade was very largely dependent on the Cutty Sarks of history, but that they could indeed become 'becalmed' occasionally (particularly near the equator), and that's why we had steam auxiliary engines added to ships. Auxiliary because steam engines were not efficient enough and so the boats couldn't carry the immense tonnage of coal necessary to be fully steam power driven. Until, after just a decade or two, the stream engines became that efficient and big international sail slowly faded away.
But maybe their day is coming again:
Winds of change: the sailing ships cleaning up sea transport
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/23/sailing-ships-cleaning-up-sea-transport-oceans
But in the meantime, perhaps Groany should read up on wind. The atmosphere of this planet simply can't stay still for any extended period, so any "wind droughts" will be of relatively short duration and will seldom consist of a true 'doldrum':
"Wind tends to blow stronger over the ocean than over land. The ocean presents a smooth surface over which wind can glide without interruption, while hills, mountains, and forests tend to slow or channel wind over land."
https://www.google.com/search?channel=trow5&client=firefox-b-d&q=does+the+wind+ever+fail+at+sea
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8916/global-ocean-wind-energy-potential
As to 'channeling' wind, every Melbournian knows how the Kilmore Gap focusses the hot northerlies down onto Melbourne.