The pond increasingly feels it's trapped in a reptile nightmare.
There's a deep sense of déjà vu mixed with ennui, and terminal boredom, a slow sinking into quicksand, a long quagmireish slomo flight down a rabbit hole.
It's compounded by reptile topics which the pond refuses to touch, such as Dame Slap's fixation on the Lehrmann matter or the lizard Oz obsession with Clementine (no John Ford jokes please)...
Automatic red cards. Yet it leaves the pond in a pickle of tedious predictability.
The pond also doesn't do true crime ... that's what YouTube is for ...
So the pond has to do other forms of crime, such as the dog botherer intent on killing the planet ...
It must have been a slow day for the dog botherer, because he's done this sort of stuff a zillion times ...
The pond long ago gave up betting that the opening image would be of Satanic windmills, perhaps inducing psychosis in sheep, because no bookie would offer odds ...
There were the usual snaps designed to break up the rant while stroking the fear...
.. and the recurring realisation that no one in sane mind would bother to have an argument with the dog botherer when he's in one of these moods ...
There's plenty of climate science out there, and plenty of stories about the impact climate change is having on the country and the planet ...
In short and long ...
Does all that corporation preening and feathering and speaking in forked tongue count for a hill of beans up against the destruction wrought by the dog botherer in one of his moods?
Why a single dog botherer column could do more damage than all the bean counting to hand in News Corp...
Back at the ranch some tired hack was still putting together that corporate feather display ...
The pond wondered which hack had sold their soul to put together all those fancy graphs, while just across the way, the dog botherer was still deep into denialism and ranting about this very thing ...
There were all the usual words from a dog botherer deep into a psychotic fit - psychosis itself and cannon fodder and national idiocy and Orwellian and north Korea and raging at fuel efficient cars and so on and endlessly tediously forth, accompanied by pictures of grids designed to terrify the lizard Oz's ancient demographic ...
Meanwhile the corporate masters were busy pretending they cared ... just look at the graphs, up there with an ABC finance report ...
It's all meaningless twaddle and deep hypocrisy ... in short and long ...
Meanwhile, the dog botherer was merrily going on his way ...
To go along with the verbiage there were snaps of signs put up by Sky after dark viewers ...
They'd be the ones unaware of the corporate speak and window dressing that the reptiles put out ... so much that the dog botherer couldn't provide enough spacing for all of the cant ...
This was done back in the day of course.
These days News Corp, Faux Noise and Sky after dark routinely preach climate science denialism and are perfectly comfortable doing. so ... but at least this time the pond managed to get through the dog botherer without referencing the state of the planet or the state of its climate or the state of the country and recent climate-change enhanced events ...
Meanwhile, on another forked tongue planet ...
Sure the pond would like to be cracking other sorts of jokes, following other hares down the rabbit hole ...
But a look down the fold added to the pond's dilemma. There was a typical Sophie's Choice ..
Keen eyes will have already noted that nattering "Ned" is out and about doing defence, while the bromancer has also delivered one of his rants.
Does the pond do "Ned" tomorrow or today? Does the pond do the bro today or tomorrow? Does any of it matter?
Why is Chris Bowen pandering to the lizard Oz walled garden business model? What's this blather from snappy Tom about cashing in on migration? Hasn't he read a single groaning?
Why is the oscillating fan pandering to politicians? Has anyone asked the question, "How to attract a better class of scribbler to the lizard Oz?"
For better or worse - okay it's infinitely worse - the pond went with "Ned", on the castor oil principle. Close eyes and swallow as quickly as possible ...
There were some 20 chunks of verbal and visual chaff in this outing, and the pond realised that the reptiles had devised a new way to distract punters who'd set out on the Everest climb...
Shove in lots of snaps, and keep the gobbets between the snaps short ...
The strategy came into view after the first "Ned" gobbet ...
Why does the government keep bolstering News Corp by paying heed? Why do they keep on supporting the hive mind paywall cloistered garden?
Don't they realise that "Ned" is going to twist anything said into a riddle trap?
Never mind at this point the distracting images began to flow ...
... and so did the short interstitial "Ned" gobbets ...
What can be said about this? The portentous pompous bloviator demanding that nothing else will suffice and Marles must perform herculean tasks so that the bromancer can wage his war with China by Xmas?
Is Marles so full of ego and so desperate for attention that he panders to this sort of idle rhetoric?
Doesn't he realise the fix is already in? And that his best hope is that nobody behind the paywall pays attention to "Ned" asking burning questions with ice-cold fury? Oh yes, we're in cliche cliché, as the old dodderer scribbles furiously ...
Just like in any bromancer piece, there are snaps of kit designed to appeal to old salts ...
... and that produced yet another short interstitial ...
The problem is that the pond has created the problem by attempting this Everest climb ...
Does Marles realise that blathering for the sake of blather won't cut the mustard up against lizard Oz prejudices and what he's doing is a waste of space and time?
The pond began to feel the need f or its own visual distractions...
Yeah, that'd be right, though it looked more like Captain Memo than Nemo was playing the game ...
Back to the short gobbet strategy ... and the war with China by Xmas ...
Marles is sensitive? Marles is tedious, a mug punter who has fallen into "Ned's" riddle me this trap.
At this point the pond was thinking it was about time to give it all away. The planet doomed and the reptiles busy with their war with China, and all that was left was a handshake ...
That was followed by another short snap as "Ned" wheeled in others to bray at the moon ...
Not content with quoting them, they both scored huge snaps ...
On and on "Ned" rambled with his chums ...yes, Jennings would get the nod ...
Always the Jennings ...
For a mess of pottage and the massaging of ego and the sake of a snap, this is how Marles ended up?
Luckily a larger gobbet gave a sign that "Ned" was running out of steam, and the reptiles were running out of snaps to interrupt the stream...
At this point the reptiles produced another snap of kit in action ...
To what avail? This is the sort of meaningless snap designed to accompany and distract from tedious blather. It turns up in all sorts of places, stock footage alongside stock verbiage ...
And yet in the end, it had worked. The pond had made it to the end, and it had all gone in one ear and out the other, with the pond still thinking that a war with dictator Xi would be a grim prospect, but the reptiles as usual had succeeded in making it a talking point for the aged demographic yearning to send young 'uns off to war so they could play a game of armchair generals...
And so at last to the final gobbet ...
The pond apologises, no one should have had to suffer this. Of course "Ned" is the prime cause of the misery, but the pond blames Marles, blathering to the reptiles about his tasks, as if they cared, as if it would help in the election campaign down the track ...
Meanwhile, on another planet ...
That's right, in that entire pile of verbiage there wasn't a single mention of Ukraine ... happy birthday to Europe's resident true crime sociopath ...
...and there wasn't a single mention of that other dire threat to the country ...
Doomed. The country's doomed, the planet's doomed, the pond is doomed ...
Pond, channeling Will: You do me wrong to take me out o' th' grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten Ned.
The pond would like to think it will get better on the morrow, on the day of meditation, but it won't. It never does, it never will ...
DP said "Just like in any bromancer piece, there are snaps of kit designed to appeal to old salts" ... now our kit are...
ReplyDeleteFloating coffins. Because oceans are now as transparent as air.
Reptiles after kicking the steak knife forget thier dorked tongues..."Our nuclear subs fantasy adds up to military net zero | The Australian
7 Oct 2021 · If people claim the French attack submarines would have been floating coffins, that must surely be even truer of our Collins boats"
"Have Aircraft Carriers Become Floating Coffins?"
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/have-aircraft-carriers-become-floating-coffins-182755
“Torpedo hit"
“… of which 267 kg are high-tech explosive, and which have the punch of half-a-tonne of TNT.
“The Mk48 can be guided by a wire that reels out behind it, [using Hedy Lamar's famous paper "she was granted US patent number 2 292 387 for a “Secret Communication System” that used a new technique to conceal a radio message by sprinkling it across a wide range of frequencies."
https://navyhistory.au/hedy-lamarr-movie-star-and-inventor-of-torpedo-control/ ] or it can find the target by itself. Once it gets close enough to the target, it first uses sonar to aim for the centre of the ship. When it’s really close, it uses the magnetic signature of the target as a trigger to explode, when it’s about 15 metres directly under its hull. The depth and location are quite critical. The 267 kg of high explosive almost instantaneously all turn into a huge volume of gas.
“First, the actual explosion generates a very high pressure shock wave. This rams into the middle of the underside of hull of the ship at about 1.5 kilometres per second.
“Second, the shock wave crushes the underside of the hull, and also lifts it up. It bends the ship bend upward in the middle, like a banana. The upper decks of the ship crack apart. After a few hundredths of a second, the shock wave has come and gone. But within a few more fractions of a second, the expanding bubble of gas from the explosion then hits the underside of the hull. The bubble reaches a maximum size of about 18 metres across, and it maintains the massive upward force on the bottom of the hull, once the shock wave has passed. So the ship is bent upwards in the middle in two stages – from the shock wave and then the expanding gas.
… [3rd, 4th, 5th …]
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2005/09/01/1448475.htm
I'm with Paul Keating. We need to be an echidna, not lumbering elephants.
Are these the partners in developing our new submarine?
Deletehttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68355395
Ah, the joys of the Doggy Bov: "Our future is dire. The climate is killing our country.
ReplyDeleteI refer, of course, to the political climate."
Yair, that's our Doggy Bov, al right. A man that Sexton would readily applaud for his unparalled ability to weigh and evaluate information, someone with great capacity for critical reasoning. And just so, for no matter what the "information", Doggy Bov will always evaluate it out to the same conclusion: there is no such thing as anthropogenic climate change.
And the Bov would certainly unconditionally agree with Alan Kohler:
Alan Kohler: The problem with Australian politics? Both sides agree about everything
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2024/02/22/kohler-politics-bipartisanship
Because, as Doggy Bov says about those "Coalition governments" that "a reversal of their squeamishness is the country's only hope." And we all recognise just how "squeamish" the Spud is, don't we.
Oh my; Snowy 2.0: "...a bungled and delayed pumped-hydro project called Snowy 2.0..."
DeleteBut, BG, butt:
Snowy Hydro’s 2.0 fortunes might finally be turning as drilling gets back on track
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/23/snowy-hydro-2-project-scheme-fortunes-kosciuszko-national-park
100 cell brains.
ReplyDelete"What it's like to be considered a person" in Alabama-stralia...
Morrison et al have form and sympathy for Alabamy.
"Former immigration minister, now treasurer, expressed ‘pretty strong views’ against advice of staff when woman was considering termination"
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/oct/20/scott-morrison-voiced-opposition-to-late-term-abortion-in-2014-asylum-case
The FORKED (speaking in) TONGUEs.
[Repriles are capable of a balanced article- from a reptile journalist - Ellen Ransley -as opposed to the culture warrior lizard's of oz opinionistas]
May 4, 2022
"Scott Morrison has defended his Assistant Minister for Women after she attended an anti-abortion rally at the weekend, saying she had every right to go because "it's a free country". Amanda Stoker attended the annual Cherish Life Queensland rally in Brisbane on Saturday, alongside LNP Senator Matt Canavan and One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts."
A rhyming Everest of an article.
"The Parable of the Amen Snorter and the Rotten Fish
...
"Some commentators have argued along these lines that Morrison is non-dogmatic when it comes to worldly matters. In his comically terrible book Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World, Greg Sheridan spends a dozen sycophantic pages portraying the Prime Minister as a devout man who is wise enough not to let religion determine his policies. Morrison is, according to Sheridan, ‘the prime minister for all Australians, for Australians of all faiths and none’.
...
https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/amen-snorter-rotten-fish/
Geoff Chambers, Stephen Rice and Janet Albrechtsen are only “exclusives” because no other respectable journalist or commentator would write such partisan junk. Chris Kenny is no longer exclusive because, as the Pond says, he’s said all this so many times before it’s become background noise.
ReplyDeleteWho is the biggest catastrophist of them all? Chris Kenny is: “Our future is dire, The climate is killing our country.” Now there’s a perfect example of sensationalist exaggeration, what Kenny calls catastrophism.
The Murdoch media is not full of people “itching to tell others what to do”; it’s full of ranters baying at everyone about what they should do.
My advice to Kenny is the same as Keating once recommended for Howard when he went troppo. Give him some valium!
I share our esteemed hostess' disinclination to recognise Dame Slap, neither do I have the time to work through DSM-5-TR (2022) to get to a precise definition of the Dame's actual problem. Might we just conclude that she believes firmly in the conservative tradition of trial by juris (doctor)?
ReplyDeleteIs Ned ok? I was reading it, sometimes 'nedding off', then, it just stopped. Perhaps someone should give him a call, or go around and knock on his door, perhaps he fainted. I would really like to know what his conclusion to this saga is - perhaps there is no conclusion, perhaps there is no end - to Ned. If so, it's all rather pointless. AG.
ReplyDeleteHow perceptive is Jennings? To borrow one of the titles, we can ‘Take Jennings, for Instance’ when he tells us that Ministers Marles and Conroy ‘will now understand that, at its worst, Defence puts its own corporate interests and convenience first.’
ReplyDeleteThe fictional Jennings is not noted for self-awareness, neither is the claimed ‘analyst’ Jennings. A corporate body putting its own interests and convenience first? Whooda thought? Might that happen with other corporations? Perhaps, say, one that claims to be a worldwide source of information, news even? Could it be even remotely possible that a large media organisation might see its own interests better served, not by producing reliable information for the public, but by promoting particular political figures, in the hope of seeing them voted into office, from which they might advance the interests of the owners/executives of that organisation - and do so in ways most convenient to the media body?
Hang on there, Chad; it may be all very well for various organisations, including the likes of Murdoch media, to put their own interests first, but surely a government department is supposed to put the interests of we, the people, first. And some even have over the years, though less and less now it seems.
Delete'Nedding off' - thanks Anonymous. My but we do extract some fun from the reptiles.
DeleteNed: “..the more ambition you seek, the more things can go wrong.” Whatever happened to the reptiles’ aspiration?
ReplyDeleteWhat might go wrong? In how many ways could it go wrong? How many times can Ned ask a question? What are the ways out? Can we get out? What will happen if we do get out? In how many ways can Ned ask the same question? Why won’t anyone listen to Ned? How many paragraphs can Ned ramble on for? Is Ned up to the job any more? Was he ever up to the job? So many questions and so few answers. Marles is wrong; churn is not a key part of the problem; it’s Ned, feeding his blues.
There are indeed times when I look at the Reptile ravings so carefully curated by DP and find myself wondering -
ReplyDelete“Who actually reads this shit?”
“Who actually enjoys reading this shit?”
And most perplexing of all - “Who actually pays money to read this shit?”
Yes, I recognise that there are plenty of reactionary trogs, Climate change denialists, conspiracist theorists, and armchair generals out there, and that there’s a substantial market for angertainment. But the Lizard Oz scribblers are just so bloody dull! Turgid, leaden prose, devoid of any real wit or style, and so repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. How many readers, I wonder, read the umpteenth identical Botherer screed against renewables, the Bromancer’s latest hysterical babbling on defence procurement and WAR!, or Ned’s ponderous Sermon of the Day, and think “Yes, yes chaps, you’ve got it right again. So perceptive and insightful; so witty; and so original! Can’t wait to see what they come up next time.” ? I suppose there must be some genuine enthusiasts, but there can’t be too many. Of course the Reptile scribblers consider themselves to be widely-read, but I suspect a lot of purchasers of the dead tree edition rarely glance at most of the ravings, while it would be interesting to learn how many clicks the digital subscribers bother giving to, say, Dame Slap’s umpteenth article on the Lehman case.
Yeah, kinda interesting in its own weird way, isn't it: just how many homo sapiens sapiens are really non compos mentis. Something around about 99.8 % I'd reckon at a rough estimate. And most of 'em pass their school and uni exams, some with honours.
DeleteBut then, given that there's a bit over 8 billion of our species, what would the world be like if 99.8% of us sapiens really were rational, sensible, intelligent and informed ? Would we ever have got to being 8+ billions of us ?
It is a sad indictment on our media laws that Murdoch is able to survive.
ReplyDeleteYou don't reckon that it's really a sad indictment of our species, Anony ? Don't our laws just reflect our own failings ?
DeleteThis an analysis of the procurement of the Australian governemt by Hugh White on the Saturday paper and we will surely be waisting our money.
ReplyDeleteWhen Labor won office it inherited a defence program catastrophically inadequate to the strategic challenges of the next few decades. The worst of it was the Coalition’s AUKUS nuclear submarines plan. Almost as bad was its plan to build new warships for the Royal Australian Navy’s surface fleet. Now Labor has proudly taken ownership of both these blunders and made them its own. Last year it committed to a totally unworkable plan to deliver nuclear-powered subs that we do not need and will never get. This week it announced a program for the future surface fleet that perpetuates the worst of the Coalition’s mistakes and adds some of Labor’s own.