In which the pond turns to the bromancer and Babones for distraction before the big late arvo trip into the heart of reptile darkness ...

 

 

 

The pond is wildly excited by what it will offer in a special edition late arvo slot, nothing less than the essence of reptiles, the heart of darkness, so perforce this morning's outing must be mundane and perfunctory ...

First comes the ritual observation that the reptiles are still taking Klive's kash in the klaw ...

 

 

 

Next a survey of the field, and the available options ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sigh, just the usual, though the pond is sorry to say that it won't be joining ancient, venerable Troy ...

 

 

Aeons, or at least decades of blathering about debt, and suddenly the reptiles and their readers must turn on a dime and forget all about it?

Easier said than done for the pond, but tempting as a trip to ancient Troy would be, the pond can never walk past the warrior fantasies of the bromancer ...

 

Oh fucketty fuck, not Compass polling, and John Anderson ... two of the great doofuses of these times... and apparently not a thought given as to the how of the fleeing.

It would be easy of course ... the pond would simply hope in the Mazda and drive to Tasmania, knowing that the sturdy vehicle would handle the choppy waves easily ...

Of course there are precedents as noted at the NAA in a pdf...

 

But they fled south, a town like Alice and all that. Does that count as fleeing, or should one hop on a plane and fly directly to London to be a decent, properly qualified flee-er?

What if we were invaded from the north? 

Would fleeing to the south count, and turn us all into cowardly custard greenies? 

Even worse, what if the invasion started in the deep south, and people fled Melbourne for warmer climes, like the deep north? And then dressed it up as a vacation, what with the way that heat helps with arthritis.

What if eastern staters tried a quick trip across the Nullarbor, or vice versa? Would getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, and out of gas, qualify as fleeing?

The pond should note before moving on that the NAA tried to put the best gloss on the fleeing ...

 

 

 

 But now back to the bromancer stupidly taking John Anderson and Compass polling seriously ...

 

Even making allowances for methodological ambiguity?

Does that also allow for methodological stupidity and the sheer pointlessness of it all? Why is the pond bothering? There are so many what ifs to the what ifs that you'd have to be a complete idiot to join in the game, and a complete tosser to try to extract meaning  from it ...

Oh wait, it's John Anderson, the world's most compleat tosser ... who thinks cadets might be the answer to it all ... and so to the homily from the armchair warrior ... and as you'd expect it's all the fault of postmodern ideology ...

 

There's something more than vaguely indecent about this 'what if' fantasising and wanking while Ukraine is in the middle of a war... an armchair game for armchair warriors, easily played by conducting a rampantly stupid and meaningless poll, then extracting armchair warrior rantings from it ...

It's as if the reptiles must fantasise and concoct their own post-apocalyptic event, as a distraction from the current catastrophic behaviour of a sociopath ...

You know, invent their own kind of Red Dawn down under... full of fruity denunciations of anticipated quislings and forelock tuggers and pathetic greenies ...

 

 

 

 

And yet not a single mention of the quislings, saboteurs and lickspittle fellow travellers of the Tuckyo Rose kind? The sort that litter Faux Noise and have the means and the motivation to do a little fleeing...

Meanwhile, there's a real war going down, and brave warriors heading to the battlefield, and only the infallible Pope to hand to celebrate ...

 

 

 

And so to the standard pond bonus, bearing in mind that in the late arvo slot the very heart of reptile darkness will be revealed ...

Yes, the bonus only a barebones Babones, but it will have to do ... and what do you know, it's another survey ...

 

 

 

Frankly the pond feels deeply uncomfortable staring at the Babones for too long, but perhaps that's the pond's fault and perhaps the pond should just look away ...

But no, there's nothing like a good ogling and licking of the lips, and so the pond will continue to harass itself ... and now how soon can we get to the prof's narrative about a moral panic narrative ...

 

 

Yes, yes, all that, but looking at it from another angle, isn't the matter of sexual assault something to take seriously, whether on or off campus? You know, instead of distracting by quibbling about a survey, take seriously what might be going down?

 

 

 

 

 

 

No? Too tricky? Easier to imagine that somehow universities are venerable cages for profs of the Babones kind to hide in,immune from things going down in the rest of the community? Easier to pick holes in a survey because profs of the Babones kind prefer distractions as their narrative?

Luckily there's just one gobbet of dissembling to go and it's a short one...

 

Usually at the end of this sort of guff, you'd get the line "much has been done, much remains to be done" - the pond's immortal sponsored doc line - but instead there's a whine about the absence of a line in a survey that the prof in any case thinks is totally useless.

Why whine and moan about a breakdown of the sample by gender, when all that would lead to is further harassment by the prof ... which tells you everything you need to know about the prof, and his governance standards and commitment to the pursuit of sexual harassers and those inclined to sexual assault ...

Finally. a report on what the pond won't be covering this day. and it wasn't just ancient Troy, because the reptiles were at it again, with the reformed, recovering feminist, the Oreo, joining in the baying pack ...

Yes, the pond is aware that a reformed, recovering feminist piece beginning "in the real world" must be exceptionally fruity and wondrous, but the pond is deeply tired about going there...

Instead, the pond would just like to note another lament about mean girls ...

 

 

 

 

Why don't the reptiles care? Why isn't the reformed, recovering feminist ranting and raving? 

Well that's just the way it goes in politics, a knife in the back in the dark and move on, and besides consider the victim, thanks to Crikey, dead to the pond except when it isn't ...

 

 

 

 

Thank the long absent lord for mean girls, have they done the country a service or what ...

And so to end with the usual immortal Rowe, because the pond will do its late arvo slog into the heart of reptile darkness without the usual comforters ... though there's more Rowe here, no doubt helping ancient Troy forget that wicked talk about debt ...