In which the pond begins with Polonius, as ordered by law, gives the dog botherer a voice, only to wonder why, and then greases the wheel of monstrous stupidity ...

 

After yesterday's excess - the pond is always reminded of that Monty Python scene with  Mr Creosote and the extra after dinner mint when it overindulges in reptile stew - the pond decided to trim down for its Sunday meditation ... and yet there were so many tempting mints on parade ...

Sure the pond had had the pick of them with the bromancer's how of pain, but look, just below, there was Polonius's own plaintive yowling, and surely it was right to begin the Sunday meditation with a reference to Dickens ...

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Bleak times in Bleak House, and yet waddling like an elephantine lizard up Sydney's CBD to the Sydney Institute comes Polonius with his tale of woe...

Indeed, indeed. Whenever the pond glances at the mutton Dutton, the immediate thought is that here is Ming the Merciless reincarnated ...

But soft, Polonius is sounding a tad gloomy, and his mission is to inspire hope that our new Ming might yet rise ... stand by for a devastating futuristic blast of Polonial wit ... followed by a dissertation on the traitors, quislings, lickspittles and rats in the ranks ...

So it becomes clear. This elaborate dance has simply been done so that Polonius can rail at Malware ... (and let us not speak of the head prefect turning into an ancient leftie railing at the Liberal party, or if we must, please sotto voce ...)

It goes without saying that Malware is favoured by the cardigan wearers, who ruin everything on a daily basis, so much so that Polonius can never stop listening to them or watching them for so much as a nanosecond ...

Splendid stuff, that talk of a revival, and it lifted the pond's Sunday spirits, and in that spirit, the pond serves this spirited Kudelka ...

Or perhaps this one offering hope to those inclined to share a lobster with a mobster...

The pond did yesterday tough, with just one cartoon and then only an old one, albeit a winner, and this day it resolved to enjoy itself a little more ... which reminds the pond that Marina Hyde has returned, and what a ripper that opening par was ...

Nothing could possibly be longer than this Conservative leadership race – not even the final minute of your washing machine cycle. Every promise made in it should be treated with the same deference you’d reserve for the claim that the tab closure on a cardboard cereal box “seals in freshness”. Given the crises raging outside, the contest resembles a Dickensian reality show, in which two grotesques compete to run the workhouse, simply refusing to be thrown off course by the increasingly desperate entreaties of their paupers. Who, as a mark of lavishly sarcastic respect, are these days referred to as “clients”.

Dickens again, and the pond is having a dickens of a time, but there must be losers as well as winners, and here the pond felt the need to toss a coin. 

You see at one point in the weekend, Dame Slap was out and about, sandwiched, nay shoehorned into the triptych of terror ...

Good work Rachel, and good work simplistic 'no conflict here' Simon, but what of Dame Slap? 

Could the pond bear another extended rabbiting on about the Voice, when the pond knew that all that needed to be said was that Dame Slap was agin it. She'd been agin it from the start, she was agin it now - toss in activist High Court judges - and she'd be agin it in the future - toss in pesky, difficult, uppity Aboriginal activists that never know when to learn from their betters, and make no mistake, Dame Slap is infinitely better and wiser ...

It was full of the quiet understatement that Dame Slap is rightly famous for, even when screeching at the top of her voice ... and it concluded this way ...

Damn you difficult, uppity, pesky blacks ... in one stroke, you've entirely killed off parliamentary democracy. 

Now why don't you just don a MAGA cap and stride into the New York night to celebrate the arrival of a champion of democracy. Just follow Dame Slap's example, and the best will follow you everywhere ...

On the other hand, the pond had promised to itself not to bother with the storm in the teacup known as the Fitz-Price affair,  and had managed to avoid entirely the lizard frenzy surrounding it ... yet astute readers will have noted above in the commentary contents list that the dog botherer was determined to molest it one more time ...

The pond had no choice but to put a peg on the nose and plunge in ... only to be immediately confronted by a cartoon from the worst cartoonist at work in the country ...

To be fair, the pond only gets a sense of irony when the dog botherer - a singularly humourless man without a trace of irony or self-awareness - scribbles about the importance of irony ... or the wonders of Leak, again without a shred of irony ...as if a third rate hack promoted beyond his skill level was beyond a dose of irony ...

At this point, some readers will probably want to remind the pond that the entire affair was covered by the venerable Meade in her usual honeyed, irony-laden style in the Weekly Beast ... and 'tis true, 'tis passing fair and true ...

The pond loved that bit about Price defending Pauline Hanson as someone who cares deeply for indigenous Australians and rushed off to Buzzfeed for a listicle to show the deeply caring in action ...

“I’m not going anywhere because this is my land and I was born here and I don’t know any other place that is home. I belong here as much as what you do, now just because you’re an Aboriginal is a weak excuse." - Hanson on 60 Minutes in 1996.

Hanson appeared on Channel 9's flagship current affairs program 60 Minutes in October 1996. It would become Hanson's most famous interview, delivering the infamous line '"please, explain?" after she was asked whether she was xenophobic.

Journalist Tracey Curro grilled Hanson extensively on her views regarding Indigenous affairs. Most of those views centred on the notion that Indigenous people received special treatment.

“I said they [Indigenous people] receive privileges that other people don’t receive because they’re Aboriginal, which is true and you cannot deny that."

The program took Hanson to the Aboriginal community of Palm Island, with the now deceased equal rights campaigner Charles Perkins, to see first hand the shocking conditions people were living in.

"Palm Island is isolated from the mainstream Australia; those people are there because they want to be there and it is causing problems because they want to live there."

"They’ve got to start doing something for themselves, first off, if they start cleaning up the environment they live in," she said.

"Along with millions of Australians, I am fed up to the back teeth with the inequalities that are being promoted by the government and paid for by the taxpayer under the assumption that Aboriginals are the most disadvantaged people in Australia."

Large parts of Hanson's maiden speech in parliament focused on the myth that Aboriginal people were receiving a high number of "benefits" for being black.

"This nation is being divided into black and white, and the present system encourages this. I am fed up with being told, ‘this is our land.’ Well, where the hell do I go? I was born here, and so were my parents and children."

"I will work beside anyone and they will be my equal, but I draw the line when told I must pay and continue paying for something that happened over 200 years ago. Like most Australians, I worked for my land; no-one gave it to me."

"I do not believe that the colour of one’s skin determines whether you are disadvantaged."

"I won the seat of Oxley largely on an issue that has resulted in me being called a racist. That issue related to my comment that Aboriginals received more benefits than non-Aboriginals."

"Flying two Australian flags is extremely divisive. We should be united under the one flag, the Australian flag."

In January 2016 in the Queensland Times, Hanson had a lot to say about AussieBum swimwear founder Sean Ashby, recalling a line of swimwear that featured stereotypical Aboriginal motifs and a caricature of an Aboriginal man standing on one leg with a spear in his hand.

The design also featured an Australian flag atop Uluru, a deeply spiritual site for the Anangu people, and Indigenous people were incredibly offended by the swimwear.

"We as Australians have never been asked in a referendum whether we endorse or recognise the Aboriginal flag," Hanson said.

"But it is flown everywhere, especially above government buildings.

"If anything he [Sean Ashby] has been inclusive of Aboriginals."

"I personally did not find his Australia Day themed underwear offensive."

"I'm Indigenous, I was born here. This is as much my land as any Aboriginal that was born the same date and time as I am."

Hanson was interviewed on FairdinkumRadio, a Christian radio station, a fortnight ago and said she was just as Indigenous as someone with Aboriginal ancestry because she "was born here".

Hanson also claimed that those who did not have dark skin and brown eyes could not claim to be Aboriginal, because if they did it was to receive benefits.

"If you want to live the traditional way of life, I believe you can do that, but people here, who are as white as I am, and have the blue eyes, whatever, and claim Aboriginality to have all the benefits that go with it - I'm totally opposed to it."

So much caring, and the pond now had almost as much irony as the vitamin B group it got from eating from Marina Hyde's cereal pack ...

But stay, the pond hadn't completely forgotten the dog botherer ... apparently unaware that his heroine is herself opposed to the voice ... apparently because she's part of an arrogant and intolerant bunch of the so-called 'leets (note: offer of 'leets specifically excludes anyone who works for a business resident in Surry Hills amidst the best baristas in the world).

How do you solve a problem like Jacinta?

When ABC’s Triple J profiled Jacinta Nampijinpa Price almost a decade ago, she was sporting a mohawk and dark eye makeup.

At the time, surely nobody at the national broadcaster would have predicted that within 10 years the blues, soul and folk singer would be described as a “conservative firebrand” and Sky News favourite.

When Price appeared on the ABC last week, this time on Q+A, it was as a newly minted Country Liberal senator.

Responding to an audience question, Price said she probably wouldn’t support an Indigenous Voice when there are more pressing issues facing Indigenous communities. (the magic water paper)

On with doggie boy, grinding away, as dog botherers are wont to do ... and that so-called 'leet currently sitting in the swill known as the Senate, and if Dame Slap is to be believed, a future PM ...

Fucketty fuck all this blather about the woke and signalling and virtue is tiresome, it's even more repetitious than Polonius rabbiting on about how there's not a single conservative voice on the ABC ...

But then repetition is the main reptile game ...

A total of eleven pieces? Already that count is under, and there'll be more to come, because in the pond's experience, once the reptiles get hold of a bone, they can keep on chewing on it for years ...

Back to the dog botherer, and here the pond should note that the reptiles inserted a snap of the Senator ... as so and thus ...

... but as she's a tireless self-promoter, full of attention-seeking tedious narcissism - it goes with the mohawk and the dark eye make-up - the pond felt no need to help out, and instead shrunk it down to an appropriate size and went on with doggie boy ... also terminally tedious ... indulging in all the usual woke blather.

If only he'd taken some official secrets home with him after fucking Iraq with Lord Downer so we might have had the pleasure of a raid on his premises ...

By this point the pond had run out of steam, and began to wonder if it might not have been better off with a little straightforward black bashing from Dame Slap ... because dammit, those pesky, difficult blacks were fucking parliamentary democracy, and she had begun her agin it piece as she'd ended it ...

No, indeed, it is no exaggeration at all, and the pond is simply exaggerating when it says that Dame Slap has produced the end of irony as the world has known. it ...

Oh you can see the temptations, the chance to do a bit of black bashing with Dame Slap, yet somehow, the pond - in a terminal demented condition - had gone with the dog botherer, who pretends he wants some sort of voice, but really the only voice he wants is to yowl at someone who wears a ponce bandana ...

It's a lot simpler to do a Dame Slap and be agin it. The tortured meanderings of the truly stupid are altogether different, and what a relief to arrive at a last gobbet, where the entire point of the debate seems to be about the suffering of doggie boy, apparently coming to understand that he's on the wrong side of the reptile agenda, and should be agin it, because being agin it is all the aginning they can do ...

It's fucked. It's comprehensively fucked. The reptiles are an outrage machine, and they've found the latest outrage to drive the machine, the clicks, the views and the letters to the editor. They have their heroine, and she knows how to be outraged, and if a mohawk won't do the trick, then the sight of a roaming bandana surely will ... (oops, better take down that Facebook post)

The dog botherer is just pissing into the wind, as dog fuckers are wont to do, and this latest outing, full of fuzzy and contradictory thinking,  is just further evidence that any referendum will be a single party outing and likely fail, and the dog botherer can take as much credit as the rest of the reptiles, and poor old Noel Pearson - discarded like a useless rag of a forgotten ideological partner - can whistle into the wind as he shuffles off to nowheresville, without a voice and nobody giving a toss ... but at least the pond has gone there, and will hopefully be spared the task of going there again in the future. 

Otherwise it might begin to think that Pauline Hanson cares deeply for indigenous people ...

And so to the bonus, and here was another torture for the pond. You see our Gracie was out and about this day, but she was just agin it, whatever it was, whatever it might be ... it was a bloody prison, whatever it was, and she was agin it in best Dame Slap style ...

Steady, steady, Gracie, the summit is in the best of hands ... the brightest minds will be in attendance.

Sorry, what's that Katharine Murphy?

Let’s stocktake the opening months of opposition leader Dutton. He’s appointed a shadow cabinet that is more praetorian guard than frank advisory council, and surrounded himself with mini-me advisers who tell him what he’s already thinking. Right now, he looks like a politician who fancies he can win an election by saying no to everything Labor suggests - and by not being Morrison.

Dutton shunned the opportunity of a substantial reboot on climate policy to force Albanese into doing a parliamentary deal with the Greens – which is a Queensland strategy, not a southern states strategy. Trouble is it’s not even a Queensland strategy any more, given the only two seats the Liberals lost in Dutton’s home state went to the Greens. Rejecting Labor’s targets legislation after watching Liberal progressive heartland turn red, green and teal in May looks like the act of a tone-deaf smart arse, not a potential prime minister.

Then Dutton punched himself in the head about Labor’s jobs and skills summit. Unlike Morrison and the national cabinet rebuff in 2020, Albanese actually opened the door for his opponent by inviting him. Just to be clear – attending the jobs summit does not require the Liberal leader to: 1. Join a union; 2. agree with any ACTU proposal; or 3. agree with any Labor proposal. It just requires him not to be a man-baby. Used judiciously, a cameo there would have lent Dutton status as alternative prime minister, rather than his current presentation, which is a caricature of Tony Abbott circa 2009-13 – minus the knights and dames fetish.

Never mind Gracie, looks like the man-baby will give you a contractual prison by the power of being absent.

But the pond wasn't looking for a sitcom featuring a talking potato head, the pond was looking for a frivolous Sunday, one full of light and jolly cartoons ...

Um, that wasn't quite what the pond had in mind, immortal Rowe ... this is more like it, because the pond is about to road test an EV ...

... and battery fully charged, that's why the pond turned to the bubble-headed booby for a little quiet relief ...

There's only two gobbets to go, but the pond should get this off its chest at the get go. In fact, the pond has been marking time, waiting for the chance to say that Grease was a deeply shit movie, and no amount of gel or Vaseline on the lens can hide it.

The pond doesn't say it because it starred a delusional Scientologist, it's crappy for all sorts of reasons. 

In its time, the pond has entered into a many a spirited debate as to whether Grease or Xanadu is a bigger pile of crap, and has always settled on the notion that the only fair solution to this enduring mystery is to call it a draw. 

Sure, Xanadu was a box office bomb and was so bad it helped launch the Razzies back in 1980, but any fair minded person will agree that a box office hit can also be a pile of shit, and so Grease is more than a match for Xanadu ... it's just a more well-heeled, moola-laden pile of shit.

For starters, both movies starred Olivia Newton-John, and while the pond sympathises with those who've experienced a sense of loss at her demise - just as the pond sympathises with all those left behind when someone shuffles off - nothing can hide the fact that Newton-John had a feeble voice, sang bland pap, and ingesting one of her songs was worse than over-dosing on fairy floss at the local show ...

Whenever a song from Grease, or any Newton-John song came on, the pond could be relied upon to run screaming from the room, or punch the nearest arm, while demanding that the station be switched, or the LP scratched, or the CD smashed ...

The only other voices to have a similar, singular emetic effect was Judith Durham and The Seekers ... and that's another story, though the pond's suffering at the radiation sickness it experienced when exposed to The Seekers can only be understood if you were made to sit down and watch the Dean Martin show and listen to the rellies marvel at his genius... up there with Kamahl ...

But enough, the pond has made its feelings known, and must return for another dose of laxative Epsom Salt  ... thanks to the bubble headed booby ...

What a fuckwit, and worse, a fuckwit trained by Hollywood, to confuse and conflate superficial beauty, charm, appeal, call it what you will, with almost anything else, including intelligence, feistiness, bravery, fierceness yadda yadda. 

You might as well turn to the TV Batman series or F Troop or My Favourite Martian or Mr Ed as signs of cosmic intelligence ...

That's how you end up thinking Flashdance is a meaningful movie about dance, as opposed to a celebration of hair and leggings designed so that boys could have a quiet wank ...

The pond will confess to a wasted life. The pond has watched thousands of hours of films and television product, and ninety per cent of it has conformed to the Theodore Sturgeon Law: Ninety per cent of SF is crud, but then, ninety per cent of everything is crud ...

The 1980s were a particularly spectacular time for movie crud, and for some godawful celebrations of hideous clothes and hairstyles, which is why the nostalgia machine has cranked into overdrive to celebrate the times.

There's a fortune to be made reviving crud, and selling it to crud addicts of the Gemma kind, lost in a world of delusion ... whereby box office is deemed some exemplar of taste and achievement, as if the concept of LCD had entirely lost its meaning ...

A boomer in waiting? Sorry, darl, you're already there ... a wistful waif with not a shred of taste, insight or understanding ... clueless to the very last piece of defiant drivel ...

"The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak." —  Susan Sontag

"To understand bad taste one must have very good taste." John Waters

"What is intoxicating about bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of offensiveness" —  Charles Baudelaire

But rather than end on that sorry note, a final cartoon, thanks to the infallible Pope, even though the pond has been through the education mill, and came to understand that there was no way to redeem people if they were determined to be irredeemable ...