In which the pond hits a snag and is shut out of Mount Olympus, just as the keen Keane posed a challenge ...

 

 

The pond feels it has reached some kind of peak with the adorable Dore and the larrikin Lachy - could reptile delusion climb any higher, and the pond with it? - but the pond had hopes of seeing how the reptiles would rise to the challenge posed by the keen Keane in Crikey yesterday ... (paywall affected)

Meantime, there’s a fascinating test for the press gallery ahead. The gallery has worked hard to churn out more than 370 articles about Kimberley Kitching since her tragic passing — or about 19 a day. On that basis, we should be swimming in a sea of tens of thousands of words about Fierravanti-Wells and Morrison for weeks to come — her revelations about how Morrison and his cronies engineered the overturning of Michael Towke’s preselection in Cook, his alleged racist views about Towke’s background, the briefing of journalists (later the basis for successful law suits by Towke) using material supplied, Fierravanti-Wells says, by Labor’s Sam Dasytari, and the whole saga of Morrison’s attempts to halt rank-and-file preselections in the NSW Liberal Party.
Plenty of material to work with there, you’d think.

So how did the gallery respond? Well Granny went crying to little Johnny ...

 

 

 

 

Oh diddums did nasty Fierravanti-Wells say naughty things about the notorious liar from the Shire?

Yep, quick, suddenly make a move from mean girls blather to little Jonny talking about bile ...

L'Age noticed a little storm in a little box down the page ...

 

 

 

The Hun and the Terror knew nothing about it ...

 

 

And as for the reptiles of the lizard Oz?

 

 

Sure, they were still taking Klive's kash in their klaw, but it seems that the time to pay attention to fundamentalist Catholics of the old school had long gone ...

 

Et tu reptiles? The keen Keane's challenge to hand, and all the talk of mean girls and mean boys just disappeared up the old reptile fundament?

The pond did a check of the digital edition, to see if Fierravanti-Wells had made it to the top of the digital page, ma ...

 

 

Nope, not a whisper, not a sigh, just petulant Peta banging on in the usual way ...

Only The Canberra Times paid attention and answered the keen Keane's challenge ...

 

 

 

 

 

Wow ... and they threw in a CSIRO scientist blowing the whistle on a climate gag ... it was the little national capital rag that could ...

 

The pond did the reptiles the courtesy of checking out the reptiles' comments section ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nope, no raging at the fading of the light, no celebration, contemplation or acknowledgment. 

 

No farewell or final last words from the Senator ... just Simon saying, apparently unaware that fellow traveling with a Senator might seem to undermine his objectivity ... you know, the wondrous objectivity talked up by the adorable Dore ... and there was Killer Creighton, still ranting about Covid and masks and all that jazz...

The pond felt a vast ennui, because only in the triptych of terror did the reptiles take note of the parting Senator's words ...

 

Yep, not a thought for the truth of the words, just written down and written off as a gift to Labor ...

All the same, the pond was prepared to give it a go, but struck a snag ...

 

The reptiles had devised a new paywall, and the pond had been locked out!

 

First up, the pond felt a tremendous surge of relief. An early mark!

 

Being a paranoid, the pond knew the reason, and it was personal ... having mocked the adorable Dore and the larrikin dinkum Lachy, the order had gone out to kill the pond ...

On the upside, this meant that the pond could print all to hand of petulant Peta without upsetting the pond readership ...

 

What's not to like about just two lines from petulant Peta?

 

And what about Killer?

 

 

 

Eek, the Killer really did start by banging on about masks, and in the first few lines too, but thanks to the revised reptile desire to live in splendid isolation, the pond had no way of doing a deeper Freudian inspection ... some sort of consoling therapy - perhaps try on a mask for a minute, and then build up over the weeks and the years to an hour of cops and robbers ... though the pond did pause to note the massive incongruity of the reptile illustration involving Hope, because the pond has no hope for Killer ...

So that was it, and did the pond feel good or what ...

 

Those who wanted a serve of the Senator could always turn to Crikey, paywall affected and dead to the pond unless it comes in handy ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

That'll do, Davey boy, that'll do, that'll fill the reptile gap nicely ...

 

And so to a Rowe for the day ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

And as the pond had no need for cartoons as interstitials to break up the reptiles and make them more digestible, it's straight on to an infallible Pope ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then the pond decided to do what it did recently when the reptiles got the sulks and bunged on a do, and imitated Greta Garbo and shouted out the world "I want to be a loam" ... check out how things were going in Gundagai ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmm, not much progress ...

 

 

 

 

How about Goulburn? Has it got the slowest growing tree or what?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those who missed it, that humble growth was planted on 24th May 1969, by Lady Cutler of all people, to commemorate the centenary of the opening of the railway to the town ...

 

Now here's a snap to make the reptiles proud and stand to attention ... 

 

 

 

 

Say what you will about the squatters and their merino sheep, they knew how to lock up the crims in style ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally as railways have been mentioned, a note about Albury for train spotters ... 

 

The station's legendary days involving different rail sizes are long gone, but the station is still there ... and Tim's ghost haunts the corridors ...

 

 

 

 

As for the pond, who knows what the morrow will bring. 

 

If the pond can't get past the reptile paywall, it might go into recess, or it might keep blathering away brightly on other matters. 

 

No matter,with the adorable Dore and the larrikin Lachy, so dinkum true blue it hurts, the pond for a moment spent time with the gods in Mount Olympus, and that's more than enough ...

In which the pond again plunges into the heart of News Corp darkness ...

 

 

 

And so to another proud late arvo pond presentation of the delusional best from the heavies at News Corp ...

But why late arvo? Well when a News Corp heavy gets rolling, they never shut up ...

 

 

Actually the pond would like to start with a basic question. 

Are you an Australian citizen? If you're not, then all this blather about "our way of life" and "we" and "us" and such like is a tad problematic.

We know your dad is a Yank. We know that News Corp is a Yank company sheltered in Delaware. We know that the UK and the United States don't do dual citizenship. 

We know you were born in London, but you're the son of an American. We know you like living in Australia, but are you an Australian citizen? You're the son of an American, and truth to tell, the way that American corporation laws work, it would be problematic for you to take over the empire if you happened to be an actual Australian citizen.

Okay, so maybe you're not interested in the empire - odd, but the pond will go with it. Did you forsake American citizenship to become dinky di, and so put yourself in the position to blather on about Australia with citizenship certificate in hand?

The pond took a cursory look around the full to overflowing intertubes and couldn't come up with a definitive answer ... just a lot of blather about you having lived in the US, the UK and Australia.

You know, it's one thing for an Australian to talk about national characteristics and qualities, but what if you happen to be a turncoat Yank of the same kind as your father, selling out your nationality for a mess of pottage and a corporate empire?

Frankly the way this information isn't transparent, but rather seems to be deliberately opaque, reminds the pond of the dodgy brothers, but do carry on ...

 

 

Um, perhaps the pond didn't make it clear enough. Your father is a bloody Yank, and sold out his citizenship in this country in the most cynical way for a mess of pottage. 

Steeliness, in this context, is a good word, because it requires a certain steeliness to abandon your country of birth to join Scrooge McDuck in pursuit of wealth, but apparently expect no one to notice it as you rabbit on about Russell Drysdale and such like ... 

Now on with more of that supposedly inclusive blather about "we" ...

 

Then comes a sublime moment of complete unawareness of what Faux Noise has been peddling ...

 

 

 

 

You do realise that Tuckyo Carlson is one of your employees? You do realise Faux Noise has done much to support the wannabe dictator mango Mussolini? You do realise that the damage done to the American psyche through unrelenting attacks on its core values and via the destructive rewriting of its history is very real, and very much the work of your corporation, as it shamelessly pursues wealth above everything else?

You do realise you're little better than Henry Ford, who was very much on board with Herr Adolf?

You do realise how offensive you sound, how irritating, how problematic?

No? Oh, that myopia suggests you might well be an American ...

 

Um, actually what passes for journalism in News Corp is an ugly form of activism, and you show just how that activisim works by misrepresenting the 1619 project, while incidentally being apparently unaware of the deeply structural racism that runs through the United States, your adopted country...

But then what would a rich boy with silver spoon in mouth know when it comes to being black in America? Or which side Fox News was on when it came to Charlottesville ...

Oh wait, is the United States just an adopted country, or the one you have sworn loyalty to as an American citizen? 

Or are you proudly an Australian citizen? 

Please get back to the pond on that one, before you attempt to recruit the pond into your vision of an Australian identity that means the pond must line up with the most reprehensible of reptiles ...

And then comes the cheekiest image of all, the storming of the Capitol, as if that had nothing to do with Faux Noise and News Corp ... and their beloved mango Mussolini, attempting an actual coup ...

 

At this point, what with Gallipoli being dragged into the mess - when Iowa Jima might be more relevant  - can the pond just politely suggest that you get fucked, or perhaps just fuck off? Or take a flying fuck at yourself?

Consider it a form of laconic Australian good humour, with best wishes.

We don't really need the sort of shit that goes down in the United States thanks to News Corp ...

 

 

 

And now on with the horror show ...

Not the old fucking Covid riff. We've had more than enough of that from the likes of Killer Creighton ...

 

There's an abundant amount of evidence that Fox News reporting and/or commenting helped make the response to the pandemic worse, and killed a large number of Americans ... thank the long absent lord we avoided a lot of that nonsense in Australia ...

 

Information? Hang Fauci is information?

 

 

 

So on to the Vlad line about cancel culture ...

Oh not simplistic simpleton Sharri? That's the bridge you're going to die on?

 

 

But yeah, we're back to peddling the Wuhan routine ... suggesting that Lachlan has swallowed too much of the company cordial ...

 

 

Um, it actually happens all the time here. You know, there was supposed to be a great turnaround last year at News Corp when it came to accepting the science relating to the changing climate. 

And yet the reptiles go on peddling climate science denialism, business as usual, in a most insouciant way...

 

 

And so back to more blather about "our way of life", courtesy of an American owned company ...

 

No, black isn't white, and the freedom to disagree doesn't unify the pond with News Corp. All it means is that the pond can tell News Corp to fuck off ... though the pond will admit that it's tiring, and there's a Sisyphean sense that the task can never be completed ...

 

 

 

 

And so to a final word bite, and the source of all this blather ...

 

All the Aussie freedoms we cherish? So you are an actual Australian citizen, and News Corp is moving back to Australia?

Centre for the Australian way of life, featuring an American corporation headed by man who ditched his citizenship because he got a good sniff of a dollar or three? Please spare the pond the hypocrisy, rich though it is ...

And now please allow the pond to wash out its mouth with a few completely irrelevant New Yorker cartoons ...

 

 

 

In which the pond takes a number of detours before ending up with a good Groaning and a fierce Slapping ...

 

The pond hesitated about publishing at the usual time this day ... how many punters might then miss the adorable Dore doing dorable things, as he inevitably slipped off to another land above the faraway tree?

Not to worry, this arvo the pond will feature Lachlan in full flight, a sight as adorable as the Dore ...

Meanwhile, if you can ignore the deeds of the sociopathic Vlad in Ukraine - a big if - there's much to amuse and distract in today's proceedings.

As an aside, the pond should start by noting that finally the ABC's iView is dead to the pond. 

The only tragedy is that the pond's occasional use of the service was so rare that the pond's abandoning ship won't even show up as a blip, but bottom line, the pond isn't interested in giving its personal information to a broadcaster, especially one that's supposed to provide open and free access to the taxpayers that fund it...

Now on to the pleasures. 

What about John Crace, in as fine a form as the pond has seen in recent times ...

The denial was near total. You’d have thought that Boris Johnson would have had plenty of time to prepare a response to the Metropolitan police’s decision to issue the first bang-to-rights 20 fixed-penalty notices. After all, they can hardly have come as a surprise. Only it seems that everything is a surprise to the Suspect – or the Criminal as we may soon have to call him – these days.
So much so that he’s still not sure if he actually went to a party during lockdown even though the police have concluded that loads of people did. Even now he’s swearing blind that no one did anything wrong in No 10. The police must have made a mistake. If it wasn’t already before, it really is now one rule for him and another for the rest of us.
Imagine the scale of the delusion. It had been a lovely sunny day and “Party Marty”, aka Martin Reynolds, had suggested that the Downing Street staff get a bit pissed together in the garden after work. Just to cheer everyone up a bit and to thank them for all their hard work. And he had even been sure to ask everyone to bring their own booze because he had been thoughtful enough to remember that the Suspect was quite mean and didn’t want to have to pay for people to get trashed. Party Marty had even sent around an email confirming all the details.
But for some reason Boris had not only failed to read the email, he had totally forgotten there had been a party arranged for that evening. So when he had wandered outside with Carrie, he had been totally baffled to discover the garden of No 10 full of people, along with trestle tables weighed down with food and drink. Obviously he had been too polite to ask what everyone was doing there, so he just went along with it. As you do. And it goes without saying that it had also completely slipped the Suspect’s mind that he had introduced legislation preventing people socialising and that parties were illegal.
Now it gets positively spooky. Because the same thing kept happening time and time again and each time the prime minister forgot about the pandemic. There were at least 12 parties in Downing Street – Johnson attended at least six of them – and the Suspect was somehow convinced that no parties had ever taken place. And, bizarrely, still is.

And then there was that mean girl out and about in assorted places ...

 

 

 

Of course it was downplayed by the reptiles, and it is a tad bizarre that Fierravanti-Wells only seemed to discover these truths after being knifed in the back, but all the same ...

“Morrison is not fit to be prime minister,” she said. “And Hawke certainly, is not fit to be a minister.”
She said Mr Morrison had a long history as a back-stabber.
“His actions conflict with his portrayal as a man of faith; he has used his so-called faith as a marketing advantage,” she said.
“We learnt the leader [of] his Hillsong Church group was a mentor to Morrison ... Houston recently stood down as head of Hillsong because he was charged with sexual offences,” she said.
“It is noteworthy that in the past, Houston flew top cover for his paedophile father,” she said, in comments protected by Parliamentary privilege.
Mr Houston resigned as a global senior pastor after he was found to have breached Hillsong’s moral code in his behaviour with two women.
He had previously stepped aside from church leadership roles to fight charges of concealing information that may have been material to the prosecution of his father Frank Houston.
Mr Morrison, who praised Mr Houston in his maiden speech and attempted to have him invited as an official guest at a state dinner at the White House in the US in 2019, immediately sought to distance himself from his mentor, saying he had not been a member of Hillsong in 15 years.
“Morrison is not interested in the rules-based order, it is his way or the highway - an autocrat, a bully who has no moral compass,” she said.
Senator Fierravanti-Wells also claimed to be aware of several statutory declarations testifying that a candidate originally beat Mr Morrison for preselection in Cook before it was overturned.
“I’m advised that there are several statutory declarations to attest to racial comments made by Morrison at the time that ‘we can’t have a Lebanese person in Cook’,” she said.

And then in the Graudian came the rotting fish head ...

 

 

 

 Oh it's all too rich, what with the mean girl talking of the suffering of mean girls, and not a reptile in sight to berate those fiends who tortured mean girls ...

Now on with other reptile business, and naturally the reptiles were in raptures about the budget ...

The hagiography was extreme, with nattering "Ned" forgetting all that nasty talk of debt to occupy the top of the digital page, ma ...

Sorry, that cartoon just leaked into the pond's coverage ... and then there was the triptych of terror ...

 

Good old bouffant one, diligently pumping up the love, and down in the comments section, the tremendously objective simplistic Simon was also at work ... (how's Bid?)

 

 

Ah, a shot at a miracle and finding the balance ... and what a masterpiece of a budget in reptile la la land.

Sadly the pond decided to dodge the lot of them, and even had to let the bromancer go, with a sob and a tear, because the bromancer getting hysterical about disasters is always a treat ... 

But why not "Ned" and the budget? Frankly this headline summed up the pond's feelings in a line ...

 

Yes, it was as naked and as cynical an exercise as that ... but no need to dwell on Murphy brooding about it here, because the pond really wanted to note the full-on hagiographic pictorial feast in the tree killer edition ...

 

 

 

Shouldn't that have been the cost of bribing voters? 

And as for that full length portrait, the pond much preferred the immortal Rowe offering to be found here ...

Before moving along, the pond would like to award a medal to humble Sophie. It must be hard yards to transcribe the thoughts of your master, but someone has to do it, and it's a living ...

 

 

Talk about a technicolor yawn ...but that allows the pond to promote its special late arvo edition featuring the thoughts of the Chairman's spawn.

And now with so much time and space wasted, just a few token contributions, with the Groaner held over to do a good groaning about the budget ...

Amazingly it was a very short groaning, which allowed the pond the room to slip in a Wilcox ...

 

 

And so to a final gobbet of groaning by Dame Groan ...

 

A house of cards? But it's party time ...

As a bonus, there was just room for Dame Slap doing a bitch-slapping in patented Will Smith style ... and eek, the object of Dame Slap's fear and loathing has short hair ...

 

 

Naturally Dame Slap is all for creepy old guys roaming around taking snaps of her ... and of course she approves of the Daily Snail, a sophisticated, elegant operation which could show the reptiles a thing or two about sleaze ...

What's most interesting about all this is not Wilkinson and her carry-on, but the amount of bile that seems to lurk in Dame Slap, gushing out every so often like the sort of geyser you get from squeezing a large, messy pimple ...

Of course Dame Slap loves the pap, and gives the pap a run, because what could be a better way to a republic than sending Diana careening into a wall?

Why is all this so rich? Well you have to travel a few years back, before Dame Slap was up for a krogering, back when she travelled with bankers ...

Crikey is of course dead to the pond, except when it comes in handy ... 

Yes, it's the snout in trough league taking shots at people for having snouts in trough ...

Well you won't find any attempt at humble sanctimony or righteousness from Dame Slap. She's going to stay the bitch from hell, possibly hoping to end up some day in hell (is it worse than being up for a krogering?). Oh if only that wasn't a figment of the Xian imagination ...

And so to end with an infallible Pope ... celebrating an infinite capacity for bribery and corruption ...