In which the pond celebrates our Henry's resurrection and the return of Brendan the barbarian ...

 

 

Thank the long absent lord the Covid crisis is over and we can all get back to normal ...

The pond keeds, it keeds ...

What else? Well last night the pond will confess to dipping into the English parliament yet again, and truly the stock characters and caricatures and stereotypes on view were like watching Rex Harrison in a repeat of My Fair Lady ... and as always, the pond turned for its reward with a reading of evocative John Crace early in the morning ...

Even when he’s caught red-handed Boris Johnson can’t stop himself from lying. It’s pathological. Reckless, even. The closer he gets to the end of his political career, the more outlandish the untruth. There’s not even the doubtful glamour of burning up like some latter day Don Giovanni. At least the Don recognised his own failings and embraced his immorality. The Convict gives no sign of being able to manage the basics of distinguishing between right and wrong. His narcissism and entitlement is total. He lives in a bubble, enabled by the nodding donkeys who surround him.

Alas and alack, the pond can only nod in passing to Mozart and rich comedies elsewhere, because the pond is bound to its own wheel of fire, and tears of molten lead, known as herpetological studies ... 

At least there was no Klive kash in the klaw on view in the tree-killing edition this day, but don't worry, Klive has plenty of kash and the reptiles still keep their klaws. 

But this day, the klaws were busy sending out a shrieking Sharri to do a hit job, and a view of the top of the page ma, digital edition will suffice ...

 

 

 

Meanwhile, for a compare and contrast ...

 

 

Will the reptiles ever realise that the Labor party currently isn't in power, and so it's the Australian government which must be above all accountable? 

Probably not, though that other TG yarn at top of page reminded the pond of why it never took to tweeting ... so many tweets to retract ...

So he's not just an economics girlie man running up debt, he's a full-on girlie man, and this was his Captain's pick? Et tu Deves?

The comedy/irony was too rich and the pond already felt sated, even before dismissing the temptation of spending time with bubble-headed booby Claire denouncing Vlad the impaler. Yes, broken clocks, twice a day and all that ...

Besides, for that sort of stuff, the pond needs look no further than the hole in the bucket man, with our Henry returning from his Easter break refreshed and full of references, ready to give the pond a dose of Exodus ...

 

 

 

 

 

Well yes, indefensible, barbaric and criminal, though none of the criminals responsible for appalling acts in Syria have ever been held to account and nobody has much cared because it happened over there, perhaps because it's "over there" ... and then the pond and our Henry had a parting of the ways, which is not uncommon ...

 

 

Not a narrowly factual narrative? What a hoot, and why did our Henry have to bring Xianity into it, because that's part of the problem. 

It so happens that this morning a piece in The New Yorker dropped into the pond's in-tray, and it might be outside the paywall here. 

It led off with a familiar coupling of war criminal, with war criminal facilitator, enabler and accomplice ...

 

 

And so on and on, it was a lengthy piece, bewildered by the notion that Xians might be brutal ... and yet ...

There’s no question that Putin is using religion for political purposes, yet it is also true that Kirill has instrumentalized the invasion for Russian Orthodoxy’s purposes. Eastern Orthodox and Catholic leaders in this country thought it improbable that Kirill would stand back from this war, because they see the war as an extension of the Russian Orthodox Church’s efforts in Ukraine. For two decades, the R.O.C. has used state money and propaganda to assert itself in that country. Through his full-throated support for the war for a greater Russia, these leaders say, Kirill is militating against their own transnational Orthodox project, which has been under way since the fall of Communism.

Ukraine is where, more than a thousand years ago, a warrior prince took up Christianity to marry a daughter of the patriarch of Constantinople, and then compelled thousands of others to convert as he had. The conversion of St. Vladimir—also known as St. Volodymyr—is claimed as the foundational act of Christianity in the region, to which both Russian Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy in Ukraine trace their roots, and Ukraine has been religiously controverted territory ever since...

And so on and on, nothing like forced conversions as a foundational act, but the pond must get back to the hole in the bucket man ...

 

Oh fucketty fuck, the usual nonsense about the Israelites and nothing about the ancient Greeks and the pagan Roman laws that had such an impact, especially as the Romans were better at doing a Putin than Putin? 

As for xianity, from what the pond can see, it's part of the problem, not the solution ...

 

Yes, there's been a lot of territorial fussing and feuding, and it's all a part of the current barbarism and brutality ... and so here we are, with a spoiler, at the end of the piece ...

After the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s religious diversity has been subsumed into national unity. Whatever the war’s outcome, the biggest loser, in religious terms, will almost certainly be the Russian Orthodox Church. Last month, nearly three hundred R.O.C. priests and deacons signed an open letter in which they denounced the “fratricidal war in Ukraine” and called for an “immediate ceasefire.” (Those church leaders, however, are a tiny minority of the forty thousand clerics in the R.O.C.) Ukrainians who worshipped in churches tied to Moscow may sour on a religious leader who has lent holy purpose to Russia’s bombing of their country and its killing of their neighbors, and whose stature has been diminished forever by those acts. During services in Moscow on April 10th, Kirill gave a long discourse on the exercise of power, and concluded with a prayer: “May the Lord help us all in this difficult time for our Fatherland to unite, including around the authorities,” in order to “have true solidarity and the ability to repel external and internal enemies” for the sake of “goodness, truth, and love.”

But, if it’s clear that Kirill is not going to waver in his support of Putin, it is less clear what his Eastern Orthodox counterparts can do about it. They have encouraged the ouster of the R.O.C. from the World Council of Churches, and lauded the suspension of Kirill’s deputy, Metropolitan Hilarion, from the theology faculty at the University of Fribourg. Some have openly supported Ukraine’s effort to defend itself militarily and have spoken of it in terms not unlike those that Putin used last month: as a Christ-like act, a sacrifice, as Borys Gudziak has said, “for something that is greater than their very lives.” Mostly, though, they have been forced to look on from a distance, having no more power to stop the carnage than seemingly anyone else.

Meanwhile, a last gobbet from our Henry, still imagining he's back in the time of Exodus, at least until he remembers Pericles, not exactly a big feature of the old testament ...

 

The dear old loon, such a rhetorical overload and as useless as those Eastern Orthodox counterparts ...

As usual, the pond then took a look at the reptile menu and checked out what might serve as a bonus, or a dessert ...

 

The Swiss bank account man celebrating Albo getting his Covid? It's probably a matter of timing, but in his usual way, as at every point in his career, the Swiss bank account man was a tad off ...

And there was the meretricious Merritt, following the reptile way by denouncing integrity and all that jazz ...

But the pond felt like a walk on the wild side and was astonished to see Brendan the barbarian back at the lizard Oz, celebrating the joys of iconoclasm ...

 

 

The pond has always thought that the burning of books was the sort of thought crime that produced other atrocious acts of barbarism, which is why Vlad the impaler is currently so intent on stamping out any discernible criticism in any format ... but it seems that Brendan the barbarian is always up for a good book burning ...

 

 

 

Now here the pond must note, with a billy goat butt, that it has no time for rioting, but at the same time, it has no time for book burning, and it doesn't think of book burning as offensive speech, it thinks of it as a profoundly offensive act ...

Too many images come flooding back for that blow to be softened...

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, okay, Godwin's Law and all that, and it wasn't one of Truffaut's best, and you might be better off reading Ray Bradbury, but the main point is that book burning isn't the sort of thing to encourage or defend, unless you happen to be Brendan the barbarian ...

The pond took the same view when it came to Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, and even though it thinks of the Qu'arn as a pile of tosh, the same as the book of Mormon and the bible, the rule still applies ...

 

 

 

No, no, no, it's not just his blather. It's his iconoclasm ... and his deliberate evocation of past ways and past days ...

 

 

 

 

 

Of course Brendan the barbarian has his own but billy goat butt moment ... until he remembers that his role is to play Brendan the barbarian ...

 

 

The pond read that line and wept: "And yes, burning objects counts as an expression of opinion."

Perhaps it was the notion that books were mere objects, and the thoughts they contained were ripe for the burning... and then the pond realised that Brendan the Barbarian would be right at home in Florida ...

 

 

 

 

 

And so to a last gobbet from Brendan the object and book burning Barbarian ...

 

 

 

Stand up for the freedumb to burn books? 

Thanks, but the pond will pass on that chance ... the pond will even pass up the opportunity to mount a funeral pyre for fuckwits blathering on about woke sensibilities and cultural 'leets. 

Just listen to yourself, you goose, as you keep company with all the worst of human behaviour ... you don't have to stand alongside book burners in the name of freedumb ...no more than you need to stand alongside Vlad the impaler in the name of the Russian Orthodox church ...or the Islamics of ISIS ...

What a fuckwit you are, what a twat and a twit, and the pond says that all in the name of cheerful un-PC humour, you loon regurgitating simplistic offal ...

And then the pond realised it had a real crisis on its hands. 

Cartoons by both the infallible Pope and the immortal Rowe to hand ... and both perforce clumped together at the end.

The immortal Rowe had got out early, late arvo yesterday, and so deserved first go ...

 

 

 

 

Ah yes, better another Deves reference late, rather than never ...

But the pond couldn't resist the infallible Pope, even if he was referencing later Simpsons, long after the pond stopped watching ...

 

 

 

 

Yes, yes ... all that ...

 

 

 

Ah, the twirling towards freedumb, perhaps in company with Brendann  the barbarian ...

And then the pond remembered that it had wanted to celebrate this Rowson ... because that's where the pond started this day, loving the big liar's antics, even if dimly remembered through Exodus and Brendan the barbarian ...

 

And for some reason that reminded the pond of its favourite Melbourne painting ...

 

 

 

 

 

And that mention of Collins street at 5 pm reminded the pond of a few recent images of lively Melbourne, the up and at 'em town in go mode ...

 

 

 

 

 Too much excitement going on, and exactly as the pond likes it in these troubled, wretched times ...