Mein Gott, in which the pond presents the usual serve of pompous Henry, but then turns to a surprise guest from the deep north ... and the pond means really deep, really north, as a hawk is to a handsaw ...

 

Lately the pond has taken to doing reality checks before plunging into the reptile hive mind, and yes, the trial of the century is still going on ... and for those who like to avoid paywalls, the Graudian was there ...doing it live ...

Of course the century's still got a long way to run, so maybe there'll be more trials of the century, but for the moment, pussy-grabbing piglet, it'll do, it'll do, and there it was at WaPo with authentic sketch ... and they too were doing it live ...

Meanwhile the NY Times couldn't let Stormy go ... heck, do it live ...

Readers of the pond will know what's coming ... scouring the top of the digital edition for news of stormy weather, and coming up with nada, zilch, nihil, nothing ....

Yep, the search for stormy weather is going to take a lot of scouring, and anyone searching for news of the Gaza genocide would also be disappointed ...

Meanwhile, down below, the pond's heart sank at the Friday choices ...

Good old Shoe, all scribble, but the pond looks forward to him enlisting, and leading the charge in the great reptile war with China by Xmas ... and what's that, the Gottcha still in the mix, even though he was first out and about early yesterday?

Mein Gott, the Gottster has turned into something of a pond albatross ... but the pond may as well shoot that bird first, and proudly drape it around its neck ...

Mein Gott, it's a disaster, though if you happened to be the Albanese government, you might think plans to gas the country to save the planet was the real disaster ... you know, what with Madeline King carbon captured by fossil fuels and Anthony Albanese faces internal revolt from inner-city Labor MPs over gas strategy ... if the pond had wanted SloMo to remain in charge of energy policies, it would have voted for Captain Spud ...

But Mein Gott is on to something even bigger ...

Crazy? The technical term, if the pond remembers the bromancer correctly, is "this is nuts".

Speaking of nuts ...Gina Rinehart, One Nation and the Greens all oppose Glencore’s plan to store CO2 in the Great Artesian Basin – why?

Glencore’s proposal has brought together unusual bedfellows in furious opposition to the plans – from farming and conservation groups to billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s agriculture business and One Nation and the Greens.

Count the pond in on that strange, heady brew ... and so to the last panic, the last alarum, the last undiluted serve of hysteria from Mein Gott ...

Mein Gott, is there never any end to the suffering of the rich ... and Mein Gott, after that outing, the pond needed an infallible Pope to deflate its anxiety ...

Mein Gott, suddenly the pond's anxiety level was inflated to bursting point, and turning to the hole in the bucket man in the middle of this gassing certainly wasn't going to help ...

Mein Henry, sssh, don't mention the genocide in Gaza, mein Henry is still in the grip of an unseemly blutdurst ... and naturally there were distractions ...

It goes without saying that our Henry is passionate about the right of the current leader of the Israeli government and certain of its ministers to tout the concept of "from the river to the sea" ...

At this point, the reptiles inserted a huge snap of that endlessly suffering martyr, the Riddster of the IPA ... so huge that even shrunk, it seems of a fair size...

But surely the Riddster is happy pursuing top notch science at the IPA ... his astonishing work is available for all, and at a modest price for those wanting to support Connor Court ...

Cry freedumb at the voice of freedumb and then move on to the next hole in bucket gobbet ...

Sayeth the preacher, a member of a nest, or should that be a hive mind, of fanatical reptile sects ...

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a snap which really should have come earlier but was as big as that of the long-suffering martyr, the Riddster of the IPA and "coral isn't just good, coral is great" fame...

Moving right along, our Henry was on fire, with Marx and Webber just warm-up acts to show his astonishing familiarity with everything ...except perhaps the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has got a bit rich even for Joe ...

Now those tragic souls who once used the Reader's Digest to expand their words of the day (say what, Tumblr's still a thing?) would have been much better off paying attention to our Henry ...

Chiliastic, as in: 

chiliasm

Gk., chilioi, ‘a thousand’).

Another name for millennialism, the theory that Christ will reign for a thousand years before the final consummation of all things. (Oxford)

Yep, the pompous, portentous blowhard is up to his usual concept and word mangling tricks ...

Um, is that the freedumb to defend genocide? Never mind, at this point, the reptiles introduced yet another huge snap as a distraction ... a loon of late not much heard of, except in reptile circles ...

Never mind, in his own small way, our Henry has contributed to Godwin's Law theory... apparently as discussion in the lizard Oz grows, the likelihoood of people being called fascists or compared to fascism grows, especially when an old bigot in his dotage is searching for easy abuse while celebrating freedumb ...

Ah yes, the pond well remembers our Henry's ferocious defence of Eric Hobsbawm ... it was an inspiration to all, and never mind the bizarre white nationalist crusader mindset embodied in that peculiar concept, the Anglosphere ...

Usually the pond would end there ... knowing that it hadn't been able to crack jokes of a worm kind, or suggest that the worms had been getting at the hole in the bucket man ...

And it's with deep regret that the pond couldn't pay attention to the gift that keeps on giving ...Beyond Cricket: More Bonkers Stories From Kristi Noem’s Memoir (sorry, likely paywall)

...In chapter eight, Noem introduces readers to her father, Ron Arnold, a rancher who died in 1994 after jumping into a grain bin on the family farm.
She remembers watching Ron out in the yard, and seeing him “take a knife to his brand-new pickup, fresh from the dealership.”
“He was cutting the seat belts out,” Noem writes.
“‘What are you doing?’ I asked, wide-eyed.”
“The government is trying to pass a law to say we’re required to wear seat belts,” Noem says her father replied. “No government is going to tell me I have to wear them. So I’m taking them out.”
As Noem tells readers, “the message was clear: the government telling us what to do was not right.”...

...Throughout the book, Noem proudly touts her non-response to COVID, boasting that South Dakota leads the nation in “freedom.” In September 2020, Noem allowed the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to proceed unabated, creating a so-called superspreader event with attached public health costs of some $12 billion. And by November 2020, the state had recorded the highest COVID mortality rate in the world...

...Once Cricket was no longer, Noem “realized another unpleasant job needed to be done,” she writes. A billy goat that had been living on the farm for years was too “nasty and mean” to tolerate, and smelled like urine, which is how males in rut attract females.
“It’s the most disgusting, musky, rancid smell you can imagine,” Noem writes. “Not only was this goat constantly covered in his own muck, but he also loved to chase the kids.”
So, she shot him. However, Noem admits, “My shot was off and I needed one more shell to finish the job. Problem was, I didn’t have one. Not wanting him to suffer, I hustled back across the pasture to the pickup, grabbed another shell, hurried back to the gravel pit, and put him down.”
While walking back across the pasture, Noem says she passed a group of construction workers building her family’s new home. The men had “looks of shocked amazement on their faces,” and seemed afraid of Noem, she writes.
“Later that evening, my uncle, who was the general contractor building our house, called me and said, ‘What got into you today?’ ‘Nothing,’ I responded. ‘Why?’” Noem goes on.
“‘Well, the guys said you came barreling into the yard with your truck, slammed the door, and took a gun and a dog over the hill, out of sight. They heard one shot and you came back without the dog. Then you grabbed the goat and headed back up over the hill. They heard another shot, you came back, slammed the pickup door, went back. Then they heard another shot and then you came back without the goat. They said they hurried back to work before you decided they were next!’”

Sorry, instead of the gift that keeps on giving, or the worm that keeps on burrowing, the pond wants to present a special bonus, a deeply transphobic, deeply climate science denialist, deeply weird offering from the deep north.

The pond had to put it last, way out of sight, because if the pond's TG friend caught sight of it, there might be trouble at mill ...

How weird is this Amos of the deep north? Check out his viewing habits ...

Ben Shapiro did okay? But then if you're a transphobic bigot, that's just par for the course ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles interrupted with a video about hate speech ... and the pond was forced to note it ...

... before carrying on with the hate speech ... and this time Greta's yet again the target ...

This loon from the deep north should relax, it's all done and dusted ...

Instead the reptiles decided to inflame the loon from the deep north with a snap designed to send the readership into a foaming lather of fear and paranoia ...

Then it was back to more rabid rhetoric ...

At this point the reptiles ran a clip reminding the aged readership that it was perfectly fine to sit back and watch sundry genocides unfold without so much as a whimper ... the pond recalls being told in 'Nam days to hush its mouth, its elders knew what they were doing, and didn't that work out well for tricky Dick and his crew ... what with that other Henry scoring a peace prize for bombing the bejesus out of everything in sight ...

Luckily the pond knew there was no reason to be afraid, the planet was heading in the right direction...

As for the loon from the deep north, the pond reckons the reptiles have unearthed a new treasure ... and was sorry there was only one thoroughly loonish gobbet to go ...

Marvellous, they still make 'em like that up in the deep north, though for a nanosecond the pond did pause to feel sorry for any young person who might be in need of a rural psychiatrist up Townsville way ... (suddenly Tamworth felt strangely civilised).

If this Amos is going to be the arbiter of childhood, the long absent lord help them all ...

The pond's TG friend once had to endure the attention of shrinks, and scored the full treatment, electric shocks and the rest of the barbarity, not to mention the full weight of the Catholic church, and endless bullying by unforgiving peers, but waddya know, still managed to end up enjoying life and doing useful things ...

So it sometimes goes, if you can endure and transcend the bigotry and hate, and after all that, what better way to end than with a celebratory immortal Rowe ...

Never mind the pffts, as usual, it's in the barfing detail ...

Oh what a tangled weave and warp of gas they belch, and the pond's horse for a carbon captured King ...

..The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, called the government “climate frauds”, saying they were backing fossil fuels “past 2050 while scientists ring alarm bells and the planet boils”. He argued Labor’s gas policies were “worse than [former Liberal prime minister] Scott Morrison”, who promised a “gas-fired recovery” and dedicated subsidies to the industry.
Laxale, the MP for Bennelong in Sydney, said he believed the government needed “to be moving away from fossil fuels, not championing them”.
“While we know that many in the community understand the role of gas in the transition away from fossil fuels, particularly after 10 years of climate neglect and denial by the Liberals, our government should continue to execute this transition as quickly as possible. This will remain my focus,” he said.
Sitou, from the Sydney seat of Reid, called for a “transition as quickly as possible off fossil fuels and on to renewable energy”.
Wilson, whose WA seat of Fremantle neighbours King’s seat of Brand, said: “Let me be crystal clear in saying that climate change action requires fossil fuels to depart the scene in the course of a sensible and vitally important global energy transition.”

So it goes, and not just in the deep north ...