Egad sirs, and possibly the odd lady, it's a bumper book of reptile adventures this Friday ...

 

Forget the Canadian wildfires, forget the talk of the arrival of an El Niño event, heck, even forget the reptiles embarking on a vast conspiracy theory involving puppet masters ...

Gad sirs, and the occasional lady, Dame Slap keeps jumping the shark, but the pond knows its duty, and tip toed past that hysterical talk of a gigantic conspiracy involving a puppet master ... (speaking of vast conspiracies, the pond is still waiting for the UN to use climate science to establish world government by Xmas).

Today our Henry is on a mission from god, and the pond is proud to present a bumper book for reptiles and colonial boys ...

Gad sirs, there's good Queen Vic trembling at the knees at the sight of her devoted servant, and as she handed him his Faithful Servant and Devoted Service medals, she knew she was rewarding not the actor but the act (or perhaps many acts, who can say?).

Why if Jack the Ripper hisself had been given a gong for his splendid work teaching the fuzzy wuzzies a lesson at Rourke's Drift, the odd little street crime would do nothing to tarnish the medal ...

 

Gad sirs, our Henry was just warming up ... could there be a Carlyle in the wings, or sob, a full on jingoistic Rudyard Kipling?

Gad sirs, a pack of bloodthirsty hounds, building an empire and showing Vlad the Impaler how it should have been done. By this time every fibre in the pond's body was exuding a patriotic fervour ...

Gad sirs and now it's Kipling's turn ... and who couldn't immediately think of the splendid sight of drinking from a dead man's artificial leg as a sign of the wonders of empire ...

Gad sir, the only warrior suited for a war is a sociopath, and the sooner we realise it, the better we'll all be for the understanding ... after all, the best way to save the village is to burn it to the ground.

Gad sirs, but what of the ancient Greeks and Thucydides? Oh you callow chaps, as if our Henry could forget them, they were all sociopaths too ... or at least prone to savage outbursts ...

Gad sirs, the pond could go on quoting good old Colonel Blimp and Colonel Henry all day, but will settle for quoting the infallible Pope, proposing another vast conspiracy to undermine SloMo, where it seems the puppet master might have been ... gasp ... SloMo hisself ...

But wait, this is a bumper book of reptile adventures, so there's much more to follow ...

Why cackling Claire has discovered the real problem with the Voice. Those bloody difficult, uppity, blacks, living the life of Riley on the dole, get in the way of leading a dinkum lifestyle ...

Gad sirs, she's right of course. The tiresome, uppity difficult blacks are simply being too tedious for words and should take their lessons from history ...

Gad sirs, the pond knew it would find it hard to break its Low habit once it started, but let's face it, we must keep the uppity, difficult blacks in their place ...

Gad sirs, is that some loon from the media class blathering on about the media class being insulated from the masses?

Gad sirs, those uppity, difficult blacks have a lot to answer for ...

Ah yes, those bloody uppity, difficult blacks, what a privileged and disconnected elite they are ...

Gad sirs, is this not a splendid bumper book of adventure for the Catholic boys' daily, and yet the pond has only just got going.

Torn between Karl Rove predicting neither the mango Mussolini nor old Joe would win, or going with the grave Sexton, gad sirs, of course the pond would go with the local lad ...

Egad sirs, the good old days of Richard Nixon, but surely the grave Sexton will understand that there's already a winner to hand, with a winning issue ...

Gad sirs, the pond had to break its Low habit at some point, and so to the grave Sexton feeling some sympathy for the mango Mussolini, what with accusations of him being Putin's lapdog - is idolising fellow sociopaths so wrong? - and him being harassed by trivial charges, because who doesn't feel like staging a coup when your election has been stolen...

What a splendid effort at owning the libs, and the pond could feel a TT coming on, with more TT here ...

And so to the grave Sexton picking a winner, and the winner would be Nikki Haley, if only she could be a winner, and at this point, the pond almost wondered if it should have gone roving with Rove ... but the main point stands, what we need is a return to the great days of tricky Dick and backroom deals, and plumbers, you always need plumbers ... and with a bit of luck, it seems the unfairly treated mango Mussolini might get another chance to make America go barking mad again ...

Time for a new book? Flogging that old one is sounding a little long in the tooth, but gad sirs, what a splendid set of insights offered up by the grave Sexton. Have you not been entertained?

And this is usually the point where the pond would throw up hands and cry enough already, the bumper book of reptile adventures has sated the appetite.

Gad sirs, and forsook, not so fast, no yielding or quitting or jettisoning yet. 

The pond is intent on honouring the meretricious Merritt, keen to stamp out any notion that anyone is above the law - say the filthy rich who might even have appointed a judge or two, or who hang out with a Supreme Court judge, you know the kind ...

And they said hyper-realism was dead, but that simply had to be included in the bumper book ... especially as there are more difficult, pesky, uppity blacks to be thrown under the bus, in due course and with proper regard to their right to continue as second class citizens. If they've done it for a couple of centuries, why not keep on with it? 

At this point the reptiles decided to embrace iconography and throw in a few big illustrations ... and the pond had to downsize them in the usual way ...

Funny - peculiar more than ha ha - the pond had always thought of Magna Carta as a bunch of rebel barons reaching a deal with a difficult King - and that a lot of pieties and blather had been talked about its meaning and its significance ...

What's that, there's a wiki?

First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Neither side stood behind their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.

Oh right, the pond gets it, it's just the Catholic Boys' Daily celebrating the joys of an interfering church...

On with the meretricious Merritt, wildly spinning away, doing a Henry and mistily dreaming of the English empire ...

Ah yes, the United States, and the common law, and justice for all, and strangely the immortal Rowe had a splendid example of how that was working this day ...

But wait, that's not all, there's some black bashing to be done, and Merritt has got out the nine iron to do a bit of hacking ...

Indeed, indeed. Now the pond can hear a few pesky, difficult, uppity blacks snorting behind their hands at the idea of equality before the law...

But the pond is pleased to ignore their talk of poisoned flour and massacres and slavery and stolen generations and such like, to join with the meretricious Merritt to put them down, in the name of ancient robber barons ...

Or we could just close this bumper book of reptile adventures and wander off into the night, wondering why anyone takes the lizard Oz seriously this day ...

Meanwhile, the immortal Rowe's cartoon struck the pond as a fitting closer, so why not a few more, with even Ramirez joining in the disapproving chorus ... though it's really only a fine example of cash being supreme before the law ...