Is there anything better than a Tuesday groaning? Of course there is, bring on the understudy ... (and there's an Optus bonus too) ...

 

The pond always comes late to things. That's one of the problems of being trapped in the reptile hive mind and reacting to the latest daily outrage by some crazed reptile loon.

So it was only recently that the pond sat down to binge on the first series of Barry, a really excellent black comedy made back when HBO was a thing, with lots of sly acting in-jokes and dark humour, as you might expect from a yarn about a hit man who wants to have a go at acting, and tries to make out with a neurotic woman determined to play Macbeth, with Fonzie himself presiding over the acting jokes while trying to make out with a black female detective. 

There are also assorted gangs and killings as the genre requires, but the pond most enjoyed the actor jokes, because for its sins the pond once, very young, kept the company of wannabe actors in a course designed to enhance communication skills. 

It's all a nonsense but the self-deception is also a remarkable skill, as Sarah Golberg shows when she moves from a flat reading of Macbeth's immortal speech to a teary rendition that took the pond back to the days when it used to listen to Macbeth on Caedmon Records. (Bill Hader's pretty good setting up the moment too, but then the whole cast does ripper work).

It's a speech much worn by time and repetition, but the pond recalls almost every day it reads the reptiles ...

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

The pond will now of course have to binge on the final three series of Barry, but in the meantime, what idiot reptile has told this day a tale full of sound and fury and signifying nothing? What maundering, wailing, gibbering wretch keeps the pond from an episode of Barry?

Hark, what's that infernal groaning off? Wherefrom comes that hideous hellfire racket, demented and maddened and maddening, as if from a mad aunt locked in a garret in castle Inverness ...

Well usually, it would be exeunt sanity, enter Dame Groan from far right ... but marry, please don't be disappointed if what follows fails to match the build-up, because as the wise porter said, here's a farmer hanged himself on the expectation of plenty, marry sir, a reptile reading provokes the desire for intelligence, but it takes away the performance ...

Yes, instead of Dame Groan, today's performance will be done by her understudy ...the bromancer, not so much denouncing the importation of pesky, difficult, uppity furriners, but celebrating, in an awesomely tyke way, the importance of breeding, because what the country, neigh the planet, needs is more peeple ...

The pond has, perhaps too frequently, has noted the way that the Catholic church's Ponzi scheme has always been heavily reliant on a breeding program by the faithful.

Nobody has ever managed to track down Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits saying, "Give me a child until he is 7, and I will give you the man", though the pond does note that the wiki of his quotes suggests it actually came from a mischievous Voltaire.

In any case, it's wrong, it should have been "give me a child, and the church will find a way to leech a nice little earner off him or her all the way to the grave",  and so the pond applauds the bro for promoting the cause ...

An atmosphere where the entire Western project is demonised? Is there a Freudian in the house? The pond had to refrain from talking about climate science, but the temptation to reach for a story was overwhelming.

Sure enough the Graudian was in full cry ...

As well as the big reveal, The huge climate impact of the middle classes, a follow up to the tale of the billionaires being even worse, there was World facing 'hellish' 3C of climate heating, UN warns before Cop28.

Nightmare stuff, but the bro had an astonishing revelation, a vision from the past to help put all that alarmist nonsense aside ...

It was only a profound act of strength and courage that allowed the pond to continue, though the natural tendency at such a sight is to run screaming from the room ...

Are the bro and the reptiles in top form or what?

Now for the understudy's attempt at a Groaning, and it's passably fair ... it comes trippingly off the keyboard, and 'tis not mouthed, like some town-crier speaking the lines, but with a temperance that gives it a smoothness ...

What an astonishing insight. You get a bit older by the day, a bit funnier in the head and then you die.

Who would have guessed it, who would have thought it, until the bro came along and made it plain as day. It's almost Einsteinian in its profundity, and naturally the reptiles were so delighted that they slipped in a huge snap of the man himself ...

Trust the pond it was huge, but the pond was eager to get on to more philosophical gems to justify the rounding up of vulgar youffs and sending them off to breeding camps, Catholics preferred ...

Whenever someone wonders about the bees buzzing around in the bromancer's hive mind, the pond is entranced to find him straying into this sort of territory, sublime evidence that he's as barking mad as the pond frequently proposes ... and here's a final ARCing gobbet to prove it ...

Some might be having an anxiety attack at the way that the pond's screen caps don't allow the following of links, but relax, you're not missing much, here's what that link buried in "the ideology of identity politics and extreme multiculturalism" led to ...

Some might wonder at the connection, but it's clear enough. If you're an infertile sort, you must be a witch, and soon enough you'll die, and there's identity politics and extreme multiculturalism for you, as Humpty Dumpty would say ...

And now what to do for a bonus? 

Frankly the pond is vastly relieved to be out of the Gaza quagmire for a moment, what with the reptiles being dishonourably mentioned in Media Watch last night, and reminding the pond that it wouldn't trust either Hamas or the current Israeli government to lie straight in bed at night, with both sides adept at lying ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles seemed to be working up to another jihad, this time involving EVs ...

A sure sign that a jihad is in the works is if the lizard Oz editorialist takes up the cause, and sure enough ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles had slipped down the page the news that, having herded Palestinians south, Benji's mob are heading south, and there's another hospital to destroy ...

No wonder the pond looked elsewhere, but it couldn't do the EV jihad ...

It did think for a nanosecond about wallowing in Milner minor, but there was a Golding to hand ...

... and besides it was the usual toad rant, and the only thing of note, amid the usual predictions of gloom and destruction, were the funny snaps the reptiles had lined up to help the minor Milner out..

Why do you need words when you've got pictures?

Speaking of pictures,  the pond simply couldn't let this one go ... because as well as not trusting Hamas, the Israeli government or the lying reptiles, it was a reminder of why the pond never went into the business of prediction.

As well as not knowing the origin of Covid, the pond doesn't have the first clue about the lies emanating from the fog of war, but did know that things put up on the full to overflowing intertubes tended to say on the intertubes ...

It was handy because the pond needed a segue to the infallible Pope of the day ...

In the end, this was the best the pond could do for a bonus ...

Valiant stuff, and of course it's all the fault of the guvmint, and here the pond should note, by way of full disclosure,  that the pond was once an Optus user, but left long ago because they were truly hopeless, even worse than Telstra, and that's saying something ...

As for wondering who this shepherd herding the sheep back to Optus is, he has turned up on occasion in the AFR, but only intermittently, a bit like Optus service ...

No doubt there have been many other sightings, but the pond read the first few lines of Why Australia must rebuild its lost industrial base  ...

Now is the time for Australia to be bold. We must diversify, modernise and industrialise our economy while lifting our productivity and investing in modern manufacturing. This is both an economic and a strategic imperative.

As a large country with a small population and thus a small domestic market, we have always relied on exports for our prosperity. However, we have become a one-trick pony with heavy reliance on our resources sector. The resources sector makes a critical contribution to our prosperity but leaves us vulnerable to external shocks and supply chain disruptions...

... ending thusly ...

...We have the capital, the human and physical resources, political stability and the education system (despite weaknesses in science, engineering and mathematics). All we need is the will. For example, we are the world leader in quantum computing, and we have exemplars such as CSL, Cochlear, ResMed and Thales who have established globally competitive businesses with marked global success.

The days of exporting both common and scarce minerals without processing should be coming to an end. We must also ensure we retain the capacity to competitively manufacture steel and aluminium. We must build our electronics and computing capability using our leadership in quantum computing as the lever.

We have a history in space and the world’s biggest overland rocket range. We should build on these natural advantages. We are already manufacturing small satellites. Our capacity in biotechnology is proven and should be expanded. Our fuel refining capacity must be re- established maybe in the future with biofuels as the base. Australia must wake up and get moving now.

Tony Shepherd is chairman of the NSW government’s Modern Manufacturing taskforce.

... and immediately realised that here was a cliché-laden giant, rightly given the job of defending the indefensible ...

Talk about a scribbler full of wise clichés, and at this point he was helped out by a snap of an unfortunate, now no longer in the chair ...

It would have been cruel to follow up with a Golding, so the pond did ...

Is the pond still bitter about all the trouble that the pond had with Optus long ago? 

Not really, not when the pond wasn't caught up in the mess, and could enjoy this resulting spray of defensive tripe ... because, you know, it's just such a learning experience, and stop being such a snowflake, and put things into perspective, and so on and so forth ... you can always find a way, and it's true, the pond found a way ... by dropping Optus like a hot brick ...

The pond always enjoys a whiner whining about the whiners, especially when it's an expert whiner given to whining about the industrial base. 

It's such a reptile thing to do, and as for that closing manly injunction to harden the fuck up ... take a deep breath before you harden the fuck up ... the pond shed tears of joy and relief ... after all, it's not like the pond is currently experiencing the pleasure of being in a hospital in Gaza, aided by an Israeli government intent on ethnic cleansing and collective punishment ...

And with that done, it was time to wrap things up with the immortal Rowe of the day, strangely in tune with the shepherd and his flock ...