A splendid sighting in Fish Creek, jewel of Gippsland ...

 

The pond is still on holidays, but managed to find a way to connect to the full to overflowing internet to wish any passing reader all the best in the new year.

The pond will resume herpetological studies in due course, but hasn't lacked for entertainment over the break.

For a moment, it seemed that a wildcard upstart liar and fantasist - a combination of Baron Munchausen, Walter Mitty, and shameless rogue - might snatch away the mango Mussolini's title of con artist of the year, an award he has won each year for decades, often taking out the double of year's best snake oil salesman.

Fortunately the committee dropped its massive final report - there's a direct link to the pdf here, though the pond has no intention of reading it - and what with the drop of the shameless tax returns and associated lies revealed, and assorted extended interviews showing the desperate and richly comic efforts of the coup plotters - the orange Jeebus comfortably retained his title. 

Wannabes of the George Santos or Ron DeSanctimonious kind will have to try again next year, but credit where no credit is due, the pond's time clutching its phone for news of the world was richly rewarded (just don't expect a signal from Telstra on parts of the Hume).

Speaking of awards, the pond was also delighted that the judges had snatched away Clarkson's clottish attempt at an incel impersonator. 

Catherine Bennett reported the judges' findings and covered some of their deliberations for the Graudian in Among the Meghan-hating media fraternity, Jeremy Clarkson isn’t even king.

Fairness requires his article to be available for comparison with work from names including, in no particular order, Dan Wootton, Piers Morgan, Nigel Farage, Tom Bower, Brendan O’Neill of spiked and the Spectator’s Freddy Gray, not forgetting Richard Tice, Toby Young and Rod Liddle. Energised, perhaps, by the abundant material issuing from Montecito, more and more commentators are realising that a media career really can be based on, or refreshed by, repeating that the Duchess of Sussex is any or all of a talentless (yet cunning) mansion-dwelling liar, narcissist, bully, gold-digger, hypocrite and republic facilitator who stole “our” prince (Morgan: “dragged him out of the country off to your California mansion to fleece your royal titles”) whom she will dump – thanks to the demagogue-psychic Farage for this insight – when the time is right. To which the popular psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson tweeted: “This seems highly probable to me.”

Having said that, the trade is harder than it might look; the successful Markle-detractor must not only sustain Morgan-rivalling levels of abuse but produce some signature excuse for his feelings. An honourable mention, then, to Peterson who, new to the specialism, brought a scholarly perspective to bear on a Markle “archetype” podcast in which he’d been quoted (saying “I don’t think that men can control crazy women”). While compliant with Goldwater constraints on psychological speculation, Peterson added to his academic defence of “crazy women” the objection that Markle’s voice “just grates on me”. Elsewhere, the recently arrested career misogynist Andrew Tate seems to be the first of this men’s group to call her a bitch and worse. Why the anger? Unclear, but, invited on Morgan’s show, Tate recently regretted that “a lot of age-old traditions are being destroyed in real time”.

Here the pond must issue a spoiler alert and jump straight to the award-winner ...

To pick a winner from this wealth of invective has occasionally felt like an impossible task. But the most precious is, surely, a piece by the distinguished Marxist turned Markleist, Brendan O’Neill. Not for pyrotechnics but for so brilliantly encapsulating Meghan’s often fascinating effect on the male mind. “Go away,” he begs the belle dame of Montecito, “Leave me alone.” He made the same request in 2020.

The pond always knew that blathering Brendan had it in him, and it was only right and just that a wannabe late arriviste of the Clarkson or Peterson kind should be reminded that it takes years to become a properly schooled obsessive compulsive, and years confusing size of muffler with size of penis (or size of drug intake with size of penis turgidity, and ways to achieve penile tumescence) is simply not good enough ...

It's probably the first and last time that the pond will waste any time on the Markle phenomenon - so many angry old men desperately in search of a fuck and all they get to show for it is a newspaper column - but of course mention of mufflers and penis size brings back to mind those two epic smackdowns by that still just a Swedish teen (though at 19 she's about to lose that title), showing that there was still a use for Twitter for vulgar youffs wanting to to box the ears of an alleged kickboxer ...

What a splash it made, and was still making as the pond typed ...

Google as you like, but all this begins to take the pond too close to reptile studies, what with blathering Brendan a long-time reptile favourite, and the formerly drug-addled Peterson much loved by Dame Slap, and of course the uppity difficult climate teen routinely abused by all and sundry in the lizard Oz. 

If only the dog botherer had tried to take her on so that the lizard Oz might achieve a nanosecond's fame down there with the pizza and cigar and muffled penis lad ...

As it is, all that's left for the moment is for the pond to report on travelling a fair distance at peak vacation time in an EV. 

First the infrastructure is comprehensively fucked, or if you will, non-existent. At any given time, it seems at least half the chargers are out of action, with advice in the app that they might be fixed in a week or so. (This is to say that if you're lucky to find two chargers, one will definitely be broken, and there's a good chance so will the other, and if both are broken, chances are the next one within range will also be broken, so you must sit and wait your turn).

Imagine then having range anxiety and turning up at the side of a garage - EV users are routinely shunted off so as not to disturb gas guzzlers - to discover one charger fucked, and the other infested by a truly expensive Merc full of entitled nubes not familiar with the 80% rule, which proposes that polite chargers get up to that limit, before battery technology severely throttles back the charging, thereby causing even longer delays for those waiting in the queue. They've wandered off to have a burger at McDonalds while they charge to 100% - as entitled wankers of the Merc kind are wont to do - so at least there might be a heart attack payback in the distant future. Those in the queue can only sit and dream of revenge on the hogs.

Meanwhile, you might wonder about the slow charger, but it's infested with a cockroach Tesla. But didn't uncle Elon install a system of chargers that would make lovers of cars made by lovers of Nazis - Nazi car lovers for short - the envy of Australia and the world? 

Of course not, Telsa chargers aren't abundant and they're not cheap, and so the cockroaches - Nazi car lovers if you will - spend their time using non-Tesla chargers ...

All you can do is gloat at the drop in price of Nazi car lovers' cars in the second hand market or perhaps the drop in the company's share price.

So even with a long range EV on the Hume, be prepared for a couple of additional hours of travel time, even if you once routinely stopped while guzzling gas, thinking a break might help you arrive alive ... and be prepared for governments to talk the talk, and do sweet FA about it ...

But at least in its travels the pond did sight a splendid sign in Fish Creek, jewel of Gippsland, and in lieu of reptile studies and relevant cartoons, here it is ...