In which the pond has to scratch around to find a reptile worth hitting over the net ...

 

 

Friday and the hole in the bucket man gone missing, and some fuss about a tennis player, and so the pond was reduced to a survey of the reptile offerings ... so low, so quickly, and the pond was getting better hits when scribbling about Gundagai, and perhaps should be scribbling about the hail storm that struck the town the other day ...

But no, the pond is back on herpetological studies duty, and first up, must note that the reptiles are still taking Clive's cash in the claw, and so the cry is freedumb, freedumb on the tree killer edition ...

 

Can't get enough Freedumb when it means cash in the reptile claw ...

Boring ... so what about below the fold?

 

The mutton Dutton out and about behind the paywall? 

Well it's what you expect of a Pravda down under or a sanitised Hong Kong newspaper, thanks to emperor Xi, and perhaps once upon a time the pond would have transcribed it for benefit of taxpayers deprived of the thoughts of their fearless political leaders - unless they donated a shekel to chairman Rupert's mafia-style combine - but not today ...

And to fill the gap left by Henry, hole in bucket fixer, the reptiles offered up a couple of lizard Oz editorials ...

The top of the lizard Oz digital edition had the pond pushing the reptile content panic button hard ...

 

The pond has already pilgered Sir Tony Bleagh and as for the rest? 

The pond has got nothing to add to what Malcolm Farr said yesterday in the Graudian when it comes to the matter of the strollout man and the tennis star, in full here, and ending this way ...

...His keenness to be seen as the tough guy with Djokovic – once it was explained to him it unavoidably was his responsibility and not that of the Victorian premier, Dan Andrews – was the first sign that border protection would be ramped up.
His problem is that even insulting and exploiting the world’s best tennis player will not be sufficient distraction from the growing confusion over the response to Omicron as it overwhelms towns and cities.
Morrison’s admission that he gets rapid tests for free, while thunderously objecting to other Australians getting the same deal, quite simply stinks.
If it’s not the hypocrisy or the deliberate misleading, it’s the broad policy failure of the federal government’s Covid response.
There is only one tennis player being deported.
There are thousands of Australians every day discovering they have been infected by the virus, and many others unable to get tested but who know they are stricken.
None of them will feel safer because Novak Djokovic has been thrown out of town.
 

It just goes to show what can happen to a reptile once he leaves News Corp. Farr was always one of the saner ones, a kind of Chris Wallace in the fold, but now he scribbles for the Graudian he can be both sensible and human …

Sadly those who stay in the fold still retain an astonishing capacity for fluff-gathering, navel-gazing and bum-sniffing, though they only sniff lizard Oz approved bums ... which brings the pond back to the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

Incidentally, the pond was asked a riddle the other day. What's the difference between Chris Cuomo helping out and advising his bro, and Hannity helping out and advising his bro? Yep, Hannity's still got a gig ... because shameless pandering is the reptile way ...

Oh by the way, readers will also have noted that it's all the fault of the Victorian government, apparently now in the business of offering, then denying, federal visas ... how strange that one was issued, knowing that it would later be retracted ...

 

Tough love eh?

Well at least there have been a few winner memes ... with this one widely noted ... well played Titus ...

Speaking of tough love, the lizard Oz editorialist had plenty to spare ...

 

 

Why the obsession with Victorian stats?

Well it was Iron Pyrites' standard Dom that set the herd immunity ball rolling, and the reptiles don't seem  to be reminded of his brilliance, or the current state of NSW ... or the rest of Australia, suffering thanks to the brilliant Dom and the strollout skills of SloMo, who clearly looked to Britain, saw Boris lying brilliantly, and wondered why he couldn't be as brilliant ...

 

 

Yep, there's your tough love in action. Suck it up folks, and remember, whatever you do, don't mention the brilliance of Dom ... or the strollout man ...

And so to the most bizarre of the reptile offerings this day ... undiluted hysteria ...

 

 

 

Don't get too excited by that talk of a cruel state. There'll be no mention of the refugees ... 

 

 

 

It's really just a chance for Mirko to get his rocks off bashing comrade Dan, and for the reptiles to slip in some clickbait videos ...

 

Meanwhile, things are splendid in NSW, thanks to Iron Pyrites' standard Dom and the strollout king ... cf Malcolm Farr ... now time for another clickbait video, carefully neutered by the pond ... with only the rolling ball preserved in aspic ...

 

Perhaps before cranking up the outrage another notch, another meme?

 

 

And so to the final gobbet, and yes, the shameless reptiles managed to slip in yet another clickbait video at the very end ... 

 

Or put it another way...

...His keenness to be seen as the tough guy with Djokovic – once it was explained to him it unavoidably was his responsibility and not that of the Victorian premier, Dan Andrews – was the first sign that border protection would be ramped up.
His problem is that even insulting and exploiting the world’s best tennis player will not be sufficient distraction from the growing confusion over the response to Omicron as it overwhelms towns and cities.
Morrison’s admission that he gets rapid tests for free, while thunderously objecting to other Australians getting the same deal, quite simply stinks.
If it’s not the hypocrisy or the deliberate misleading, it’s the broad policy failure of the federal government’s Covid response.
There is only one tennis player being deported.
There are thousands of Australians every day discovering they have been infected by the virus, and many others unable to get tested but who know they are stricken.
None of them will feel safer because Novak Djokovic has been thrown out of town.

Or perhaps put it yet another way ...

Or perhaps ...

...there’s nothing obviously marginalised about a millionaire sportsman arrogantly demanding the right to jet into a country suffering record infection rates in hopes of lifting yet another lucrative trophy. Australians have endured restrictions so draconian that thousands of them stranded abroad at the start of the pandemic weren’t even allowed back into their own country. Djokovic has less in common with an agonised British care worker, on minimum wage, facing the sack if they don’t get the jab, than with a frequently more middle-class form of anti-vaxxer who slips under the radar. He is a believer in “natural” healing who once suggested that polluted water could be cleansed by the power of positive thinking, insisting that science had proved “that molecules in the water react to our emotions”. He’s entitled to hold whatever wacky beliefs he likes, of course, but he doesn’t have a God-given right to escape the professional consequences of them, and still less does he have the right to impose consequences on others. The clout he wields as an international sportsman, meanwhile, makes it all the more important that he be seen to follow the rules.
“One rule for them, another for the rest of us” remains the single most toxic charge of the pandemic, whether levelled against Downing Street aides tucking into convivial Christmas wine and cheese at a time when ordinary mortals weren’t even allowed to see their own parents, or against big-shot Hollywood names granted entry to Australia for film and TV work when most people were barely allowed to leave their own homes.

And given how power of positive thinking irritating all this has been, the pond would like to offer a genuine oddity as a closer ... with a Prof apparently unaware he's contributing to the lizard Oz and the chairman's media empire, including the likes of Hannity ...

 

 

First up, is it wrong of the pond to note an uncanny resemblance between the good Prof and that character in the dreary Potter movies? 

At this point, the pond should confess that it never finished the series, in fact it never made it past the first outing ... even though in the pond's world they were freely available.

Can all the talk about badly written but popular fiction be translated to movies? 

Certainly ... is there a George Lucas in the house? A discussion of galactic trade wars anyone?

Perhaps a cheesy Spielberg fucking over West Side Story? And if that doesn't suit, perhaps a Ron Howard show? Too many to count there ...

And if all that fails, how about a treatise on Cats and the musical mindset that produced that marvel?

Sorry, sorry, on with the Prof, getting extremely agitated about the likes of Mirko getting extremely agitated, with wild-eyed talk of draconian states ...

 

The ideological mindset? What the fuck is the good Prof on? Does he realise that he's scribbling for the lizard Oz, kissing cousin of Faux Noise, and so at one with Ron and Trumpists everywhere?

 

 

Sorry, sorry, back to the Prof ...

But Prof, Prof, please, there has been some terrible suffering in recent times ...

 

Okay, time to finish up with the Prof ...

 

 

Thank the long absent lord, we might have lost the hole in the bucket man, but we still get references to Plato and Aristotle, so relevant when discussing the mango Mussolini, News Corp and Hannity looking out for his bro ...

Dammit all, the pond will persist, must insist, regrets nothing ...

And so to sign off, the pond notes that there has been a Wilcox retrospective going down at that other place, and some of them remain remarkably relevant. 

Remember, in reptile la la land, a tennis player is a fit subject for all sorts of blather, but whatever you do, Don't Look Up, never look up, it's wrong to look up ...