In which Dame Slap shows her skills as school bully ...

Sooks?

The pond just couldn't let that one slip by.

Many of us have been there before, copping the hurled insult, you know, crybaby, whinger, wimp, coward, wuss, (woose or woos if you will), a gutless wonder, a streak of misery with a yellow strip a mile wide (a kilometre if you will).

The wiki had this example here:

2007, Jan Teagle Kapetas, Lubra Lips, Lubra Lips: Reflections on my Face, Maureen Perkins (editor), Visibly Different: Face, Place and Race in Australia, page 31, 
‘What a sook! Look at her cry!’ 
‘Yeah, look at the Abo cry!’

"Sook" is one of the surest signs of a bully at work …and that's why it turned up in this advice to parents here ...

Sooks! Sissies, pansies, milksop, milquetoast, pantywaist, nervous nelly ,,,

Well,  many of us have been there, one way or another …

Luckily, that site had some advice for those tormented by bullies, and the pond hastily made a bit of it over so readers could catch the drift.

Yes, bullies who call others sooks or weaklings or such like are really only concealing their own deep sense of inadequacy. 

The pond's usual advice is for such folk to find someone they can act out the dynamics of power in a relationship by experimenting with BDSM, but failing that, they can settle for the act of seeing what happens when a Donald-worshipping bully goes about the business of bullying others for News Corp …by celebrating a bullying politician going about the business of bullying ...

Now the triumphalism is to be expected, but there's dangers in responding to it, because the next thing you know, you become a sucker for the sort of pitch they used to have in comics …

And the next thing you know you're forking over cash to try to deal with the bullying …

It's a lot simpler just to see the tricks that bullies get up to …

Of course what's being talked about here is actually the right to go on bullying, you know, like the ability to consign poofters to hell, or abuse women for being witches, and make sure they behave like proper angry Sydney Anglican complimentary women ...and such like …

This style of bullying has been a noble thought experiment by the reptiles and others for decades, and by certain conservative forces for centuries …and they live in dread fear that it might all come to an end.

Of course they blather on about jousting and the contest of ideas and such like, but what they really mean is, "we're the king of the castle, and you lot are just dirty weak sooky rascals."

And confronted by the hate, fear and loathing, there's a temptation to reach out for that panacea …

But it's important to remember this sort of bullying comes from an inherent sense of weakness … which is why soon enough we'll be copping some blather about Western Civilisation, when Dame Slap has done her level best for it by supporting most peculiar forms of WC enlightenment …

Oh and tariffs too …

Yes, all that's best and brightest in Western Civilisation, as brought to you by a consummate bully, con artist and pussy grabber … just Dame Slap's sort of man … no wonder she was a devout wearer of the grandee MAGA cap ...

He's a sook? 

Well she's a bully, in the grand tradition of Dame Slap bullies … but to be fair, she does prove with her words and deeds, the corrosive role of government … the sort of affliction that can wear people down, and soon enough they're shouting at clouds ...

… or perhaps devising plans to respond to climate science …

And so, as is traditional, it's off to a final gobbet from the bullies …

Yes, it's the quiet Australian way.  

Let's play Senate. Let's call out all the crybaby, whinger, wimp, coward, wuss, (woose or woos if you will), gutless wonder, streak of misery with a yellow strip a mile wide (a kilometre if you will), pesky blacks, weird poofters, and anyone different or other, and remind them of the joys of Western Civilisation, as spouted by a dropkick fuckwit with a chip on shoulder a mile wide from the deep north, otherwise known as Queensland … 

But remember, be tolerant, don't take the pond's little outburst as an invitation to bully back, because bullies usually were themselves bullied, and that's how they became such an intolerant bunch of dropkick dickheads ...

Oh it's going to be tough perhaps, but remember if things get a little rough, and the bullying starts to wear you down, you can always ask the panel for help, or perhaps use up your last chance call to phone a friend …

In which Polonius does his best Bertie impression ...

Freedom to speak?

But they never shut up, do they, they're always banging on about their freedom to speak being stifled, when they can never shut up about it, can they, a blather here, a rabbiting on there, a bit of navel-gathering fluff over yonder … yet it turns out that for some, the only time they get the real freedom to speak is when they leave the lizard Oz …

Yes, these days the pond mainly keeps up its reptile watch by reading the likes of the Graudian's Weekly Beast and what a Devine read it was this week …

But the pond can't kick its Polonial habit … where's the harm, just one hit a week, a short jab in the arm and then an oneiric, hallucinatory state kicks in …

Speaking of missing, a pointed missing, the pond was traumatised watching that farewell to Barrie Cassidy. Oh they dusted the moths off John Howard and dragged him out of the cupboard, and lined up a lot of others to offer tributes, but where was prattling Polonius?

Silenced and ignored, yet another example of the complete absence of right wing commentators on the ABC …yet Polonius delivered years of faithful service, harping and whining and moaning, going up against that fiendish David Marr in a jolly comedy routine, somehow thereby providing a splendid example of the intolerable abundance of right wing commentators on the ABC …

Ah, the best and the brightest, how the pond misses them, the bloated ones full of wind and speech …

Yes, where was Akker Dakker with his encomium …

But enough, it's just a once a week outing, so it's on with the pond's Polonial pleasure …

Now the pond takes Polonius's polonial point, but surely "do absolutely sweet bugger all" is an even better maxim, except perhaps make sure the fat cats get richer, while the talk of a budget surplus drifts into the sweet by and by …

But as ever, the pond was alert to the Delphic Oracle's casting of the runes …and the hidden meanings that were coming directly from the News Corp hive mind ...

Was Polonius suggesting that, in due course, all the current mob, and perhaps even Polonius himself, would develop a case of the Malcolm Fraser guilts and turn rampant leftie in their old age?

Do a John Hewson, so to speak, and discover within their crusted, rusted, warped, twisted and deviant old bodies, that there was a person aching to emerge and cry out …"I am not an animal, nor a even a lizard, but a human bean" or perhaps, "the lizard people and the hive mind had me in their weird embrace for decades, but now I'm free at last to speak?"

Phew, it shows how deluded the pond can get when away from the reptile coal face … but not our Lloydie …

Still Johnny one note, our Gra Gra of the environment, but wait, Polonius is remains hidden behind the arras, and he has more to say about the importance of doing sweet fuck all …

Oh how brave of Polonius to mention The Insiders. How sad they ignored him for the farewell show. An errant tear trickled down the pond's cheek.

It's surely understandable that the brave lad should hop into his time machine and drift back to May 19th, when that last show on June 9th committed such a monumental crime against the good Polonial self …

But hang on a mo, did the pond just detect in Polonius a little tic of the Donald kind?

...returning the budget to surplus (if possible) …

Why that bracket has all the signs of a quality Donald tweet, perhaps an epic Whale about the impossibility of a surplus …

How the pond yearned for a Colbert reading …what a meal he'd make of that aside, if possible … oh if only it were possible to get him to take an interest in Polonius ...

But if doing absolutely sweet fuck all is the new policy setting, if possible, oh if only doing absolutely nothing was possible, if possible, what will the reptiles get to yammer about, given that nothing seems to matter much, and we can all slouch around like alienated teenagers, slouched in front of a screen, when anything awkward can be shoved into parentheses, if possible?

Well the rag answered that one. When completely bereft of policies and pointlessly drifting in the meaningless policy sea, bring in a Bjorn and remember to berate the greenies …

  

Nota bene how the dog botherer has actually become disembodied, and has entered into the ethereal world of becoming a company …

The pond realises that the law insists, in its peculiar way, that a company is a person, but surely the notion that News Corp is some sort of monolithic entity, like that bloody great slab in the Kubrick film, is the very last point at which the hive mind takes over …

Still the pond felt justified in talking of the hive mind, when the dog botherer himself is in the grip of the News Company hive mind, with the company now a certified teacher …

So many mindless distractions, so many chances to do nothing (if possible), but as is the tradition, a final gobbet of Polonius … and as always, a history lesson ...

Say what? P.G. Wodehouse is to be the new reference? Our Polonius fancies himself as a new Bertie? (well, that's possible).

It seems we must abandon all coherent planning and policy initiatives, and perhaps just speak in tongues occasionally to divine what must be done, and Wodehouse is the way to go ...

Well, as Polonius hinted, that didn't work out so well …

  

Oh the pond just had to do a bit of history, sorting out those who prefer five year plans and those silly enough to talk on the radio about being a prisoner of the thousand year Reich …

There's more at the NY Times, here, and at The Gradian here, but what fun if Polonius now sees Jeeves and Wooster as the best way forward, and perhaps a guide to future policy making and the fine art of just governing …

And as the Poms have been mentioned, that eminds the pond that, as well as the Donald speaking with Whales,  there is much comedy to be had from the news of Boris slouching towards Brexit …

This bit of scribbling entranced the pond during the week, from the Graudian here …

While Brexit is still the driving force in British politics, it is no longer a living programme for government. The Tories are trapped between pressure to complete it at any cost – a force applied with wrecking relish by Nigel Farage – and some residual understanding that to do it on Farage’s terms would be a surrender to madness. It is the same old Ukip agenda that has harried the Tories for years. Half of the leadership candidates are following it like Norman Bates, bullied by his mother in Hitchcock’s Psycho. They say it is an irresistible force, but it is a kind of sinister, internal derangement. The Brexit they crave, one that unites party and nation without ruin or rancour, is already dead. 
That might not stop the next prime minister inflicting something called Brexit on the country, but it is getting harder. There is only so long that a government can parade a corpse and ask the public to admire it. Tories can dress it up in different costumes, stick a Boris-style wig on it, spray it with perfume, but the idea itself has started to putrefy. Its complexion has turned sallow.

The pond once watched Psycho, through clutched fingers and from the safety of the pond's mother's lap (such comfort to hide the face in a skirt)… what they imagined they were doing, dragging a child to a screening of the show is still something of a mystery.

But now the pond realises it was actually good preparation for the current reality. Do nothing or you'll end up in the swamp of actually doing something, do nothing and end up quoting an absolute twit of a novelist, whose chief skill was to invoke British twits, do nothing, and you too might end up with a prattling Polonius, a Boris, the Donald, a speaker in tongues, or even a prince of Whales …

Is it any wonder the pond gave the daily game away, especially now that the infallible Pope has been imprisoned behind a paywall and the immortal Rowe only turns up intermittently here … 

Still, beggars can't be choosers, and surely Polonius will accept this as a fine example of the benefits of astute forward planning and decisive policy-making …almost distilled essence of Polonius channeling Bertie ...

In which Polonius wanders in to the past to avoid the mutton Dutton's thought police ...

 

Does the pond miss the washed up, sick, scammer, psycho, fruit loop, dropkick, deadbeat, disgraceful, loser, nasty, vindictive comedy stylings of the bromancer?

Well yes, but enough of the pond showing off its statespersonlike and presidential qualities - for fear the bromancer might write a column - "the pond towers over London and France and dead men in service of rage and hate" - because the pond also missed dashing Donners in a state of high hysteria …

No doubt the police are investigating the disgraceful affair even as the pond scribbles, though whether it's the feminists the cops are on to, or dashing Donners for introducing an alien concept from a quaint religion into his column is a matter of dispute. Did feminists really issue a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognised authority, and so defame the silly demonic old gander as he squawked away?

Who knows, and truth to be told, what a relief it is to be free of an angry old bigot, shouting about clouds or lawns or feminists or fatwas … hie thee to a monastery where you might prefer to issue encyclicals of a proper Western Civilisation kind …

And so to the pond's now much circumscribed business, the checking up on prattling Polonius, and it didn't start off well …

Oh dear, an historical tract, and with the usual paranoid Catholic world view mixed into the brew. Surely there was something a little more up to date Polonius could have written about?

Well at least the immortal Rowe is in good form, with more Rowe here, and the pond perked up.

Could it be that last week's pointing out of Polonius's senile ability to repeat himself endlessly about the ABC had at last sunk home? Might there be a change of pace, no matter how ancient and tedious?

Well there's the history lesson, but not a single mention of how it was all the fault of the ABC, and quite possibly due to the absence of a single conservative presenter on the ABC's radio, television, telegram, Twitter and carrier pigeon networks…

But the pond never gives up hope. Surely somehow, in some inscrutable way, the ABC must be responsible, must be held accountable ...

Phew, the pond breathed a deep sigh of relief …it's that bloody dreadful Tony Jones. 

Now the pond can hear some muttering from the back row … didn't Hamish McDonald publish a story way back on February 11th 2012 headed Framed: the untold story about the Croatian Six …?

Well yes, but it takes the mummified remains of Polonius a little while to catch up on things, and besides, it's important to tippy toe around other events this week …

Still, if the ABC scored a mention, the pond can take comfort from the way that Polonius was forced to dissemble, lest the dreadful Fairfaxians, as they were once called, take any credit, though at one time it seems that Hamish McDonald wasn't actually a freelance journalist …

A Herald investigation strengthens suspicions that the Croatian Six - Max Bebic, Vic Brajkovic, Tony Zvirotic, Joe Kokotovic and his brother Ilija Kokotovic, and Mile Nekic, all young tradesmen and Australian citizens of Croatian birth - were framed, each spending up to a decade in prison….

...Framed, the Herald’s first ebook, investigates the fate of six men jailed for up to a decade over plans to blow up a Sydney theatre in 1979 as part of a Croat terrorist plot. Hamish McDonald spent months tracking down the surviving members of the Croatian six, the police and others involved in the case. His findings strengthen suspicions that these convictions are, as one former senior Australian official puts it, ‘‘a grave injustice’’. McDonald also investigates the role in the case of the Yugoslav state security service, which used Australian police and intelligence services as tools to blacken the reputation of Croatian-Australians as extremists.
The Herald publishes an extract of McDonald’s book in print, online and on the iPad app today. Video interviews with key subjects in the story are on the Herald’s iPad app and online. The full story, Framed, is published as an Amazon ebook on the Kindle Store.

The first ebook! The pond felt quite nostalgic … and to think it might all have been avoided if there'd been a single decent conservative commentator on the ABC, or perhaps management had done the right thing, and appointed Polonius to run Q and A ...

Now don't you mind that, at the very moment Polonius scribbles about ancient misdeeds, mutton Dutton's hounds from hell lap at the door of the ABC and even, oh can it be, the noble HUN beast itself, while the smirking salesman speaker in tongues dissembles …

And out of it came this odd Crikey headline …

Yes, it's a strange thing when the creature you help create comes back to bite you on the bum, the economy slows, and talk of surplus is a mere dream from a midsummer's night … but the pond felt it had done short weight, and so felt free to indulge a little more.

After all, in for one conservative Catholic commentator, in for a reptile dozen …

Now the angelic one has never been the sharpest wafer in the holy reptile communion, so the pond wasn't expecting much, except for the usual paranoia, fear and loathing ...

It seems that the only solution is to set the barking mad fundamentalists free, so that they might howl at the moon and contend whether Sharia or Catholic law is the best way to send homosexuals to hell …

The pond felt a strange ennui of a kind it hadn't felt in what seemed like months, or years, though something crept over the grave and sent a shiver down the spine reading the Weekly Beast, talking of the ABC showing a complete lack of Adani spine, and little Timmie Bleagh being more revolting than usual … a considerable achievement, as being revolting is little Timmie's resting state, and when he gears up, supremely revolting is what you'd expect when he's idling in first gear …

But back to the angelic one making an ambit claim, in which apparently religion encompasses everything, including atheists and those that might have some disagreements with the widely different, conflicting and confusing thoughts of imaginary friends.

The problem of course is to sort out the "it". If religion encompasses everything, is the encompassing Jewish, barking mad fundamentalist Hindu, Islamic, Catholic, or evangelical, consigning the whore of Babylon to eternal hellfire? No doubt the pond will be on board, when as Media Watch suggested, an atheist teacher might stand up in a Catholic classroom, explain that the religion is loopy, and anyone who doesn't want to attend the compulsory mass is excused, and it's all in the cause of freedom of conscience ...

The pond read on, hoping for the state of no enlightenment would continue ...

It sounded vaguely hedonistic - in religion, apparently "you can do whatever you want", though what you might want to do might well depend on which imaginary friend you believe in. Never mind, so long as the Ponzi scheme can be preserved, and the state can be persuaded to finance the indoctrination of children, all's well in the world, and who needs any notion of balance? After all, where would an education system be without a balancing belief in creationism,  and Adam and Eve and such like tosh …

Dammit, the pond knew that a dangerous reformist liberal judge might be involved (sssh, not a word about him being one of those disgraceful homosexuals pretending that they know about love and marriage and all that stuff):

Religious doesn't mean stupid? A Freudian would have a field day with that, simply because whenever the angelic one scribbles, the pond suspects that she suspects that she's not the strongest holy water to come out of the tap … (maybe a little more fluoride?)

Never mind, that final persecutory, paranoid flourish was enough. A couple of thousand years of persecuting witches, poofters, and all sorts of people they didn't like and suddenly, somehow they think the shoe is on the other foot, and the fundamentalists are supposed to be feeling the heat. Tell anyone seeking an abortion in the deep south about how it feels to be that far under the gun …

But enough of that, because the pond would like to finish up where it began, with a New Yorker cartoon and another one from the immortal Rowe  … well, they put the infallible Pope behind a paywall, and while the pond loves him, sadly the pond's money goes to the NYRB and the New Yorker and not to The Canberra Times ...

Blessed by the infallible Pope ...

It really was an exceptional cartoon, and the pond felt blessed by the infallible Pope, which is no real excuse to do a Melba, a Farnham, an Elton John, or a Dylan, though he never even pretended that he stopped …

But the pond would like to thank all those who offered a kind word on the pond's retirement from daily blogging, it really was much appreciate and the pond indulged and indulged, like chocolate on a winter's day, except in Sydney we wonder if there's going to be a winter … sssh, don't mention reptile climate science denialism … oh, and to preen a little and bask in the reflected glory of that Pope exceptional cartoon …

The pond was swept into koan territory …

So many exceptional cartoons and so the pond became enlightened ...

As for missing it? How does it feel to stop banging head on wall? The pond was reminded of the story of the pond's son's snake. It was a handsome enough reptile, and to feel it wrapped around the neck and shoulders was to know that in the wild it could crush an innocent thing to death quickly enough …

And then there was the added bonus of the horror and disgust some felt. You actually keep a reptile, you enjoy herpetological studies, they would say, as they reeled back in fear from what they thought would be a slimy touch, until they plucked up the courage and experienced the reptile's smooth, beguiling skin ...

Reptile studies, it turns out, is a bit like Eve in the Garden, before being assigned complimentary women duties by an angry Sydney Anglican …

But then comes the tedious reality … for much of its time, when not sitting on its hot rock, the python would roam about, crapping wherever it felt like, pissing on things, creating a snaky stink, knocking things off the mantelpiece, getting stuck in the toilet, or in a hole in the wall as it sought the outside world, and then there was the keeping of dead rats and the microwaving and the feeding, nothing but reptile duties, onerous, burdensome, repetitious, ennui, tedium, existential angst, piss, crap, shit, dead rats, pissy stinky reptile smell, day in, day out …

Well as we're speaking of reptiles pissing and shitting all over the place, the pond must make mention of one comment, which wondered if Polonius ever read the pond. 

The pond will likely never know and likely never care, but wondered if it might be fun to torment the prattler on a weekly basis … no comeback as such, just an occasional dose of humbug, verbiage and pompous pedantry …

But this weekend brought a reminder of that dead rat reality … look at them, see how moronic repetition is the key to the Donald and the reptiles …

Yes, there was Lloydie, insisting yet again it was just a polarised global debate. Here no actual science, no actual science here, just more talk of debate, and perhaps theology might also enter the discussion … and the pond has been there a thousand times before, and when Tamworth runs out of water, don't come crying to the pond … remember, you're not experiencing reality, you're just enjoying a polarised global debate …

And then there was prattling Polonius below him, blathering away …

And here's why the pond gave it up, because the pond couldn't find a bookie that would lay odds on the prattler mentioning the lack of right wing analysts on the ABC …

The pond can stand the triumphalism, it was to be expected, and the pond would have likely had an equally adverse reaction to the triumphalism of comrade Bill if he'd got in. 

Now, comrade Bill is determined to do an onion muncher, and hang around like a bad smell, because, insiders tell me, he's always dreamed of being a PM, and now he can't imagine doing anything else, and nobody can work out how to get him to go away because he's no good at anything else … except stabbing leaders in the back and working behind the scenes to create a mess, in the onion muncher way. And how did Richard Marles, a bear of very little brain, get the deputy gig? The onion muncher Peter principle is alive and well …and Albo is already looking like his time has passed … thanks in no small part to the efforts of comrade Bill ...

But the pond digresses. You see, if it could have found a bookie, it could have retired rich by banking on prattling Polonius blathering on about that "conservative-free zone", as he's done a squillion times before …

Is there a special short cut key where if he's stuck for a word, Polonius hits it, and out comes some stodge, some porridge filler of that "conservative-free zone" kind, because whenever the pond watches the ABC, which is rare, there's always some IPA stooge to hand with an opinion? 

The relentless repetition as moronic as the Donald, and the pond, while filled with nostalgia, was also filled with nausea, because really it's just Polonius complaining that he never got a gig … but then nobody at Sky after dark thinks he's worth it either ...

What will David Speer make of having this dodderer come down from the attic and ruin The Insiders with his pedantry?

And the rest of it was full of the same old …with all the usual enemies doing their tour of tedious duty ...

Ah, the onion muncher, how's he doing?

Golly, nice work if you can get it, and with an explanatory statement and all at the Graudian …

But when thinking of international travel, the pond prefers the infallible Pope's explanatory statement …

And so to a final gobbet of Polonius, and as to be expected, the triumphalism is likely to linger for months ...

Did somebody mention religion?  The pond has been having a bad run of late, with The New Yorker running a tale of one atheist, who sounded good at first, but turned out to be some kind of Jesus-style socialist, though perhaps Giacomo Sartori's I Am God might offer some fun - see Cathleen Schine's NYRB review, sadly inside the paywall ...

Again the pond must turn to the infallible Pope …

Does the pond miss anything?

Well it misses the cartoons and the reader feedback, but not much else. 

At the moment, the pond's toilet reading is Norman Lindsay's tales of characters in The Bulletin, and the pond enjoys the way that whatever else has gone on, there's been a line of continuity in classic cartooning …

The pond these days would settle for simply running a few Pope and Rowe cartoons as a commentary … but then you can find infallible Pope here and the immortal Rowe here … and there's no point in being redundant, but what the hell Archie toujours gai, there's still some life in the old Dot and some pleasures to be had, and if running Polonius allows the pond to run a few more cartoons, then the pompous old pedant, the tedious old fart, the relentlessly blathering old bore might be useful after all …