In which Jenny is spurred to ramble about gas, and Polonius shows his fighting pluck ...

 

The pond is starting to get to the point where it red cards reptiles before they get out of the gate. Take this triptych of terror ...

Joe, the lesser member of the Kelly gang, "Ned", the leader of the Kelly gang and Alan Howe doing over Assange by saying he's no journalist ... while scribbling, without the slightest hint of irony, for the lizard Oz?

The pond red-cared "Ned"with great relief yesterday and the same goes for Joe and as for the howling Howe, the pond will at least note that his current claim to fame is the preparer of obituaries ... so perhaps he's just warming up to his job on Assange ...

History editor? Now there's a full time job at the lizard Oz ... so much tosh to edit, and so little of it done...

The pond also passed on this serve of fried rice ...

They'll never shut up, it'll go on for years ...

The pond also decided to pass on the Angelic one, offering deep sympathy to the psychotic Bondi Junction killer as part of her fundamentalist tyke Xian duty ...

The pond only came away with a few notes ...

The most bizarre explanation was that he was, in the words of one correspondent to this publication, a “radicalised misogynist”, a quintessentially postmodern notion that proves there always has to be some explanation rooted in someone’s bad psychology, transformed into ideology. For some it is always thus, no matter how superficial the explanation for an act that seems otherwise beyond human understanding.
A straight-out manifestation of violence targeted specifically at women also was the favourite theme of female radio hosts, all keen to push this as a misogynistic act that required more protection for women, although most of the people strolling through a shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon probably are women, and casually shopping women are easily distracted and easy targets.
This theory conveniently ignores the one unfortunate male victim, but for some professional know-alls it was yet another opportunity to portray men as latent monsters. For others it was a simplistic way to find something to say, anything, about something that seemed inexplicable. 

That wasn't how the pond remembered it going down, and a quick visit to the Graudian confirmed that it was the chief NSW plod who'd steered the conversation in that direction...

Queenslander Joel Cauchi has been identified by police as the man who took a knife from his backpack on Saturday afternoon and stabbed five women and one man to death and injured several others.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said while investigators were looking into the 40-year-old's past and a possible motivation for the attack it was "obvious" to her that Cauchi was targeting women.

"The videos speak for themselves, don't they?" she told ABC News Breakfast on Monday.

"It's obvious to me, it's obvious to detectives that it seems to be an area of interest that the offender focused on women and avoided the men."

Frankly the pond doesn't much care about all the theories. It's obviously disturbing when an unhinged person turns mass killer, but this closing Angelic one line completely bemused the pond, and led to her red carding ...

As a mother and as a friend of other mothers, some of whose children have balanced precariously on the edge of madness, I cannot feel anything but enormous sadness and compassion for Cauchi, a child who was lost, killed to save others and possibly, in the end, himself.

(He) killed to save others and possibly in the end himself? 

What on earth does that mean? Was he sensibly killed to save others, or did he kill to save others, and possibly himself?

Was he a member of the army, navy or air force? Did he do time in Iraq or Afghanistan? The best the pond could come up with was this portrait of his life when he should have been killing to save others ...

Cauchi grew up in Toowoomba where he studied at the University of Southern Queensland and, according to his Facebook page, worked as an English tutor online.

He was a member of many social groups, including the Toowoomba Car Club and Toowoomba Arts Society, and appears to have had an interest in life drawing.

He later lived in Brisbane, in Kangaroo Point and Carina, before returning to his family’s home in Toowoomba.

He killed to save others at the Toowoomba Arts Society?

Oh okay, the pond can feel an argument about the use of apostrophes to indicate possessive case. Better pray on that one, while there's no words for the stories of the victims, stories abruptly cut short.

Here's another grievance. 

The pond can understand why the reptiles have banned talk of the Gaza genocide, but why have they abandoned the New York trial of the orange Jesus, deep in suffering ... sit, orange fur-covered hound, sit ...

To quote the great man himself ... all around the world they're saying ... roll on Monday's circus.

But with all the red cards and strike outs, the pond was stumped for an opening act before prattling Polonius took the stage, but then decided a Jenny George garage band was better than nothing ...

This might outrage some, but the pond has an ulterior motive, as we head down the rabbit hole with the quisling, lickspittle lackey member of the reptile Vichy regime ...

Naturally there was a snap of a demonic figure, servant to Satan ...

But here's the pond's ulterior motive. Over the years the pond has made many references to Fame is the Spur, which featured Michael Redgrave as a politician radicalised by the Peterloo Massacre, who treasures a sword handed down by his grandfather as a symbol of his radicalism ...

You can see where this metaphor is heading ...

India? We should put our faith in Hindu nationalism of the far right kind? 

And then as a capper, there was a snap of the sort of company George likes to keep these days, the beefy boofhead windmill hater with an office in Goulburn ...

The point of course is that in the course of Fame is the Spur, Redgrave's politician becomes the sort of politician he once despised. 

At the end of the film, in his dotage, he totters over to get down the sword, and finds it rusted into its scabbard ...

It's a clunky metaphor, and yet it suits George perfectly, and there's a reason, and it comes in just two words in the final gas-loving gobbet...

And there you have it, two deadly words to show this Tootle has left the tracks. "Virtue signalling", as in "beware the pitfalls of virtue signalling."

That's a sign that George has jumped the shark and nuked the fridge, and now has joined the reptiles, with the sword well and truly rusted in the scabbard ...

And so to Polonius and his prattle, and a few days ago, the pond warned that it might not be able to cop with the burst of Jingoism that erupts around this time of year, and in his usual way, Polonius fired the first shot across the pond's bow... and there will be a history lesson ...

Egad sir, the pond won't argue the causes of the first world war, it endured enough of that when studying history, even when the most specious reason is offered, and even when all the competing empires were doing their damndest to bring on a war, imagining it as some sort of nineteenth centur frolic.

And egad sir, the pond isn't in the business of noting that actually the landing was planned to take place on beaches about a mile north of where the troops landed... it might not have mattered much, it was just another sign of singular incompetence and disregard for the lives of the troops.

Instead, the pond is here to celebrate military thinking with cartoons which would have served the bromancer just as well yesterday ...

 

Gad sir, the pond is here to celebrate Polonius's extensive record of service in the armed forces, and his valiant deeds on the battlefield, down there with the pond's ...

At this point, the reptiles enlisted a snap of soldiers in Polonius's cause, but there's no need to feature their involuntary involvement ... who knows what actual soldiers actually fighting might actually think of war?

The pond's main memory of war is the pond's grandfather returned from the Somme to become an alcoholic wife-beater constantly disturbed by nightmares.

On with valiant Polonius, a veritable Hotspur, if occasionally undone by his ill-weaved ambition to return to The Insiders and make it even worse than it currently is ...

That's about the first refuge of the scoundrel, that line about loving it or leaving it ...

The pond knew there'd been a reason for mentioning the orange Jesus ...

Still, it nicely positions Polonius where he feels comfortable with the company he likes to keep ... with the next reptile snap featuring company he doesn't like at all...

Strangely Polonius was silent on how we won the Vietnam war, a favourite topic of his over the years, but it's too late now, as the final gobbet looms...

The pond isn't quite certain what that last par meant. We should remember that Germany was once a Pacific power? 

Should we also once remember we fought a war with Japan and that China was treated as an ally? Should we note that Vlad the sociopath's country has a Pacific edge, and the tattered remnants of the moderate GOP have finally plucked up the courage to support plucky Ukraine, despite the best endeavours of the likes of the Yale hillbilly 'leet and Moscow Marge (close relative of Tuckyo Rose)? (Funding to help stop one genocide, funding to help continue another, so it goes ...)

Should we remember that all sorts of European powers treated the Pacific like their plaything, and even now Europe Yearns to Be an Indo-Pacific Player?

Whatever, one way or another, we must work hard to have that reptile war with China by Xmas ... meanwhile, the pond will spend its Anzac day remembering the victims and the complete futility of war, while jingoists strut about in peacock Sydney Institute colours handing out white feathers.

Here's a cartoon for Polonius celebrating warrior virtues...

And so to celebrate traditional Australian, sorry, American, values ...

And since the pond has been carton lite this day, how about a TT?