"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” She chortled in her joy ...

 

 

The pond woke up to some joyous news this day ...

Finally, the reptiles have got around to strengthening their paywall, and as a result, the easy access the pond has been forced to endure has gone ...

No doubt the new blocking will be unblocked by challenged geeks in goodly time, but this is Australia Day, and all the reptiles had on offer was SloMo blathering on about how good it all is, and Dame Slap getting agitated about the pesky, difficult blacks.

The pond had already thought of taking the day off, and this sealed the deal.

It's too early in the morning for the pond to worry about being blocked, or to attempt to do something about it. Instead, the pond has decided to take the day off, and might well go on hiatus for a while, indefinitely or forever. 

It goes without saying that the pond would rather tear out both eyes than toss the Chairman and son a shekel, but the pond will say it anyway. If the reptiles are unhappy with the pond insisting that people pay attention to them, the pond is extremely content to ignore them. The joke had long ago worn thin, and the pond had long ago grown tired of only having reptiles for company.

On the upside, this means that the reptiles have retreated further inside the castle, even deeper into their paranoia, and will spend their days more closely inspecting each other's navels. 

The pond regards this as something of a personal triumph ... though no doubt there were many others who took the easy route to check out the daily loonery on parade ...

Meanwhile, the soft paywall at the Nine papers continues, which is why the pond insists that readers don't go away empty handed, but instead take a Wilcox with them ...