In which the pond embarks on a marathon with a howl of pain from the bromancer, the usual "Ned" Everest, and an interminable outing to ancient ruins with Troy ...

 

The pond sometimes starts with an anecdote before letting the reptiles take the stage to strut their hour, and this will do. 

The pond has been binging on the HBO documentary Mind Over Murder, regarding the Beatrice Six (careful how you pronounce the name of the town), and in a way it's a microcosm of the American situation - bungling incompetence by a number of people, most notably a deputy and a scientific analyst, a complete inability to acknowledge said incompetence, and a town willing to believe, and once set in the belief, with a cult-like inability to accept any alternatives ...

As the film-maker explained, the documentary was an attempt to deprogram the cult through empathy, but it didn't entirely succeed ... you can take the cultist out of the cult, but the cult will always have a hold ...

Alternatively, the pond should probably have begun this weekend with a reference to Howl ...

Stop right there, enough with the commas already Allen, if people want to move on to the next comma they can go here, because the pond has seventy hours to waste on other matters...

You see Allen, this day, yackety yakking away, we have a tremendous howl of despair from the bromancer, so heartfelt, so jumping off the stoops of fire, the pond barely knows how or where to begin, except perhaps at the beginning ...

Nine gobbets long he ran, a cri de couer, and the reptiles knew it was the right stuff, and so packed it full of audio visual aids and supplements, because how could a man contemplate the war on drugs and the war on carbon and not cry into his beer, and then let out a long shuddering wail at the fully woke?

Oh and Brexit has been pretty much a disaster, but don't worry about that. We're into a full cri de coeur, and the suffering is great and damn you slick Kiwis, how you torment the lizards of Oz. Perhaps now time to contemplate a snap of Boris? Et tu with your wokeness? Your tentative grasp in your wool-covered brain that climate science might be on to something?

Oh yes, leave apart the very special problem of the mango Mussolini, who has made it very hard for the pond to focus on the reptiles this week, even a splendid cri de coeur of the bromancer kind ...

Even at this moment he manages to be a distraction ...

And so on and distractingly on, but the pond must stay true to the bromancer and his cri de coeur, his wailing, neigh his almost unendurable howling into the wilderness ...

His influence is now baleful? But doesn't that mean - gasp - that Faux Noise's influence is baleful? And if that is true, isn't News Corp, the money-grubbing owner of the platform also baleful? And if that's the case isn't the owner, the malignant Chairman Rupert, deeply baleful? And if all that is true, isn't the bromancer, working for a shockingly baleful American owned company, blindly baleful? 

Might not then the bromancer himself, and his cri de coeur be a part of this all round tremendous balefulness?

Just a thought, but the pond has no time to consider these baleful mysteries, it must move on ...

"If there is a conspiracy explanation behind the FBI's bizarre raid..."?

There he goes again, braying like a loon ... and yet what need of a conspiracy?

Sorry, the pond can't show more, it is stuck with this ancient mariner and his cri de coeur, his howl into the ether ...

Oh yes, look at all the wretched climate scientists, studying the planet. What on earth is the point of all that when each Sunday they could be joining with the bromancer in the cannibalistic ritual of eating human flesh and drinking human blood?

Sorry, this howl is beginning to wear, and yet dammit, there are three gobbets to go, and the next features the bromancer's best bro, his best buddy, his messiah, gesturing forlornly in a Christ-like way at the clouds ...

Yes, yes, the forsaken Messiah, but the IPA and Bella doing a tremendous job for white nationalism, and yet still two gobbets of despair to go ... capped by a snap of a shameful loser and dropkick ...

Oh you wretched loser, you dropkick, how you ruined everything, and yet the pond sighed a sigh of relief, because there was just one despairing gobbet to go ...

And Jimbo Molan is the heart? Why they might end up as fucked in the head as the bromancer, but at least it helps explain why the pond turned to nattering "Ned" with a sense of relief ...

"Ned" offered a sense of relief? 

Well his howl of pain is much shorter, and while it's a howl, it's not the din, the ruckus offered by the bromancer ... it's just seven gobbets long, and the pond has cheated by throwing in a couple of short meaty chunks of "Ned" goodness ...

Was it only yesterday that the pond was reading the hole in the bucket man, saying that there needed to be a focus on Russia and the war in Ukraine, and yet here, the very next day, the craven "Ned" is back on China, and running up the white flag with "Pelosi should not have gone to Taiwan."

If the pond ever wants a paper tiger to take on the dragon, it will reliably turn to "Ned" ...

It's "Ned" at his Chicken Little craven best, but the pond was lost for so long in that cri de coeur by the bromancer that it must rush on helter skelter ...

So much for our hole in the bucket man's thesis about Vlad the impaler and the need to help Ukraine. Not a whisper, not a jot, not a thought ...and lurking through it all comes the sense that "Ned" would ditch Taiwan in a heartbeat if push came to dragon shove ...

Still three gobbets to go, and the reptiles doing their best with click bait videos and snaps of drones and such like, and naturally for padding, "Ned" turns to regurgitating the thoughts of others, as he always does ... come on down, Harvard prof ...

Of course it would be much better if Taiwan simply did a Hong Kong and simply disappeared from sight, and we might all see the triumph of a one person one party authoritarian dictatorship in full flight ... and should anyone happen to enquire, the pond has a slightly worn bust of Chamberlain, or Quisling, or "Ned" himself for sale ...

With the war on China lost, and likely before Xmas, the pond admits it cheated, and upped the gobbet count a little by concluding with this short lame chunk of hearty "Ned" goodness ...

Having completely confused the pond - the war not worth fighting, the war lost, the war likely to finally remind "Ned" of Ukraine, all the pond's senses shrieked enough already ...

But there was still a bonus to go, and this day the pond was faced with a dilemma. The dog botherer has gone all in this day on the Price-Fitz affair, and the pond was in no mood to get a good fritzing.

What could the pond look at that wouldn't ruin the contents of the Sunday meditation?

Ancient Troy provided the answer ... little Johnny with a book to promote ...

Warning: ten bloody gobbets. And yet the pond will never read the tome, not even if it turned up in a street library for free, and so the pond offers this as a service ... what better way to be reminded of the thoughts of a drop kick loser who managed to lose his own seat while losing government? Who better to memorialise, and who better to do the memorialising than ancient Troy?

This might become a study of snaps. There's little Johnny in victory mode, and yet the next gobbet ends with little Johnny casting a shifty, furtive eye at the snake oil salesman and speaker in tongues sitting next to him ... but meanwhile, there's a book to flog ...

Yes, that photo says much, and it's a relief, because the next gobbet is entirely free of snaps, and the pond must wade on until the mutton Dutton hovers into view ...

Please, the pond can already hear the shrieks and the howls, but the pond promised nothing but ancient, venerable Troy regurgitating the thoughts of a doddery old fart, and the pond is delivering in spades ...

and so to that snap of the mutton Dutton ...

It's hard work flogging a book, especially a book by an irrelevance. Is there a single vulgar youff in the house?

Never mind, it's time for a few hagiographic snaps, with Nic Walker on the case ...

And so to talk of little Johnny's deep love of the likes of Prince Chuck and Prince Andrew - there's nothing like a fiddling royal to get little Johnny excited - and look, there's another Nic Walker snap ... but spoiler alert, Nic is about to ruin everything ...

Yadda yadda and so on and so forth, but at the end of the next gobbet, look what Nic produced ...

Oh Nic, Nic, it's going to take a long time to get that searing image out of the head. 

Not all the creamy, comforting blancmange that ancient Troy is offering can help eradicate it ... there's nothing in the flogging of a book to a caring audience of vulgar youff that can give the pond any kind of relief ...

And there you have it, mendacious doddery nonsense ... you might as well be "agnostic" on gravity ... as if science was some kind of religion.

But the good news is that the pond has reached the final gobbet in what has been an interminable session. Perhaps the pond would have been better off with the dog botherer, what's certain that it would have been more satisfying just to sit and bash the head with a hammer ... or perhaps recite the whole Ginsbergian Howl ...

What else? Well it's been a long and interminable trip and the pond did it without a single cartoon, but feels impelled to note this award-winner ...

And to back it up a shot of the deserving winner, thanks to this tweet ... retweeted ...