In which the bromancer has a nuke fit and "Ned" provides the usual Everest to climb ...

 

 

 

The pond is a shallow, slow thinker and it was only this morning that it realised that the bromancer is a manic depressive.

 Perhaps not in his personal life - the pond disapproves of psychological analysis at a distance - but certainly in his scribblings.

Only a short time ago, it was all Joe Biden's fault. Today the bromancer has succumbed to nuclear hysteria, and has offered up a jolly good nuking nightmare ...

 

 

This is a speculative game of whataboutisms. What ifs and buts and so on and so forth. It seems designed to scare the readership silly, but then the pond was recently reminded that the bromancer loves to fling words about with wild abandon.

Crikey is dead to the pond, but it does provide a good ancient example ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See? The bromancer just flings around a few words in an hysterical way and there goes Eric Campbell getting all snooty and agitated and hurt and suchlike ... when all the bromancer was doing was pouring the usual swill into the trough for the readership. 

 

Would whining Eric accept that? Of course not ... and there's your problem with the ABC right there ...

 

 

 

Looking back it's funny of course. These days News Corp is the home of totalitarian lovers, what with the worship of the mango Mussolini, and the deeds and words of Tuckyo Carlson and Laura "Seoul City Sue" Ingraham ...

But enough already with the digression, it's back to the what ifs and the hysteria ...

 

You see? It's there in that classic billy buttism: "None of this is to suggest that nuclear was is likely ..." Butt, billy goat, but ... "it's vastly more likely" ...

It goes without saying that the pond really doesn't share the view that the bromaner is deranged, under great pressure, deeply paranoid, isolated and his mind full of the treachery of his kissing cousins at Faux Noise.

He just enjoys lathering up fear and anxiety ... and at some fair speculative length ...

 

Consider another scenario? There's the rub of it, there's nothing like war gaming to get the bromancer going ... and going ... and going ...

 

It's true that the pond also enjoys a good scare. The pond was around, though young, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, when the adults in the room were terrified, and the legacy is the pond's favourite movie ...

 

The pond didn't learn the love the bomb, but did learn to love the movie and the sort of black irony and dark humour that it presented ... in much the same way that it can now read the bromancer having a nervous nelly nuking fit in an almost zen Buddhist way ... because if the bomb doesn't get the pond, then climate science is very likely to get the young (sorry, the pond will be out of here before the worst of it) ... and then you don't need to fear the bomb, you just need to fear the climate science denying reptiles ...

 

The truth is, nobody, least of all the bromancer, has any idea how things will play out in the coming days, weeks, months and years, and the bromancer has been wrong so many times before on so many matters that the pond pays no need to him ...

After all, if we took seriously his belief in an imaginary friend, we should welcome the impending end times and the rapture, and look forward to an eternity of bliss. Well perhaps not the pond, the pond has been naughty, and the way the bromancer is carrying on, it sounds like he's been naughty too ...

 

Now as if all that nuking hysteria wasn't enough, today is the day when the pond must climb the Everest known as nattering "Ned" ...

Today is a most peculiar affair. Partly there's boosterism for a colleague's book - ancient Troy has a splendid volume to hand and "Ned" has been given the duty of hawking it, nay, flogging it to death with a limp lettuce leaf - but the pond also detected another agenda, though it's a bloody long haul to confirm it ...

 

First of all the pond should note that it's another bout of what ifs, and alternative histories. 

Except for the need to boost ancient Troy's book, "Ned" might just as easily have scribbled an interminable column headed "Billy Hughes would never have been prime minister today" ... with as much meaning and purpose ...

But what is the bonus purpose the pond mentioned? That's revealed in the next gobbet ...

 

You see? In other ancient times, gods strode the earth, and now you have mere mortals posturing in front of some wall art just down the road from where the pond lives ...

Strange that the reptiles led with the jab shot when they had other choices in the archive, even closer to the pond ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps the reptiles couldn't handle the nudity, but the point remains the same ... Albo is no Hawkie, and why would anyone vote for him when they can vote for a man who speaks in tongues to imaginary friends, and never holds hoses? It's a subtle message, but when you start looking, it seems to be everywhere in reptile la la land ...

Now on with flogging that book ... and who better to speak about not being troubled by fucking other women?

 

 

 

Ah ancient times, good times, speaking of assorted rats given to rooting away ... shafted her, and then shafted her book ...

 

 

Note well that talk about failing any Independent Commission Against Corruption type investigation. There isn't such a body federally, and the pond is routinely handed reports of the deeds of rorting federal ministers (is there a beefy boofhead Angus in the house?) and nothing happens to any of them, because pork barreling is a way of life and so is dipping snout in trough ...

 

 

 

 

 

What a treasure he is, the gift that keeps on giving ... but back to flogging that book ...

 

You see? Thar she blows again: "... contemporary Labor had drifted away from the vision he and Keating had entertained".

We all know what that means ...it's about time to remind the readership again that there are now gnats where once there were giants ... and at end of gobbet, we'll get another snap that proves it ...

 

You see? A gnat trying to coattail on the back of a colossus, or at least a fit subject for a good book flogging ...

That reminds the pond ... there is one other matter the pond would like to slip in before "Ned's" final gobbet. 

You see, the pond's dearly beloved was once approached to work with Hawke enterprises on matters Burmese, at a time when the country was at its most oppressed. It would have meant turning a blind eye and working with the worst of the worst and the pond's partner turned down the opportunity, and only later was it noted that this was no colossus in his business dealings post-politics ...

"They always disappoint you in the end", says Parker to Norman in The Wire, but truly "Ned's" natter never disappoints ... and once again the pond has managed to climb that Everest of words ...

 

Ah, the usual Golden Age guff ... usually spouted by ancient loons yearning for their youth ... and decoded, what it really means is that the reptiles are terrified that Albo might win and all the grifting, swill in trough and such like might head off to the other side ...

The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the Works and Days of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the Golden Race of humanity (Greek: χρύσεον γένος chrýseon génos)[ lived. After the end of the first age was the Silver, then the Bronze, after this the Heroic age, with the fifth and current age being Iron.
By extension, "Golden Age" denotes a period of primordial peace, harmony, stability, and prosperity. During this age, peace and harmony prevailed in that people did not have to work to feed themselves for the earth provided food in abundance. They lived to a very old age with a youthful appearance, eventually dying peacefully, with spirits living on as "guardians". Plato in Cratylus (397 e) recounts the golden race of humans who came first. He clarifies that Hesiod did not mean literally made of gold, but good and noble.
In classical Greek mythology, the Golden Age was presided over by the leading Titan Cronus, or Hawkie if you will. In some versions of the myth Astraea also ruled, and the reptiles roamed wild and free. She lived with men until the end of the Silver Age. But in the Bronze Age, when men became violent and greedy, she fled to the stars, where she appears as the constellation Virgo, holding the scales of Justice, or Libra.
European pastoral literary tradition often depicted nymphs and shepherds as living a life of rustic innocence and peace, set in Arcadia, a region of Greece that was the abode and center of worship of their tutelary deity, goat-footed Pan, who dwelt among them ...

And so on, but the pond is living in the time of Rowe, and so it's time to end the proceedings with a Rowe, with more to be found here ... with a reminder that while the actual figures might change now and then, nothing much changes ... and there's never really been a golden age, but there have been plenty of ages of lead ...