In which the pond sings a sing of Hillsong, goes submariner with the bromancer, and oh frabjous joy, turns ancient Greek with the hole in the bucket man ...

 

In the huge, ongoing kerfuffle over the despicable ongoing behaviour of Faux Noise and the likes of Tuckyo, the question of actual malice keeps arising ...

The pond thinks actual malice in relation to the voice would be easy enough to prove in relation to the reptiles, with this example of gotcha journalism and gotcha opinion from the meretricious Merritt ...

Luckily the pond is over the reptiles and the voice, but the ongoing kerfuffle in the US - try Kevin McCarthy’s Deplorable House, try How Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson Surrendered to MAGA - the question arose of the fate of journalists trapped within a hideously corrupt body which should never have had "news" in its name...

The Daily Beast version, Fox News Journalists Sound Off on ‘Soul-Crushing’ Dominion Filings, might be behind a paywall for some, but the Huff Post clone, is short and carries the gist, 'Incredibly Angry': Fox News Staff Reportedly Fuming About Dominion Filings.

The pond naturally lapped up this civil war, but then decided to do something it rarely does. 

Sure the pond had read the story the day before in Crikey, ‘Fraud, money laundering and tax evasion’: Wilkie tables Hillsong whistleblower documents  (Sure, the pond had also read in Crikey David Hardaker's take-down Nine’s bombastic China series aims everywhere at once, yet misses key targets, but the pond has such a complete contempt for the Nine rags and their pitiful attempts to ape the lizards of Oz knew it could never be bothererd to go there. When it comes to war mongering, there's always the bromancer).

But Crikey has a paywall for some, and look at what the cat dragged in or at least, what turned up on the far right in the lizard Oz's triptych of terror ...

An actual attempt at journalism and reporting as if there'd been some attempt to throw off the shackles of the reptile commentariat. Sure it was decades too late, but even the insufferable Phillip Adams might be tempted to hand out a koala stamp ...

For once, the pond decided to look past the bromancer, purring like a cat fed Snappy Tom out of a tin can sub, and let an actual story roam wild and free, if only because it featured Hillsong (correspondents anxious for a serve of the hole in the bucket man and ancient Greeks must wait their turn).

The pond has nothing to add - not even a joke about Christ and rich men and eyes of needle and yadda yadda - and instead is content to enjoy the work of Andrew Wilkie ... (he's pretty good on poker machines too).

The pond did think of interrupting with some cartoons - it's been collecting Faux Noise cartoons for the weekend meditation ...

But why interrupt reporters trying to be reporters, while the rest of the reptiles create their usual ruckus and din?

It's simply too delicious to ignore, and the reptiles didn't just offer snaps of ominous amounts of folders, they gave the story a full outing ...

This isn't to say the pond forgives the reptiles for their daily parade of malice, but at least this malice is pointed in the right direction, and the pond has always favoured the notion that the enemy of the enemy, even self-serving hypocrites of the lizard Oz kind, can sometimes come in handy when the money spenders are inside the temple, making out like bandits ... just look at the sort of shack preachers like to shack up in these days, talk about Elmer Gantry having a fit of pique and envy ...

By golly even the snaps are fun, what with the preacher's palace getting a guernsey and a snap inside the humble abode coming up in the next gobbet, with just a few rags idly on display in the very small wardrobes, as befits a preacher donning sackcloth and ashes ...

Of course at the end the reptiles do the decent thing, and run a response from the preachers, taking a break from the fleecing of their sheep, desperate to keep the shearing shed in tip top condition ... because you can never have enough seats in the living room, or lebensraum if you will...

Will any of this stop people from lining up to be fleeced, while indulging in clap happy songs? Not likely, because as the mango Mussolini and Faux Noise has shown, is showing and will continue to show, there are suckers born every minute, and mug punters who have been hooked, and must keep on ingesting the junk ... and the lizard Oz is late to this story, which has been brewing for years, and only scored a seat at the table thanks to Andrew Wilkie, but still, is there a koala stamp in the house?

And so on to take a squiz at the rest of the reptile offerings ...

The pond thought for a nanosecond about cackling Claire dumping the housing crisis on furriners, but then thought, yeah nah, bashing a bigot for bashing migrants was too easy, so after going to the effort of clipping the offering, the pond threw it in the bin. 

Some day Dame Groan will be back to groan about pesky, difficult, invading furriners, cane toads ruining everything, and that'll be enough. No need to waste time on a lightweight like cackling Claire ... or even Geoff dishing it out to the greenies ...

A few punters might note the hole in the bucket man, and start a Pavlovian slobbering, but the pond knows how to titillate, and so took a detour back to the triptych of terror, and the bromancer sounding like a pig in mud (or is that shit?) and showing the Nine papers that when being an armchair general, you need a classy armchair and a superior brand of port ...

The pond was immediately suspicious. How long before this delighted pig in shit would turn? But then the pond has always been made instantly suspicious whenever the bromancer cheers on anything ... as in the matter of Modi and his government, where the pond tends to take an infallible Pope view of things ... (It seems the infallible Pope is worth his weight in subscribers).

But no, the bromancer is on a roll, the manic phase before we hit the depression that's sure to follow ...

Meanwhile Wilcox did her best to tamp down the bromancer's manic euphoria ...

She missed point six, Each day we can see Faux Noise having had their way with the mango Mussolini will not have had enough and will have at it with fascist DeSantis, and so we're likely to end up in a pluperfect imperfect future perfect ...

But enough mock Latinate, a final gobbet of pure manic delight from the bromancer and then it's on with the ancient Greeks ...

The pond is sure there'll be tears as the bromancer comes down from his meth or sub induced high - that's what smoking a sub joint will do for you - and suggests handkerchief manufacturing will help out the SA economy, but enough already, time for the ancient Greeks ...

In the past, the pond has tended to red card any reptile going over tedious super ground, there having been a superabundant carry on by an assortment of reptiles, but this was simply too good to pass up, with the hole in the bucket man firing on all ancient Greek cylinders ...

Yes, it's a tame opening, and yes, the snap features Jimbo, a Satanic figure designed to instil terror in anyone with an idle 100 mil in super, but trust the pond, there are good bits coming, even if there's also another snap of Jimbo getting in the way, and earning a quizzical look from Albo ...

Oh sheesh, did the pond pretend it was offering the ancient Greeks and somehow ended up with Roman Stoics?

Be fair. The ancient Greeks started it, long before the Romans ripped it off, and then our Henry started to blather about it in a super way...

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve eudaimonia (happiness, lit. 'good spiritedness'): one flourishes by living an ethical life. The Stoics identified the path to eudaimonia with a life spent practicing virtue and living in accordance with nature.

Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to virtue ethics. The Stoics are especially known for teaching that "virtue is the only good" for human beings, and that external things, such as health, wealth, and pleasure, are not good or bad in themselves (adiaphora) but have value as "material for virtue to act upon". Many Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that because "virtue is sufficient for happiness", a sage would be emotionally resilient to misfortune. The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment, and they believed people should aim to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is "in accordance with nature". Because of this, the Stoics thought the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how a person behaved. To live a good life, one had to understand the rules of the natural order since they believed everything was rooted in nature.

Stoicism flourished throughout the Roman and Greek world until the 3rd century CE, and among its adherents was Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It experienced a decline after Christianity became the state religion in the 4th century CE. Since then, it has seen revivals, notably in the Renaissance (Neostoicism) and in the contemporary era (modern Stoicism). (wiki the footnotes here).

What the fuck has all this got to do with super in Australia? 

Fucked if the pond knows, but admit it, having a romp with the ancients is fucking good fun, and we can thank the hole in the bucket man for that ... and he's not done yet, not by a long shot ...

How did the pond not see that coming? Cant about Kant in a super irrelevant way ...

It's quintessential distilled essence of the hole in the bucket man, and the pond grieved that there should only be a short gobbet go to, because it features the ancient Greeks and never you mind about the slaves ...

Slavery was an accepted practice in ancient Greece, as in other societies of the time. Some Ancient Greek writers (including, most notably, Aristotle) described slavery as natural and even necessary.This paradigm was notably questioned in Socratic dialogues; the Stoics produced the first recorded condemnation of slavery.

The principal use of slaves was in agriculture, but they were also used in stone quarries or mines, and as domestic servants. Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 5th and 6th centuries BC, with an average of three or four slaves per household, except in poor families. Slaves were legally prohibited from participating in politics, which was reserved for citizens.

Modern historiographical practice distinguishes between chattel slavery (personal possession, where the slave was regarded as a piece of property as opposed to a mobile member of society) versus land-bonded groups such as the penestae of Thessaly or the Spartan helots, who were more like medieval serfs (an enhancement to real estate). The chattel slave is an individual deprived of liberty and forced to submit to an owner, who may buy, sell, or lease them like any other chattel. (wiki the footnotes here).

Frankly the pond would be a lot happier about life and democracy and all that jazz if it had a couple of slaves running around the house doing the pond's bidding. Oh what fun then to talk about self-government and dignity and a hundred mil of super, but alas that pleasure is reserved for the eastern suburbs, where slaves are routinely hired to make life easy for the idle rich ... and instead the pond is left with a serve of stale bread, cold water and our Henry ...

 

What a sublime wank by such an esteemed wanker and the pond feels all the better for it, and will start the day with a kick in the heels, even if there's no slave nearby to give a good kicking to ... but at least there's an immortal Rowe, setting sail with the bromancer...

It's always in the detail, though the pond suspects that one day the bromancer will also turn into a mine ... what poor sweet ancient Siren impaled herself on that monstrous object, leaving only a shard of bloodied frock behind?