The pond was torn. It was a big day for the reptiles. Should the pond do a python (Monty) and swallow it whole, or should a reptile be consigned to the purgatory of an afternoon exile slot?
In the end, the pond decided it was better a feast than a famine, but that meant a lot to cover.
First the pond had to visit the Oz tree killer edition to check that the reptiles were getting their steady supply of Klive's kash in the klaw ...
Yep, never stand between a reptile and a maverick flinging cash into their kick ... and meanwhile in the digital edition, the colour teal was all the go, and the reptiles were terrified ...
Good old Ticky, doing her thing for the planet, and dinkum, clean, pure, innocent Oz coal ... and there was simple Simon saying yet again, "look Bid, no conflict of interest here, here no conflict of interest, top of the digital page, ma, or Bid, as the case may be" ...
But on with the treats, and how could the pond resist a good bellicose outing from the IPA's Bella?
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought!
That giv’st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of Childhood didst Thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human Soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart …
Ah, but that's purifying nature and western civilisation for you ... as on we go ...
The pond isn't sure that Bella phrased that last par with her meaning in mind, but the pond will agree that it's shocking, absolutely shocking, that anyone should care for the environment or the planet, or even the dog shit in the back lane ...
And then the bellicose Bella was done ... but not before a passionate plea for home schooling and perhaps with a bit of luck book banning in the style of the United States ...
Well played Bella, and here, have a Wilcox cartoon ...
Yes, with a bit of luck, we too could go full Taliban ...
Next up the pond checked out the reptile triptych of terror and lo, there was a "Ned" sighting ...
For some reason the reptiles keep dragging honest John out of the cupboard, dusting off the moths, and letting him blather on about the shocking danger of teal curtains in the lounge room, and in the other panel, there was Killer Creighton celebrating the return of the mango Mussolini thanks to a fabulously whacko billionaire, as if the United States wasn't already fucked enough. But you can trust Killer to dance with demagogues, authoritarians and white nationalists ...
It was tempting, but in the end, the pond's business is to induce a torpor, a state of relaxed unawareness, and what better way than a serve of "Ned" ...
Here the pond must run its standard house-keeping note. The pond does its best to serve the reptiles undiluted, even if it must neuter the click bait videos. If the reptiles put up a link showing "Ned" reading himself to himself, then the pond will note it (though of late it's been strangely absent).
But gosh darn it, that reptile note about content only being available on the web, and an instruction to open the web version if you want to do a Starship Troopers and know more?
Like a sucker, the pond always clicks on it, only to discover that it's reading the web version, and if it clicks on the web version to open the web version, it's left with the web version, and the instruction to open the web version ... and... well you can see where this ends. Either you disappear up the reptile fundament, or you find yourself trapped inside an Escher drawing, or worse still ...
What's that? Carry on "Nedding"? If you insist ... but what a lot of suffering ...
Thank the long absent lord "Ned" didn't mention climate science or the pond might have feared he'd succumbed to pagan-green ideology, and then Ticky would have been left with a lump of coal in hand ... but even then it's passing rich, surely, for a reptile to complain "there is no formal carbon price to govern emission reduction investment certainty ..."
Talk about ways to induce hysteria in the pond, or at least hysterical laughter ... and lo, it came to pass, and the laughter was truly grand ...
How credible is he? Hmm, waiter, is there another Wilcox handy, showing off credibility in action...
Yes, that'll do nicely, and there's just a gobbet to go, and as the pond was trained to look at invisible sub-texts, the pond suspects that gloomy "Ned" is in a depressive fit because he can sense the wind is blowing in the wrong direction ...
His assault on Albo has the impact of a custard pie in the face ... with a grim forewarning of doom in the last par ...
"If he wins", Ned says ...
Is that all that's left for the reptiles at the moment? Say it ain't so.
"If he wins", he's going to fuck up, haunted by the daunting past, because reform success has eluded past PM fuck-ups! That'll teach him, that'll learn him for winning ...
And so what if these past PM fuck-ups happen to include the liar from the Shire? Well, we could make "Ned" happy and have another four years of being haunted by a daunting past ...
It's terribly sad, and if not the fault of pagan-green ideology, then certainly a pagan love of teal, what with "Ned's" deep hatred of teal curtains and feature walls possibly having something to do with him being so downcast ...
Eek, the 1960s are back ...
Then the pond checked out the comments section, because that's also an order of business in a tidy pond day ...
Frankly the pond thought it had the pick, with Bella, what with poor old John Lee still drawing attention to the power of teal ... has anyone done more for the teals and Clive than lizard Oz hysteria and greed?
But there was Dame Slap,. and for a nanosecond the pond thought of sending her and Killer off to a late arvo slot ...
But there are better routines than Killer at the moment when it comes to the mango Mussolini ...
Only now are the rats coming out of cover, lured on by the smell of a cheesy book deal, with the full version of that story at Business Insider here ...
And with the musky smell of Killer done, would it have been right and fair to leave Dame Slap alone in a late arvo slot, when she should really run with her IPA Bella kith and kin?
Perhaps the pond should have warned that Dame Slap was going to embark on a passionate plea for corruption and pork-barreling, because it's the IPA way, and in its own way, it's s form of pagan-green ideology ... good old-fashioned pagan greed and a flash of a wad of green hundred dollar notes, straight into your paw ...
Steady, steady, Anthony, Dame Slap isn't going to stand for that sort of nonsense. In truly post-modernist manner, in a way rich with irony, she trots out the usual subjective excuses for a good old dose of corruption ...
Yes, yes, it would surely be a dangerous road, all this talk of corruption, when after all, the reptiles themselves love a dose of Klive's kash in the klaw ... and where's the harm in pork, payola, perquisites, political patronage, favouritism, rorting, rip-offs, logrolling and snouts in trough?
It's the spoils of office, and if it was good enough for the Caesars, then a study of western civilisation determines it's good enough for the IPA and Dame Slap. Who wants activist judges when we can have famously active and deeply corrupt pollies. Can there ever be a day when the patented Joh and little red robbing Bob Askin brown paper bag go out of fashion ...
After all that, beefy boofhead Angus must have breathed a sigh of relief. Safe from kangaroo courts, Dame Slap and the IPA will abide ...
And after that epic trek with the pagan greed Clive's green bucks reptiles, the pond will abide with a Rowe, with more Rowe abiding here ...
But DP how can you say that the BellaDab "really is a loon of the first water" when she got this down right:
ReplyDeleteBellaDab: "In other words, nature is good and humans are evil." Surely anybody with any knowledge whatsoever of human history can see that. And the kids really need to be taught it, don't they ?
Have you noticed the now common moronic trope which began in Amerika and repeated by the dismal Bella that the contents of the curriculum should be returned to the parents. Such an idea is of course laughable.
ReplyDeleteIt's an element of the 'divide and conquer' strategy used by IPA types. Devolve responsibility for everything that goes on in schools to parents, because they're much easier to manipulate than education experts.
DeleteThank you Dorothy for selecting Bella this day. She is such a predictable little reactionary, isn’t she? A couple of nights back she was on what I think of as the ‘Chucklehead’ panel on Sky, with that hugely successful magazine editor Rowan, the fella with the American accent, to remind us that wisdom now comes from across the waters, and Rita, who epitomises that saying that for every complex issue there is at least one solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.
ReplyDeleteThey were beating up on Sydney Biennale and Book Week. Standard ‘who would want to look at that rubbish?’ ‘do taxpayers know they are paying for this?’ leading up to the inevitable ‘because nobody would pay to see this sort of stuff.’ - Bella, in full IPA disparagement. No doubt Gina feels she is getting value for her investment.
I waited for at least one of these strident promoters of capitalism and markets to remind the others of the Museum of Old and New Art - which has become a major driver of the economic progress of Tasmania. Did not have long to wait. That is the advantage of taking ‘Sky’ in small tinctures, with ‘YouTube’ - not so much as a hint of recognition that there are people prepared to spend their own money, not just to walk in the door of such collections, but to pay a goodly amount for air fares to get to the island, and for somewhere to stay while they spend a couple of days (which, I understand, is the common experience of interstate visitors) to share interpretations of - life, sex and death.
Interesting to compare the doings of Gina with those of Twiggy, isn't it: neither ever appear in any of the rants that DP serves up to us.
DeleteMONA LISA: Museum of Old and New Art Likenesses Interest Scholars All.
Something needs to be done about Janet Albrechtsen. She is straight-out advocating pork-barrelling, and refusing to condemn corruption. The difference between promises made during an election campaign and wholesale rorting of grants allocation processes at all other times is completely ignored in her scribbling (I can't bring myself to call it an article, even an op-ed).
ReplyDeleteCan't somebody get creative?
Slappy: "In fact, some things are best decided by voters." Really, but "voters" hardly ever get to decide anything, except for a very occasional referendum and a periodic choice of our "leaders". Unless that is what she means: that by choosing our
Delete"leaders" periodically then, by definition, everything that they do is "decided by voters".
Our 'leaders' as a group might be decided by our vote, but our Leader certainly isn't. The PM is voted by the successful party once the election result is known. We the voters get no say in that.
DeleteNo more nor less say than in any of the decisions of parliament: we elect the people who, by virtue of being "the government" choose the PM. We had exactly that much say in Australia's declarations of war in WWI and WWII. Which is precisely the point of having a "representative" government.
DeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDelete“In other words, nature is good and humans are evil.”
It turns out that Bella’s father, Bernard D’Abrera, was a fairly famous self-published lepidopterist and was evidently none too pleased with Western Civilised Man;
"The greatest number and diversity of insect and plant species occur in the Neotropics, a vast amount of which is still being discovered and described. Paradoxically, an almost equal amount of unknown creatures is being destroyed even before their discovery, because of the violent and ruthless destruction by civilized man of the complex miracles that make up the Neotropical ecosystem. History alone will pour out its wrathful judgement on these disgraceful goings-on, because contemporary man is too besotted with economic trivia to comprehend the consequences of his avaricious deeds. - Bernard D'Abrera Butterflies of South America (1984)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_d%27Abrera
Whilst father and daughter may have disagreed on the ecosystem, it certainly looks like they probably did share a lot of other nutty theories.
Interestingly for a biologist Bernard didn’t agree with the theory of evolution and was pro-intelligent design cosying up with the likes of the Discovery Institute and the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Society_for_Complexity,_Information,_and_Design
There is quite a bit more here on Bella, her dad, the IPA and the need to save Western Civilisation.
https://arena.org.au/saving-western-civilisation-the-ipas-aussie-crusade/
DW - when I read of creationism - and particularly 'intelligent design' I amuse myself with mental images of what the 'intelligent design' office might look like. Like - the team reading the brief for some of the wasps that paralyze spiders, lay eggs in the body, seal it all up and leave it to the offspring to eat their way through the living meal.
DeleteFor Bernard D'Abrera, I can easily imagine different members of the design team kibitzing a 'new' butterfly because it is not sufficiently different from one that HE released last week. And that is without going into the question of - are 'they' still dropping new species onto this planet; if so - how?
No doubt someone like the infallible Pope could have fun with the concept - but I would not want to distract him from his very important work now, educating us on this election.
Oh c'mon Chad; the Great Designer made us this way - we are the result of major supernatural intent. My only question is: did the Great Designer have to practice on billions of worlds to get to the state of transcendental perfection evidenced here on this best of all possible worlds or are all the worlds he creates in the infinity of cosmos bubbles that he created over the eternal time we all exist in identical with this one. An infinite supply of Chads and GrueBleens and DPs et al. Hallelujah.
DeletePS: you are quite familiar with the Omphalos Hypothesis, yes ?
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis
GB - The committed creationist has to wonder why - if penguins of one species are so difficult to distinguish from the others of that species, and ditto herring, antelope and just about every other animal - how is that humans - supposedly made by the Great Designer 'in his own image' (and absolutely not the reverse!) - how is that humans are all so obviously different? I have never seen a doppelganger Chad, let alone (shudder) a herd of them. Or any other individual, because they are all, well - individual. (Aside - does that also suggest that 'identity politics' is part of the GC's Great Plan?)
DeleteOn the Omphalos - Gosse did manage some great illustrations, used by more serious sciences in the early days of marine biology. Much of his taxonomy is still valid. He managed to do that in spite of his intellectual conflict.
and the fingers did not add the name again. Sigh.
DeleteIt seems to be quite common that human beings combine some amount of sense (if not quite sensibility) with some strongly believed nonsense. Even Einstein had his problematics. But over time, sense usually wins out, though often only after many poor sods have paid the "ultimate price".
DeleteBesides, just try to logically disprove the Omphalos hypothesis - it's worse than trying to disprove spooky action at a distance.
If we were indeed made 'in his image', GB, why do we suffer inguinal hernias? Shouldn't we, by rights, be walking on all fours?
DeleteWith the affected outrage from mighty economic intellects of the LNP - $loMo (‘I useta be a treasurer’) and Birmingham - we trust our Dame Groan will continue to invoke Milton Friedman again this week in her contribution to the Flagship. On p. 262 of the joint Milton and Rose Friedman ‘Free to Choose’, chapter ‘The Cure for Inflation’, Milton writes -
ReplyDelete‘Unions may provide useful services for their members. They may also do a great deal of harm by limiting employment opportunities for others, but they do not produce inflation. Wage increases in excess of increases in productivity are a result of inflation, rather than a cause.’
Now "productivity", of course, is just a single word to cover a multiplicity of situations. As indeed is "inflation". But hey, "per capita GDP production" surely covers it, doesn't it ? And clearly that must keep increasing on and on and on to match increasing population etc etc. And drag the "money supply" with it.
DeleteAll of which will only ever come to an end when the entire Earth is covered in humanity and its droppings. And even then, well, we can all join Elon Musk's descendants on Mars, yes ?
"Does Bella d'Abrera Know Western History When She Sees It?
ReplyDeleteChristopher Hilliard
"Children have imaginary friends. Do some Australian polemicists need imaginary enemies?
"In her recent article about the study of Western civilization, Bella d'Abrera has much more to say about the kind of history education she doesn't like than she does making a positive case."
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/does-bella-dabrera-know-western-history-when-she-sees-it/10094618
A little late in the day, but better late that never. That headline you've shared?
ReplyDeleteIt didn't happen according to Morrison. He was misquoted by a newspaper.
Well,you can see how that would happen eh?