As this is the pond's usual Sunday meditation, the pond will start by confessing to certain grievous sins.
The pond hasn't signed up to the ABC's iView, and will not sign up to the ABC's iView in the future, and so has been consigned by the ABC to the outer rings of viewing hell. Or so the ABC thinks ...
The pond doesn't much mind being a sinner. The pond thinks it wrong of the ABC to imitate the sort of behaviour to be found in corporations intent on capturing personal data, what with bloody logarithms always at work determining what the pond must watch and think, but as the pond doesn't watch that much ABC television, what the hell.
If the pond wants to watch News 24 for a completely and totally unique viewing experience, it can at the moment find it on YouTube. But the pond actually prefers the ABC's NewsRadio service.
When it comes to ABC television, the pond only regularly watches Media Watch, and that's mainly as a way of pursuing its herpetological studies.
So the pond is something of a lost cause and a lost viewer for the ABC, but that is nothing, a snowflake in hell, up against the eternal hellfire and damnation preached by prattling Polonius, who has never forgiven or forgotten the way he was dropped by Insiders, even though anyone with half a televisual brain realised that he was a boring old fart, and his routine with David Marr was no match for great comedy pairings of the Abbott and Costello kind ...
The pond has indulged in this lengthy preamble because when the pond lets Polonius loose with the ABC bumble bee buzzing around in the old Polonial noggin, there's no point trying to calm him down ...
You see? Put a snap of Leigh Sales in front of him and he's off. Mention that treacherous traitor Karvelas, who left the lizard Oz and so can never be forgiven, and Polonius is in high dudgeon ...
Oh there's conspiracies afoot and dangers all around for those who dare head into the ABC's swamp of mugwumps, and a hapless liar from the Shire would be lost, incapable of dealing with the 'gators and all the other cardigan-wearing critters snapping at his heels ...
The sooner we can privatise the bloody joint, the sooner it can end up looking just like Sky News, and as soon as that happens, we can just abolish it, because who needs two Sky News (domestic that is), when one is enough to carry all the charlatans and frauds in News Corp la la land ...
The pond sometimes imagines that it can't be shocked, but then Polonius delivered a shattering blow to the pond's innocence.
Without a hint of shame at sounding like the mango Mussolini, he deploys the term "fake news", which is even more remarkable than the standard Polonial ploy of saying that the "ABC is a conservative-free zone."
The pond has already acquired a luxury yacht from a Russian oligarch thanks to a dollar for every time the pond has read that Polonial line ...
All this from a loon still anguished at being dropped from the Insiders, and not being given a place in the temple he purports to despise. It's a pitiful sight, and the pond is daily relieved that somehow the long absent lord forgot to give the pond the pity gene.
Yes, the pond has seen it many times before, and Polonius will carry on like this until he drops, but surely the entire point of going to the circus is to watch the clowns perform familiar slapstick routines?
And so to the bonus, and here the pond faced a dilemma ...
You see, Dame Slap is usually a contender, and there she was, when snapped by the pond, surrounded by all the reptile fears and phobias and the mango Mussolini's golfing buddy in the grip of a delusion ...
A comeback bombshell? Now there's a comedy hightight ...
But back to Dame Slap, because the pond had a couple of issues ...
First what's a columnist doing writing a news story, teaming up with Sophie, and then writing a column about it? You can see them, just across from each other in that gobbet ...
The one taints the other, and while the pond expects everything Dame Slap scribbles to be tainted - including but not limited to donning a MAGA cap and blathering about climate science being used by the UN to produce world government by Xmas - there has to be a limit to indulging in the taint ...
Besides, Xian Porter is old news, washed up, yesterday's man. All he's got left, if he so desires, is endless and pointless litigation, and tedious attempts at self-justification, supported by the likes of Dame Slap...
It's beyond abysmal ... while the rest of the reptile commentary page was simply abysmal ...
The pond has already had the pick of that lot - not that it was much of a pick - and rarely indulges in the oscillating fan, as you too often are confronted by these sorts of gnomic insights ...
That's not so far from Chance the gardener - there will be plantings in the spring but nervousness about the crop is warranted - and so it was again today, with the world only knowing the outcome after the outcome ... or, if you will, the aftermath after the aftermath ...
In the pond's world it sounds remarkably silly and it's called inanity, a "Ned" in training, and so the pond was left with no alternative but to turn to the the bubble-headed booby for its bonus ...
So far so predictable, and no the pond isn't about to burst into a verse of Helen Reddy singing "I Am Woman", a song that used to send the pond into a frenzy back in the day ...
But then the bubble-headed booby really gets going ...
Of course it's pathetic and just Deves-lite, but the pond really does wish that the bubble-headed booby would get out more ...
The word "woman" has had some great moments over the years, as noted in a wiki here dedicated to "womyn"...
Perhaps that ancient form of feminism and the likes of the truly weird Andrea Dworkin have been lost to younger bubble-headed boobies, but here's a blast from the past (and you can get the footnotes by following the link) ...
Now what was the bubble-headed booby asking? "How many people are trying to get rid of the word man?"
Is there a womyn in the house who can explain things to her?
Our Gemma makes some of the other reptiles sound like rocket scientists, or in the case of the oscillating fan, Chance the gardener ...
The tragedy of course is that she doesn't have the balls to go full Delves and let the bigotry roam wild and free ...
Nobody and nothing ...vox et praeterea nihil ... except those ancient days when feminists proudly called themselves womyn ...
Perhaps instead of "woman", the bubble-headed booby might like to call herself "straw dog", since she seems to have an affinity with the notion ...
Okay, so it was a bust, and the pond didn't chose wisely, and learning about the folly of others doesn't help with the follies of oneself ... so to make up for the pond's failure, here's a selection of cartoons celebrating a country which is rapidly going full Taliban ...
SMH "Chief Restaurant Critic" Terry Durack gives new meaning to 'boots on the ground':
ReplyDeletehttps://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/serving-suggestion-could-conscription-ease-the-hospitality-staffing-crisis-20220310-p5a3lm.html?msclkid=799655bdc36d11ecb73fdef60520e484
Mercurial - thank you for that link. Pre-covid, our Dame Groan had a moan about supposedly not being able to get a cappuccino in Melbourne on a Sunday afternoon - which was her segue into anonymous coffee bar person moaning about - how much you had to pay to get someone to serve coffees.
DeleteThe suggestion of a form of conscription gets a run around our patch when there are fruit and veges to be harvested (renewed recently now that you are expected to pay pickers a minimum wage - shock horror, and watch the price of apples skyrocket) All in the national interest, of course, and, well, you can't be expected to pay anyone while they are learning the trade, can you?
In fairness to local traders, in our smallish country town - we do see many kids on 'work experience' during school breaks, and some stay on, properly paid, as they continue through school. Perhaps kids in Sydney are not as able to get a look in for genuine work experience, or perhaps Mr Durack just had a column to fill at short notice.
Well I dunno, Chad, but when I was in school (secondary) I got lots of work experience delivering morning newspapers (Sun, Age and even, for a short few years, the Argus) and also some evening newspapers (Saturday evening Sporting Globe with its lovely pink paper). And I also got some experience delivering chemist's packages and fruiterer's orders.
DeleteAnd I got paid what I then thought was a decent 'wage' for someone barely into 'High School'. There's a whole 'gig economy' now to do that kind of thing and nobody delivers papers or sells them on morning street corners. And nobody gets paid a decent 'gig' wage.
I wonder what Tog-ninny would have made of this:
ReplyDelete"Historians estimate that as many as 1,000 women may have disguised themselves as men and served in the Confederate and Union armies. ... Military records reveal that women fought —and died— in all the major battles of the Civil War, participating in clashes in Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, among many others. Dressed as men, women took on a wide range of military roles in the Civil War.
Female combatants faced the same dangers as their male counterparts, of course, but they also confronted unique dangers. In particular, they lived in fear of discovery, which might lead to expulsion or imprisonment. Fortunately for the women who disguised themselves as men, enlistment physical examinations were extremely cursory. Moreover, many women soldiers, who usually came from working-class backgrounds, had adopted men’s clothing and male personas in their teens, most frequently in order to obtain better pay and greater independence than “women’s work” in domestic service or the “needle trades” could provide. Their familiarity with “men’s work” as “hired men” and “stableboys” eased their transition to army life and helped them to evade detection. "
http://www.pbs.org/mercy-street/blogs/mercy-street-revealed/i-wanted-to-do-my-part-women-as-soldiers-in-civil-war-america/
My, how times have changed. But people such as Tog-ninny never change with them.
[Lovely collection of cartoons,thanks DP. Especially the Bondian Tuckyo,]
So, it's Very Pissable Polonius day again, like every other Sunday far back into the dawn of time and far forward to the heat-death of this small bubble of cosmos. Or maybe it's just another Sunday, bloody Sunday. Anyway, here he goes again:
ReplyDeletePolonius quoting that infallible testimony of truth, the Australian's Diary column: "'There are big numbers of swinging voters watching a show like Nine's A Current Affair but the people watching 7:30 aren't generally changing their vote, whether Liberal or Labor - they're rusted on.' That's a correct assessment."
Oh, ok then, nobody who watches 7:30 has ever changed their vote. And Polonius and the Oz Diarist know this because they've asked every single one of them, of course. Whereas those who watch Sky News bounce around all over the political spectrum and often vote for the likes of Craig Kelly, George Christensen, Mark Latham and Pauline Hanson. Among others.
Then he gives us: "For the ABC's pitch to be true [ABC as Australia's most trusted news source] it has to be assumed that most Australian TV viewers are so foolish as to watch the news on networks that they trust less than the ABC." Yep, Polly you got it in one, most Australian FTA viewers are indeed that foolish. But come a serious calamity (flood, fire, hurricane etc) and who do they turn to in droves ? Let me confirm for you that it isn't Fox News.
So, is this right ? "...many one-time ABC viewers and listeners have moved camp to Sky News. Even though, in the capital cities, this requires the payment of a subscription fee." And aren't we remaining "ABC viewers and listeners" ever so glad to see 'em go. All few thousand of them.
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ReplyDeleteOur Gemma’s gone off on a bender
ReplyDeleteOver a fake woke agenda
And a feminine descriptor
Has totally flipped her
To a nunnery perhaps we should send her…