In which the pond averts eyes from reptile hypocrisy to take in Henry versus the machines, and a dash of roving Rove ...

 

If the pond remembers correctly from the days being dragged down to Tamworth's number one oval kicking and screaming, the technical term is being "sold a dump."

Some dropkick throws the ball to you, and you get your head taken off with a stiff arm or a coat hanger or whatever, or some boofhead thug with no neck creams you. Memory fades as to the pond's recollections and sometimes that's a relief.

Never mind, here's how the technical term applies in politics:

You see? Yesterday simpleton Simon (no conflict there) had the complete cheek to turn moralist and mutter "this should serve as a lesson in the perils of politicising sexual assault allegations."

Even worse, it was Liberals get burnt after turning up the Higgins' heat.

The pond couldn't resist a rich, ripe belly laugh. The reptiles had been politicising sexual assault allegations for weeks, neigh months, and poor old Captain Potato took the bait, marched in step to reptile orders, and thought he was on a winner... but thus far all it's won him is a lost senator, and the realisation that the reptiles have "sold him a dump" ...

A little while later the lizard Oz realised this simply wouldn't do and went with the "pox on both houses" and "both sides of politics" angle ...

Now it was a "pox on both houses exposing perils of politicisation", with both sides of politics allegedly equally guilty and learning "a lesson in the perils of politicising sexual assault allegations".

But what of the reptiles? Will the reptiles heed simplistic Simon's warning and steer clear of politicising sexual assault allegations? Try stopping Dame Slap, she's a one person dumping machine ...

She'll go on selling vicious, offensive, smelly dumps until the cows come home.

Thank the long absent lord the pond has steadfastly stayed clear of that aspect of the reptile crap machine, and by morning simplistic Simon had been kicked to the side and they reptiles had sent in the bouffant Shanners to do the faux moralising ...

Now the reptile behaviour was to the detriment of all, and never mind sadly and sordidly the way the reptiles had spent weeks, neigh months, corrupting the public discourse with wretched leaks and sinister insinuations, and Dame Slap in particular had gone barking mad obsessive-compulsive and leaker in chief ...

Just to cap it off, there came the infallible Pope ...

Never mind, the pond won't be around for the main feature. The pond always found the cartoon, the one reel serial and the quota quickie more than enough.

At least the pond can now turn to the pleasing prospect of another stroll through Greek and Roman history (the pond is aware that China has been around for a few thousand years, but to parse the Pythons, what has China given the world, apart from the compass, gunpowder, papermaking, printing, grog, tea, silk, rockets, seed drills, row crop farming, and paper money, or so it says here, without even feeling the need to mention the great spaghetti v. noodles controversy).

Come on down, hole in bucket man and distract and entertain the pond with sage insights of an ancient kind ...

Hmm, that wasn't quite what the pond had in mind. An awesomely banal graphic, followed by a serve of Henry versus the machines, with a small chunk of Leibniz thrown in for flavouring?

And even worse, later the reptiles stuck to their usual routine and began slipping in large photos of ancient figures. 

Still, the alternative was vile hypocrisy, so the pond kept plugging on. Surely the ancient Greeks and Romans had a thing or two to say about machines. Must we rely on the logarithms in the I Ching and the Kabbalah?

Gosh darn it, was the decline of western civilisation way back when all the fault of the dastardly Chinese?

Then the reptiles flung in a snap of the brutish Hobbes, and the pond knew there would be more than Bayle in our Henry's baying ...

Luckily, the text began to assume an inverse proportion to the size of the illustrations ...

Pascal?! Not a whiff of Thucydides in sight, and then the reptiles offered a giant-sized snap of Copernicus as a sign of things to come ...

The pond knows how it works these days. Our Henry slips in a trigger word, and then the reptiles rush off to find a free graphic from the intertubes, because that's all that's available in the budget ... and sure enough, here comes a Copernican revolution ...

Indeed, indeed, let the twits roam wild and free, and at this point the reptiles decided that they'd try to make the old dotard sound up to date by slipping in a snap of the recently deceased Coen brothers' inspiration ...

This is certainly a newspaper for old dotards, but at least the big snaps meant that the very last defiant stand of Henry against the machines was very brief...

Evil machine? Has our Henry taken to anthropomorphism? Does he fear the avenging Fritz Lang angel?

Luckily the immortal Rowe this day also invoked old inventions ...

So it was all the fault of the Dutch, or perhaps Zacharias Janssen!

But what to do for a bonus? Here the reptile offering this day fell well short ...

Not Jennings of the fifth form again? And there's that Adelaide blow-in, and he can blow right back. The meretricious Merritt on about Minns? Pass, and ditto talk of the health system.

The pond had had the pick with the hole in the bucket man, but luckily still had a roving Rove left over from yesterday...

It's a close run thing at the moment as to what's more entertaining, watching GOPsters writhing on the hook of the mango Mussolini, or the Tories trying to deal with a gone fully rogue Boris.

Just look at the headlines in the Graudian this day ...

Some might want to head off to the likes of What do you know, Boris Johnson lied. But the carnival of crazy has just begun ... and there's usually a cracking Crace, Et tu, Phil? Boris runs out of supporters as Rish! runs out of ideas.

Sorry, but it's a faded, fully Brexited empire, and why spend time with a wannabe Trump when you can have the real deal, and the roving Rove's consternation as he runs for the door, with signs that the Donald is running out of supporters, which is just as well because as a certified authoritarian populist wannabe dictator (Faux Noise just got the wrong man  in the chyron), he never had ideas worth running ...

Then the reptiles had a Starship Troopers moment, no doubt to keep memories of Heinlein and Verhoeven bubbling away on the pond ...

Come on reptiles, don't get in the way of the roving Rove, let's see the alleged crim in the dock ...

Someone on MSNBC said the other day that there's no fun in drinking the tears of others, but the pond thinks it's jolly good, way better than the demon drink, and it helps keep up the salt content for days when the climate puts on a turn. 

No one listens in reptile la la land to yarns like Climate shocks set to worsen already fragile hotspots, Security Council hears.

Just keep the entertainment and the cartoons flowing ...