In which the pond talks to vegetables and they respond, and among the vegetables is Jimbo of the IPA, Dame Slap of the IPA, and nattering "Ned" of the lizard Oz ...

 

There has been a tendency to take cheap and easy shots at King Chuck III - guilty as charged muh lud - with Charlie Lewis a typical example in Crikey under the header Things Charles presumably won’t say out loud anymore now that he’s king. (paywall)

There were the usual things - becoming a patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy, and flogging a ten quid a pop Duchy Herbals’ Detox Tincture, and dissing on Galileo, but then Charlie simply went too far…

...Charles has revealed several times that he talks to plants: “I just come and talk to the plants, really. Very important to talk to them; they respond. I happily talk to plants and trees and listen to them. I think it’s absolutely crucial.”
This was long taken to be a sign of his chronic odd-ballery, although we have to be entirely fair on this one: there is some research that indicates plants may respond to sound.

We have to be more than entirely fair. We must be entirely supportive ...

Of course they respond to you. Didn’t the sage celebrate talking to responding plants in a splendid and deeply researched, extremely scientific song …

This is a song about vegetables, they keep ya regular
They're real good for you

Call any vegetable
Call it by name
Call one today
When you get off the train

Call any vegetable
And the chances are good
Aw, the vegetable will respond to you

Some people don't go for prunes...  I don't know
I've always found that if they-
Call any vegetable
Pick up your phone
Think of a vegetable
Lonely at home

Call any vegetable
And the chances are good
That a vegetable will respond to you
Rutabaga, rutabaga
Rutabaga, rutabaga
Rutabay-y-y-y...

A prune isn't really a vegetable...
Cabbage is a vegetable...
No one will know
If you don't want to let them know
No one will know
'Less it's you that might tell them so
Call and they'll come to you
Covered with dew
Vegetables dream of responding to you
Standing there shiny and proud by your side
Holding your hand while the neighbours decide
Why is a vegetable something to hide?

And after that celebration of responding vegetables, the pond can get on to reptile business for the day, and thought it might try something different, what with Jimbo of the IPA a feature in the below the fold comments section of the lizard Oz...

Dear sweet long absent lord, the pond realised it had made a serious mistake, but at least it could celebrate Ukraine ...

The pond had now gone inn so far with Jimbo of the IPA that to return was as tedious as to go o'er ...

Meanwhile on another planet featuring the immortal Rowe ...

Well there was no going back now, but a chastened pond was relieved to discover it had reached the final gobbet of Jimbo from the IPA ... and discovered he could be consistently vacuous, no mean feat, with the bigger strategic picture almost as silly as blathering about a picture of overalls ...

Normally at this point, the pond would have slipped in a celebration of an authoritarian, and why not, because there are vegetables in the house ...

At least the pond had learned its lesson ... best stick to tried and trusted loons, and is there any better planet to visit than Janet's, above the faraway tree?

The pond doesn't want to get into an argument about trickle down bullshit and the nonsense of tax cuts and such like - the pond's correspondents can do all that - but instead it would like to note the unnerving similarity between Dame Slap and a good trussing, at least if Riddell is any guide ...

Oh yes, ice queens wherever you look ...

Now back to the good slapping, or perhaps an excellent Turkish delight trussing ...

Truly, you can take Dame Slap out of the IPA, but you can't take the IPA out of Dame Slap ...

The pond almost has some sympathy for the poor old Poms, heading into a freezing and vastly expensive winter, and just a trussing for warmth and comfort, though really if they thought about it for a nanosecond, they should have deep sympathy for a country lumbered with Dame Slap ...

Yes, yes, grow the economy, fuck the planet, Lord Monckton was right, don the MAGA cap and celebrate the Donald, pass the tax cuts to the filthy rich, and no, that's not piss on the back of your neck, that's the trickle down in all its glory ...

At this point, before proceeding to its bonus, the pond would like to note the passing of Jean-Luc Godard. 

Way back when, before he went full Maoist and fell into bad company, Godard was a big influence on the pond. There were the obvious films, such as À bout de souffle, but the pond also had time for films such as Les Carabiniers, Pierrot le Fou and Le Mépris ...

Sure, it was full French wank, but Godard taught the pond many naughty French words ... to the great embarrassment of a hapless person trying to teach the pond the language ...

But that was then, and this is now, and the pond plucked up the courage to venture into the reptiles' triptych of terror ...

Trust the republicans to get it wrong ... surely the sight of King Chuck III, perhaps with tampon in hand, on the local currency will either produce a cashless society or a republic before the year is out ...

But the pond wasn't there for that, the pond was there for "Ned's" natter ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, "Ned" in the guise of Kerr's cur ... but it did remind the pond of another Crikey effort, (paywall) this one by the keen Keane ...

By now many people will have had their introduction to 17th century British history via observations that the name Charles has some ill omens for a British king.

Charles I, they will have read, was executed in 1649. He got what was coming to him. Charged with levying war on his own people after losing not one but two civil wars, he kept trying to manipulate his way back to power until the New Model Army got sick of him, purged Parliament and put him on trial. He had ruled for 11 years without calling Parliament, until foolishly deciding to try to impose his preferred religious model on the Scots, who promptly threw him out, forcing him to recall Parliament to obtain money.

After 11 years of increasing oppression and enforcement of a narrow Anglican orthodoxy, parliament was in no mood to help — especially after he dissolved it once, then got beaten by the Scots again.

His son, Charles II, who was restored in 1660, was a little smarter. Instead of not calling Parliament, he called one early and kept it for years, hoping its conservatism would help him. But he also made a secret deal with Louis XIV to convert to Catholicism and help the French fight the Dutch in exchange for cash that was meant to free him from relying on Parliament.

Louis XIV promptly embroiled the British in a war with the Dutch that initially went poorly for the Netherlands but eventually became a costly stalemate. So costly that, just like dad, Charles was forced to recall Parliament.

He also tried to issue a declaration on indulgence toward Catholics and Protestant dissenters, which was promptly overturned by Parliament on the important principle that a monarch couldn’t prevent the laws of the land from applying. Charles made it to 1685, to be succeeded by his brother James, a Catholic would-be absolute monarch who would be kicked out by the Dutch in 1688.

Along with their father — rumoured incorrectly to have converted to Catholicism before his execution — the later Stuarts created the persistent English belief that there was some innate connection between Catholicism and tyranny.

That of course isn't the half of it when it came to Charles II, what with Sex, scandals and betrayals: Charles II and his court, Was Charles II too randy to rule?, and so on and so forth ...

There were many most excellent precedents for talking tampons ...

Never get in the way of a swinging royal, or a royal swinging like a loon through the antipodes ...

Now back to "Ned", though the pond might well wander again if "Ned" proves too tedious ...

Oh if only it had come to pass ...

Along similar lines, did you know Charles has an organic food brand he sells at posh supermarket Waitrose? In 2009 it started selling a “herbal remedy” detox mix of artichoke and dandelion — Duchy Herbals’ Detox Tincture — that it promised would “help eliminate toxins and aid digestion”.

Again those “scientist” killjoys wanted “proof”.

“Nothing would, of course, be easier than to demonstrate that detox products work. All one needed to do is to take a few blood samples from volunteers and test whether this or that toxin is eliminated from the body faster than normal,” Professor Edzard Ernst said at the time. “But where are the studies that demonstrate efficacy? They do not exist, and the reason is simple: these products have no real detoxification effects.”

Oh yeah, and the mix cost £10 (about A$20 at the time) for 50 ml. Remind us, what else was going on around that time? Any global shocks people might be recovering from?

On with "Ned", doing what he does best, wallowing with curs of the Kerr kind ...

Indeed, indeed, the talking tampon routinely went where the Queen never went ...

His royal highness has long advocated for the “basically a glass of water” branch of medicine. As recently as 2019 he became the patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy, which “regulates” homeopathic “medicine”. The Good Thinking Society — a non-profit organisation that gets all hung up on science needing to be supported by actual evidence — called Charles’ endorsement “obscene”...

...Charles’ long-time advocacy for the environment seems to come in spite of a suspicion of science.

In 2010, the then prince gave a speech at Oxford on his great subject, making the strange argument that the real problem is we’re too hung up on the work of trendy new thinkers like… Galileo. Apparently the main problems with humanity arise from a “deep, inner crisis of the soul” — and that the “de-souling” of humanity “goes back at least to Galileo’s assertion that there is nothing in nature but quantity and motion”:

As a result, nature has been completely objectified — she has become an it — and we are persuaded to concentrate on the material aspect of reality that fits within Galileo’s scheme.

Rich stuff, and how handy to have "Ned" for once acting as some kind of interstitial for the good oil ... or balm ... or unguent, which will produce a magical mystery cure ...

Hold the digital presses. A talking tampon got wisdom by acting like a loon down under, in company with a cur?

Truth to tell, "Ned" will believe anything and say anything, so long as he can prattle.

But should the pond be stern? Should the pond hold anything against a loon of the royal first water?

Riddle this, if the pond did, how could the pond get to relish an infallible Pope?