In which the Caterist saves the pond from a blank page ... though a blank page might have shown more signs of life and intelligence ...

 

The reptiles seem to have lost interest in the behaviour of the sociopathic Vlad the impaler, so the pond thought it might start this wretched Wednesday with the infallible Pope ...

Call it deflection, call it impotent rage, but what a gigantic tosser and war criminal Vlad the terrible is ...

The infallible Pope aced the pond just as the pond began frothing and foaming at the mouth, full of impatience with the tedium of its herpetological studies.

Yet again the pond must hand Dame Slap a red card. When she's not obsessively compulsively scribbling about the Higgins matter, she's compulsively obsessively scribbling about the voice, and she was at it again today ...

Sheesh, the mutton Dutton principled? But then Dame Slap has never understood principled, and wouldn't recognise a principle, or even a principal, if they bit her on the bum. And there's something deeply weird about her obsession. Donning Dr Freud, is it to do with being blonde, this fear of difficult, uppity people of another colour?

Whatever, it's bloody intolerable and the only thing to do is to run a Wilcox joke about voices ...

What else? Well the reptiles kept up their running gag about gas, even importing a prize loon from the WSJ to join in the joke ...

Freedumb? You can't make this shit up, and only because it was there, the pond should also acknowledge the work of the lesser member of the Kelly gang, doing his best to spread fear and loathing ...

How soon before nattering "Ned" and puts the upstart Joe back into the Kelly gang box?

How's all this deflection and deferral and avoidance working for the pond? 

Bloody fine, especially as next in line as a potential candidate for the pond clipping service was the bromancer getting all hagiographic and uxorious about Jimbo ...

The pond had a couple of questions. You see, the bromancer's piece was posted 43 minutes ago at 11.34 pm yesterday, when the pond posted a reminder to itself not to touch this truly unique obituary with a barge pole (after being alerted by a correspondent to Jimbo's departure from this place).

What sort of clock do the reptiles run by? And then came this other thought ... who thought showing Jimbo in ratbag ranting supreme tosser form was the best way to support the bromancer's crawling up Jimbo's bum, as grotesque a form of necrophilia the pond has come across in recent times?

Never mind, the pond continued its hunt, and had almost given up the chase because the lizard Oz editorialist was also rabbiting on about Jimbo, and Eric was another who'd had an attack of the gas ...

Oh and fellow travelling Loosley was still on about the Dominator, though it seemed a tad late to be talking about vetting of candidates, especially when there were other jokes to be found about the rotting state of New South Wales ...

As for the rest, what's to say about the constant gas attacks - look, there's Ticky is inhaling Perth gas - that hasn't been said before, and much better?

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Well one of the tellers of that old lie has left this place, and just as the pond had almost decided to give the game away, and offer up a blank page, came a kind of salvation ... the Caterist had turned up on a Wednesday, and it was the usual guff about nuking the country ...

Given it's just a serve of the same old Caterist shyte (in the sense that it doesn't make a shyte of difference), the pond's eye was immediately drawn to the reptile illustration at the top of the piece ... a nuclear power station in Slovakia, framed by a picturesque field of yellow flowers ... almost worthy of van Gogh if they'd found room for a severed ear ...

Meanwhile, the pond has been down this brand of Caterism so many times, it feels it might have been crafted by an AI program regurgitating a mash-up of the sociology student's blather ...

Ah, at last, a genuine distraction. 

Mark P. Mills ...

Thanks be unto the Caterist, the pond has met Mark P. Mills before, but as often happens, the pond likes to remind stray passing readers of the Caterist's go to sources ... with Mark P. Mills a feature at DeSmog ...

There's oodles more at DeSmog, quotes and such like ...

January 14, 2009 ...Writing for The Spectator, Mills suggested an energy paradigm shift was unlikely to arise from new forms of energy, but rather from advances and efficiencies in the existing hydrocarbon sector:

“One thing has not changed in 40 years: perpetual-motion-machine-style wishful thinking. While emerging energy technologies offer exciting (essential) promise, none of them are about to disrupt the oil industry. Terrorism, terrible policies, and wars can. Energy tech is the hope to sustain, not disrupt, our oil-dependent economy.”

...and those who are interested can follow the link, but the pond wanted to head off to Ars Technica and John Timmer back in 2021 for this epic smackdown.

Again it's only a sample, but what a sample ...

And so on, and that's the joy of a Caterist reading. 

He slips on like a warm old glove, or perhaps an old used condom, and you meet the usual cast of loons and deadbeats and dropkick losers and denialists, and the pond gets to run a little counterpoint, and before you know it, you're nuking the last gobbet ...

It goes without saying that the Caterist's devotion to nuking the country leads inexorably to a future where sfa is done about climate change, because that's what the Caterist wants, what with decades of climate science denialism behind him, up there with his astonishing skills as a floodwaters in quarries whisperer ...

And so to the immortal Rowe ...

As usual, the pond relies on its correspondents and cartoonists to keep in touch with what's happening in the real world, outside the lizard Oz world in Surry Hills and luckily the immortal Rowe had retweeted an explanation attached to the cartoon ...

Benigh senile purpura ... oh, it was too rich, if slightly, perhaps fully sick ...

So for once instead of ending with a cartoon, the pond headed off to the AFR for a happy ending, and luckily the piece at time of writing was outside the paywall, and what a happy ending it was ...down there with the happy endings offered at Kings Court, not so far from Broadway, where the pond does its shopping ... (that's Sydney Broadway, not loser Broadway)

There was more, and the pond quelled the nausea and automatic gagging reflex to continue on ...

They are? Apart from both being in to deeply weird shit? 

There was this capper to that bit of the saga ...

And as someone who as recently as five years ago presented her own “agony aunt” style radio show, Mrs Smith’s counsel could prove invaluable as he navigates the next crucial steps for his media megacorp.

As she put it in 2017: “Everybody’s got turmoil, and turmoil is the reason for financial problems, relationship problems, wrong marriages, working in dead-end jobs, not being able to get along with people. If it doesn’t get any light or sunshine, it will never get healed - it will keep on going and festering and growing.”

What sublime festering and still growing comedy ...

And then the rest of it was a survey of the Chairman's four previous marriages, and at that point, the pond thought bugger it, why not just end with a couple of cartoons by a pond favourite, with gas still the theme of the day ...