In which the pond only has a decent, dinkum Groaning and an Xian bromancer, but that'll have to do pig, that'll have to do ...

 

A Qantas anecdote. Off to airport bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6am, just in case, what with Sydney traffic for 7 am flight. At least it allows time for a juice and a coffee.

Traffic surprisingly light, heavy at Rex and Virgin terminal, very light at Qantas. Partner settles into Qantas lounge. Flight cancelled. 70 others in same pickle. Clearly not a big enough set of baggage to waste Avgas on. 

Off to find a new flight, and eventually one found. Assorted 'technical issues' later, flight leaves hours late. Partner eventually arrives in Melbourne for meeting after noon. That's after 12 if you want a number. 

6 hours on the go. Could have been at Tarcutta by then in a more environmentally friendly way. Conclusion? Not the airline it once was ...

Meanwhile, amid a flurry of agitated updates, pond receives distracting link from bored partner to story about Scientology cult at Ars Technica: Right to repair’s unlikely new adversary: Scientologists. How hard would it be to fix a faux half-baked lie detector?

Pond ends up reading about the innards of the cult, in Secrets of Scientology: The E-Meter. Reads disclaimer with bemusement: 

"By itself, this meter does nothing." -- Excerpt from a disclaimer found in every E-meter book, and on the device itself.

Pond ends up looking for  completely useless E-Meter on Ebay. Can be found, but very pricey. Too dear for a tinker. This isn't a cheap cult, much like Qantas.

Pond entirely distracted from herpetology studies. Wonders if Jon Stewart abusing Tuckyo way back in the Crossfire days might serve as an intro. Amazingly there's a rush transcript of the show available at CNN. 

Excruciating, as it all comes flooding back. Perhaps the joke about bow ties finally helped Tuckyo get off wearing them?

Too many lines to quote:

STEWART:  ...You go to spin alley, the place called spin alley. Now, don't you think that, for people watching at home, that's kind of a drag, that you're literally walking to a place called deception lane?

Perhaps tweak that immortal moment?

STEWART: Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting Australia.

Pond gives up on idea, and turns to today's lizard Oz for all the news not fit to print. Discovers that Qantas is all the fault of Albo. Apparently SloMo shoving Covid cash down the airline's throat had nothing to do with it ...

Pond discovers reptiles are deep into IR hysteria. Pond wonders if the gig economy might be introduced to News Corp, perhaps by returning to Victorian days, with scribblers paid at a penny a word. Is this too generous? Must consider gig rate, and certainly must make sure holiday pay, super, and other idle pleasures of the rich are excluded ...

With a deep sigh, the pond sees that Dame Groan's groaning has been elevated to the top of the digital edition. A groan about how the climate is doing fine. Time at last to take that walk down spin alley, on the way to deception lane ...

Devotees of the cult of Groan will be pleased. Reptiles decide this is the best point to interrupt with a snap of people clustered around a table ...

Time now to do absolutely nothing about the climate ... everything is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and the Groaning this time is a desperate attempt to make other people realise this is no time for groaning about the climate ...

Yes, it's all tremendously manageable. Pond remembers that these days the rain in Spain falls mainly on Madrid ...

Idle talk of all being in this together must be expunged. All under control, Dame Groan has the matter safely in hand, with much data designed to avoid climate hysteria and teach those climate catastrophists a lesson.

Apparently it's going to be unseasonably hot in concrete-stressed little England - the country's got something called yellow heat to go with the buildings ready to fall down - and Greg Jericho a week ago raged Australia’s greenhouse emissions are a national disgrace that are destroying the planet and costing households. Something about insurance ...

Needs to settle down, and perhaps move into a bushfire or flood zone, while taking two Dame Groans to fix what ails him ...

Waiter, another heady draught of groaning, if you please, to fix what ails ya ... preferably laced with a generous dose of self-satisfied complacency and what passes for irony in Dame Groan land ... though she's so far up herself, it's hard to know if it's irony so much as the smug satisfaction of a smirking Cheshire cat disappearing  up its fundament ...

What a relief, and there was just one fly in the Groan's ointment. An acute shortage of workers. 

Luckily, Dame Groan had already resolutely insisted there should be no pesky furriners to hand to help with the shortage, so it's struggle street time, via spin avenue and deception road ...

Yes, it's entirely manageable in the best of all groaning worlds ... meanwhile, on another planet,  the news is getting very strange ...

Pond races out to check vegetable oil supply in kitchen. Not enough, not nearly enough. Is there time to refit the car?

Things could get tricky. And what on earth is News Corp doing running alarmist nonsense such as ‘Adapt or die’: Nightmare weather coming for unprepared Australia?

Astonishing. Sounds even more terrified than a Graudian columnist:

...In 2019, then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison refused to meet with 23 former fire and emergency leaders to hear their warnings for the upcoming fire season. That November, Australia experienced what has since been dubbed the Black Summer.
In 2023, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to release a government-commissioned report into the soaring national security risks of climate-related disasters. This summer, Australia will likely get to experience what they are anyway.
And all the warning signs are there.
The Northern Hemisphere is still in the grips of what climate scientists call “the summer from hell”. And they’re saying it’s just a taste of things to come.
The elderly are expiring in un-airconditioned homes.
Workers are dropping dead in the open.
Children are getting burns from the pavement as they walk home.
Electrical infrastructure is overheating.
Dams and lakes are drying.
Crops are dying.
And unstoppable forest fires have been burning since April.
This is in the US. In Canada. In Spain. In France. In Italy. In Greece. In India. In Japan. In China.

And there's reams more. This penny a word trick works miracles in the journo gig economy. 

Luckily the condition's easy to fix. Take two Dame Groans in the morning, and the condition should be entirely manageable, but if the condition persists, start reading the lizard Oz on a daily basis, and remember as a supplement to take a dose of Lloydie of the Amazon when supplies become available ...

So to what else is happening in the lizard Oz ...

Still on about IR? The pond decided to cut the reptiles to ha'penny a word to get their juices flowing.

Meanwhile, nothing about the Voice? No way for the pond to segue to this morning's infallible Pope? Heck, the pond will do it anyway ...

Just as well the pond's partner didn't see that one. Hated the song ... on side with the cause.

What else? Slim pickings if you're not into ha'penny a word, and so as a bonus, the pond is deeply sorry to say that the bromancer is to hand offering an Xian view of war ...

The pond felt a sense of dread. Both countries are ostensibly Xian, though Vlad the impaler's relationship to Xianity is a bit like the mango Mussolini's ... anything to sell the mug punters that the life of a luxury-loving dictator is good for them too ...

The pond was cheered to hear that Ukraine's version of the Orthodox church decided that Christ's birthday could be celebrated on 25th December, rather than 7th January as proposed by the Julian calendar ...

If there's going to be meaningless Xian symbolism, it should be done on the right and proper day ...

But is there any need for meaningless Xian blather by the bromancer justifying the war? 

Shouldn't the sight of a sociopath monstering a neighbouring country, murdering people, stealing children, destroying vast amounts of the place to produce wastelands, be sufficient? 

Apparently not, apparently we need a dose of St Augustine ... and never mind that both sides purport to be on the side of Xian traditions, actual date of birth of Christ aside ...

All nonsense of course, and the pond wouldn't give thruppence for the lot ...

Vlad the sociopath has the high authority of Patriarch Krill - oops, sorry that should be Kirill - on hand to give a decent Xian blessing on the enterprise ...  per patriachial homicidal Krill's wiki here ...

Patriarch Kirill has referred to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as "current events" and has avoided using terms like war or invasion, thereby complying with Russian censorship law. Kirill approves the invasion, and has blessed the Russian soldiers fighting there. As a consequence, several priests of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine have stopped mentioning Kirill's name during the divine service. The Moscow patriarchate views Ukraine as a part of their "canonical territory". Kirill has said that the Russian army has chosen a very correct way.

Kirill sees gay pride parades as a part of the reason behind Russian warfare against Ukraine. He has said that the war is not physically, but rather metaphysically, important.

In the days after the world learned about the 2022 Bucha massacre by Russian invaders of Ukraine, Kirill said that his faithful should be to ready "protect our home" under any circumstance.

On 6 March 2022 (Forgiveness Sunday holiday), during the liturgy in the Church of Christ the Savior, he justified Russia's attack on Ukraine, stating that it was necessary to side with "Donbas" (i.e. Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic), where he said there is an ongoing 8-year "genocide" by Ukraine and where, Kirill said, Ukraine wants to enforce gay pride events upon local population. Despite the holiday being dedicated to the concept of forgiveness, Kirill said there can't be forgiveness without delivering "justice" first, otherwise it's a capitulation and weakness. The speech came under international scrutiny, as Kirill parroted President Putin's claim that Russia was fighting "fascism" in Ukraine. Throughout the speech, Kirill did not use the term "Ukrainian", but rather referred to both Russians and Ukrainians simply as "Holy Russians", also claiming Russian soldiers in Ukraine were "laying down their lives for a friend", referencing the Gospel of John.

It's all footnoted, and there's a lot more of the usual Xian shyte emanating from the Krill, who might be better off doing a Jonah and heading off to a whale's mouth ... time for the matriarchy or what?

But in that light, it's easy to see why the pond found the bromancer's "We have God on our side" nonsense extremely tiresome ... everybody's got their god on their side, and if you haven't, just invent a helpful god, or do a Krill, and invent your very own Jaysus to serve Vlad the sociopath ...

Uh huh, but do we really need all the nonsense about moral judgements, given the way that alleged Xians have indulged in barbarism and butchery? 

It might play to a southern evangelical, but that mob have got their own problems, what with the likes of Russell Moore denounced as a heretic ...

On why he thinks Christianity is in crisis:

It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.

And then waddya know, talk of liberal talking points, and the bromancer proposes turning the other cheek ...

Wouldn't that please Vlad the sociopath, with the heroic Xian turned craven appeaser and lickspittle fellow traveller, as the cock crowed thrice, and all Vlad the impaler has to do is wait the bromancer out to enjoy some ill gotten gains ... 

"That man mean Russia unjustly keeping some Ukrainian territory."

Oh well, the pond has always regarded Tasmania as expendable, and if it keeps the invading Kiwis happy, they can have it ...

And now to wrap things up with the immortal Rowe and that question of IR returns, but not to worry, the pond is happy to offer the reptiles an exceptionally generous farthing a word if that will keep the industrial peace ... reptiles, get out your bikes and start pedalling ...