In which the pond continues its intense pre-season training for the first reptile encounters of the new year ...

 

 

The pond is now in intense pre-season training for its first encounter with the reptiles in the New Year.

Some might think that a quick scan of the current headlines should be enough, like some fatuous Sky News (UK) survey with a couple of prize twats rabbiting away ...

 

 

But that was yesterday, and so is this old, battered, fragile irrelevant piece of news, strutting about in the grand new world of Iron Pyrites' standard Dom ...

 

 

Oh it'd be grand to be a hospital worker in Dom's Iron Pyrities' standard world ...

...Or perhaps quick read of ‘Complete collapse of leadership’: Australia’s recent Covid response amounts to world-class bungling.

...The second factor was world-class bungling. The commonwealth government completely mishandled every aspect of the vaccination program. Its narrow procurement strategy was wrong. Its prioritisation strategy – with the most at-risk to be vaccinated first – was ignored from the start. Its rollout was a shemozzle, so bad that “strollout” was designated Australian word of the year. Its communication of vaccine advice and eligibility was confusing and inconsistent. The commonwealth learned nothing from this litany of errors and proceeded to bungle the testing approach as well.

But the pond's readership already had that in hand in the comments section days ago, so that's just some easy yards.

Time to toughen up, increase the reps, perhaps with John Crace offering his predictions for the year.  

Just a sampling will suggest how this might help the pond with flexibility training:

August
Twitter crashes for a couple of days as news leaks that the fourth series of Succession will be filmed in real real time. Not pretend real time, like 24. Any mistakes just become part of the script. Jeremy Strong is said to have been doing intensive method preparation for Kendall’s 10-minute lavatory break, which is set to be the pivotal moment of episode four. Brian Cox’s lines have been reduced to a minimalist “Fuck the lot of you, you fucking fucks.” Cricket writers herald a golden dawn for English Test cricket after Joe Rootand Jos Buttler put together a 50-run partnership, England’s highest stand for more than three years. Root goes on to make a cultured 37, before playing at a ball he could easily leave and being caught at slip, an innings some older cricket supporters compare to Len Hutton in his prime.
November
Liz Truss says that nothing is going to stop the UK having the best Christmas ever. A day later the World Health Organization reports the existence of the Pi coronavirus variant, which is four times as transmissible as Omicron. Lord Vallance and Sir Chris Whitty suggest an immediate fifth booster vaccine programme and a circuit-breaker. Truss conducts a solo press conference from a golden throne in which she insists that the British DNA is now resistant to Covid and that the England football team will still be going to Qatar to play in the World Cup. The first 1,000-page volume of Dominic Cummings’s memoir, Why I was Right about Everything, covering the first seven years of his life, becomes the first book to be remaindered within a week of publication.

But this, as Dustin Hoffman will tell you when staging a phony war for Hollywood, is nothing ... the pond hasn't even begun to raise a sweat.

It's not just a matter of being cut, the pond must put aside recent seasonal memories and Xmas cake, and be primed, pumped, jacked for the burden ahead.

No caught in slips for the pond, best leave that to the Poms ...

So here's the sort of random training the pond indulges in. 

A quick visit to slackbastard, and the next thing you know the pond is warming up over here with talk of Madonna's nipples and Nancy Reagan's expertise at blow jobs ...

 

 

Okay, the pond came in a little late on that story, but you can catch the gist - Nancy Reagan was notoriously good at blow jobs.

Aside from fierce training in the frivolous, the pond also has to get back into serious matters, such as climate science ...

 

But above all the pond must continue to cultivate a post-modern, post-ironic sensa huma, as shown by Calvin Trillin writing about ledes for The New Yorker under the header Florida Woman Bites Camel (currently outside paywall):

 

 

Naturally Trillin makes a meal of a woman biting the balls of a camel while attempting to retrieve a deaf dog - it helps explain why a loon would stick his arm in a tiger's mouth, or why the pond would head back to the pen where the gibbering reptiles run wild ...

The pond also must harden the fuck up, get its stomach muscles glistening like Gallipoli steel, so that the humour in any situation becomes readily apparent ...

There's no room for sentimentality when rampant stupidity is the key feature ...

 

 

The pond is still doing its own research, as a way of ignoring the advice of any of those so-called experts and 'leets. 

Then there was this ...

 

 

With coda ...

 

 

Memo to self: harden the heart, the reptiles don't mind a few deaths in their quest for world domination, and so there's no time for tears or lost children ...

Cultivating a state of sublime ignorance and rampant stupidity is essential when wanting an insight into reptile thinking ...

But speaking of the long absent Lord, apart from suggesting you drink from your own cistern, She takes a stern attitude to the reptiles (Proverbs 6: 12-19):

A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth.
He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers;
Frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually; he soweth discord.
Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy.
These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

The pond also has taken a refresher course in Orwellian thinking ... sure the header is pretentious and portentous ...

The meaning of words: Orwell, Didion, Trump and the death of language

Orwell wrote that political speech was "largely the defense of the indefensible" — in 1946. Little did he know.

Inter alia:

 

This is excellent training for the reptiles' moronic repetition of catchphrases such as 'woke' and 'cancel culture', and so on ... for such phraseology is needed if a reptile wants to name things without calling up actual pictures of real people ...

So that prepares the pond for the likes of nattering "Ned", and the bromancer and the flood water in quarries Caterist, but what of the Catholic Boys' Daily talk of religion, a regular feature of reptile discourse?

Not to worry, the pond's got that. 

The pond has been couch-sitting of late, dipping into assorted TV shows, including old Mitchell and Webb sketch comedy.

There was that one about God suddenly hitting on the idea of pitching human sacrifice to Abraham, and Abraham and his son Ivan being all in, only for God to get the willies at their enthusiasm, and begin to blather about it just being a test. 

The punchline came with God thinking up a whiz new idea - nipping the foreskins off cocks ... (there's some kind of mystical alignment there with Nancy Reagan and blow jobs).

But the one the pond most enjoyed, and also seemed most relevant to reptile logic and reasoning skills, came with talk of Sammys, a bit like American judges under the weather from sedative pills talking about "N" roaches. (allegedly).

You can find the original M and W routine on YouTube.

But here's a short summary of the gag, which makes it a little clearer as to why it's good training for reptile thinking...

 

 

An exclamation of Jesus Christ! can be heard at the end of the sketch, but it was the talk of a PC environment and Sammy lovers that alerted the pond that it was in prime reptile turf. 

Of course there are many other Mitchell and Webb sketches to be found on YouTube, which always reminds the pond of a sad and forlorn Mitchell mourning the drop in DVD sales, what with the cash badly needed to fund the show, only for all the sketches to turn up on YouTube and on torrents ...

The pond is now feeling quite limber, but after the workout with the weights - remember, start with light kgs and do many reps - a warm-down session should always include a few cartoons. 

No doubt the immortal Rowe and the infallible Pope will return to help the pond understand the reptile mindset, but in the meantime, there are other cartoons ...

Like this one, preparing the pond for nattering "Ned" and the bromancer, and the likely war with China by Australia Day using our new nukular subs ...

That's almost Animal Farm Orwellian, what with Xi going full fascist dictator in Honkers, as we Sloanders like to say. 

And there are other reassuring cartoons, knowing that we have reptiles at the controls ...

Yes, and that's why the pond will be surrounding itself with Killer Creighton and the dog botherer ... and what could go wrong?

And if confused messaging is going to be all the go in the New Year, settle back and enjoy a post-New Year feast of left overs ...

 

Somehow that reminds the pond of the reptiles' love of Clive's cash in the reptile claw. 

Yes, it's going to be a great year ... full of freedumb ... and climate science ... and all the other reptile memes ...

 

Onwards, to freedumb with the sold out reptiles!