In which the predictability of the loonacy fills the pond with despair ...

The pond continues in deep existential crisis …

The Swiss bank accounts man explaining that Malware is a dummy? The pond would rather pluck out its eyes than proceed …

Then there was The Mocker explaining how fundamentalist Xianity was really quite okay by him, and how it was right and good to send gays to hell, or at least consider it was a reasonable option, provided it didn't have anything to do with that dreadful bandana-wearer.

The pond would rather puncture its ear drums …

This is Friday for fuck's sake, this is meant to be a fun day … and what's on offer?

Chris Berg scribbling about Australia's 'rich heritage of nineteenth century classical liberalism' for the Speccie mob, in the form of Sir Joseph Carruthers?

Waiter, can the pond revert to the demon drink?

Or should the pond eat a main course of sawdust, followed by desiccated coconut, for lunch instead?

The pond blames the Caterists for not putting the rag out of its misery.

Oh sure there's always the United States, what with Donald Trump's love child all the go …

But what's love got to do with it?

What's love got to do, got to do with it 
What's love but a second hand emotion 
What's love got to do, got to do with it 
Who needs a heart when a lawyer or a newspaper can deal with it?
What's love got to do, got to do with it 
What's love but a sweet old fashioned notion
What's love got to do, got to do with it 
Who needs a heart when cash in the paw can buy the option?

If there's any love in that little deal, the pond will need to revise its definition of zipperless Donald fucking ...

And then there's Hannity explaining Mueller is the head of a crime family, and Comey calling the Donald a mobster, and the Donald in full crazy tweet mode, and cowardly custard Paul Ryan disappointing Ayn Rand by slinking away - he's not going to build the Fountainhead now is he? - but that's just a standard day in the Donald era …

Then there's the bickering local lads, though they look pretty small beer by American standards (and need the pond remind you of the small wine you must now drink?)

The reptiles did their best by having them go mano a mano ...

 

But the pond could write the 'he said, she said, they said' copy in its sleep, and Jamie lad also seemed to hand it over to the auto-pilot …

Of course the lying, dissembling, deeply embittered, revenge-seeking onion muncher pretended that nationalising coal-fired power stations was all about policy -  up there with 'let's give the duke a knighthood', and let's find the good in the Stalinist five year plan - but at least it allowed the reptiles to regurgitate a short history of the week's carry-on between the likely lads ...

They even threw in a 'sic' to try and make things interesting, but the pond just felt sick at heart … don't worry that the movie is just a screen cap. Nothing was said that was worth hearing, and nothing was seen, unless you have a thing for MAMILS … the pond would rather have sex with one of the snails in the back yard ...

Is this how it ends, not with a bang but with assorted Liberals banging on about Malware v. the onion muncher, when even the Swiss bank account man can tell you they're both pretty useless …

The pond even began to think it might have to run some sort of yarn which mocked the IPA …

Dear sweet long absent lord, how did that end up in the reptile pages? Are they trying to pretend they're fair and balanced these days?

Well yes, the IPA is hopeless, but is this is news? This is something that should worry the pond?

What's worrying, what's deeply troubling is that the reptiles thought they should pretend to be a newspaper ...

And then there's the Zuckerberg, but as the pond doesn't use Facebook and refuses to use Facebook, that saga has all the appeal of going for a lunch time walk in the mild autumn weather that Sydney is currently enjoying thanks to the reptiles' understanding that climate science is a Chinese hoax …

There's nothing left but to run a few cartoons, and hope the wheel will return, and perhaps something more interesting will turn up on the weekend …

In which the pond takes its TGIF early ...

Shattered. Gutted. Devastated. Shocked. Startled. Existential despair …(thank the long absent lord there's more Rowe here).

No, it's not the Donald on the middle east or rejoining the TPP. The pond has always expected consistency of purpose and policy from the Donald.

No, it's not the drop in the immigration numbers that have sent the reptiles delirious with joy.

It's the absence of genuinely decent and rewarding looniness.

The pond had its usual supply of airport lounge Murdochian publications dropped on its lap last night, and there wasn't anything worth clipping. Oh sure there was the bromancer, but the pond had already been there and done that. There was the Bolter bleating in the HUN about violence, and the lizard Oz editorialist was celebrating a Donald triumph over China, but what's new about any of that?

And then this morning the Speccie mob turned in a spectacular failure. No Giles, no Flinty? What's happening to the country? Are we on a downhill slide to nowhere?

The pond had to turn to some of the lizard Oz's better reporting just to do a column filler …

Strange. No reptile could be found willing to claim authorship of this epic story, which, if googled, can be found littering the intertubes in all sorts of places from long ago, and more recently in such august sources as the Daily Snail some six days ago …the pond always hesitates to provide a direct link to the gutter but it can be found here …

The reptiles are finally learning, and soon the lizard Oz might be re-named Click Bait 'R Us ...

It reminded the pond of the old joke about the way it was related to Charlemagne, a yarn revived in The Graudian here … by a certain Adam Rutherford ...

Sometimes I get asked if I’m related to the great physicist Ernest Rutherford. His discoveries about the atomic nucleus gave birth to physics in the 20th century. He is the father of nuclear physics, with labs and atoms named after him. I’m not related to him. I can reveal however that I am a direct descendent of someone of similar greatness: Charlemagne, Carolingian King of the Franks, Holy Roman Emperor, the great European conciliator. Quelle surprise! 
But we are all special, which means none of us are. If you’re vaguely of European extraction, you are also the fruits of Charlemagne’s prodigious loins. A fecund ruler, he sired at least 18 children by motley wives and concubines, including Charles the Younger, Pippin the Hunchback, Drogo of Metz, Hruodrud, Ruodhaid, and not forgetting Hugh. This is merely a numbers game. You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. But this ancestral expansion is not borne back ceaselessly into the past. If it were, your family tree when Charlemagne was Le Grand Fromage would harbour more than a billion ancestors – more people than were alive then. 
What this means is that pedigrees begin to fold in on themselves a few generations back, and become less arboreal, and more web-like. In 2013, geneticists Peter Ralph and Graham Coop showed that all Europeans are descended from exactly the same people. Basically, everyone alive in the ninth century who left descendants is the ancestor of every living European today, including Charlemagne, Drogo, Pippin and Hugh. Quel dommage.

Never mind, it confirmed that the lizard Oz was on the up and up, and was finally getting the hang of this internet thingie and despite its burdensome paywall, the business was booming …

Oh okay, "readership" data is about as meaningful as the pond's connection to Charlemagne, and the Queen's connection to the prophet, blessed be her name, but how pleasing to see that the airport giveaways are working a treat for the reptiles.

What's that you say? What about the rest of the Queen? 

Well the Daily Snail offered a bigger and better stud farm chart, but the reptiles tried their best …remember this anonymous click bait thingie is a new thing for them ...

Now has the pond told you the story of how it's related to Christ? 

Oh yes, he had a son in secret, and it's all here in a wiki, and as every Greg Hunter knows, if it's in a wiki it must be true … that yarn had an outing in the UK Terror here back in 2014 and of course Dan Brown revealed the truth in The Da Vinci Code and assorted sequels, not one of which the pond paid any attention to …

But in mentioning all this, has the pond also fallen into the bottomless pit of endless, mindless stupidity that usually comes from reading too much of the reptiles?

Well then to serious business, and a grave lapse, which has put the author on the reptiles' 'internal enemies of the hive mentality' list …

Smart money getting into wind? 

Well there's a thought crime right there at the get go … but then came the worst crime of all.

"Bizarrely!"

Dear Mr Durie, it's not just Malware and the government and the onion muncher and the coal lovers' forum, oi, oi, pushing AGL, it's your entire tribe of fellow reptiles.

Are you calling these sweet creatures bizarre? Why as surely as the pond is a descendant of Christ and Charlemagne, you shall pay for your treasonous, treacherous use of insolent adverbs …

Now is there a graph? Back in the day when the pond watched their ABC, there was always a graph …

Now is not the time to talk up alternates to coal? Wise words, because your crusading fellow reptiles are standing by to nail him to the cross … perhaps so he too can claim a connection to Christ.

And now the pond apologises for these TGIF detours … though it could have done even worse and seen the reptiles in an agony of 18C excitement over recent events involving Malware and that woman … but fortunately the immortal Pope wrapped them up together in a cartoon, with more Pope here … go on, give him a hit, because apparently the booming reptiles have no need of any help at all …

Welcome back bromancer ...

The pond had wondered what had happened to the bromancer. 

There was a suspicious absence, a sense of loss in the pond, a feeling of turbulence in the force, just like the mysteriously absent savvy Savva, but the bromancer broke his silence and revealed he's been on a junket to see the Poms…

Now the pond really doesn't want to editorialise, but it does promise that there'll be a pay-off. It might take a little time to get to, but it's a real bromancer zinger …

Never mind the classic Lobbecke - what a master he is.

The zinger revolves around the bromancer's recent infatuation with the Donald ...

It features the bromancer's infinite capacity to see the world through one eye ...

It's a slow burn, a slow build … but there will be a pay-off, the pond promises …

Almost there, but the pond does wonder whether it might have done some spoilers along the way, given the nod, tipped the hat, nudge nudged and wink winked a little too much ...

Yep, the bromancer did it in style:

(1) did a fine Godwin's law pirouette;

(2) made laughable, pathetic, risible excuses for Xians and the Catholic church, who have had a couple of thousand years of anti-semitism, against what Karl Marx and followers might have managed over the past couple of hundred;

(3) somehow managed to ignore the alt right, the Donald, Charlottesville, tikki torches and all the rest of it.

That's the work of a skilled apologist.

How the pond has missed him, even if the pond is outraged that they cut his line "In truth, right-wing Catholic anti-Semitism is an extremely venerable tradition, closely associated with blood libel over the centuries despite attempts to stamp it out, Greg Hunt it here, while the weird Israel-loving, Jew-hating mix of rabid central right-wing views currently to be found close to the mainstream of the Republican party, is much more common than any ragbag commentator in the lizard Oz should find comfortable apologising for …"

… though the pond will graciously acknowledge that the bromancer got around to mentioning it in that very last line … with talk of the crude anti-Semitism "in the orbit of the weirdest and most disturbing mainstream leader the western world has seen in a long, long time."

Go the Donald, go the bromancer's next celebration of the Donald.

And that's why the pond feels completely comfortable doing its very own Godwin's law riff …

In which the pond tries its hand at sniping, wrecking and undermining ...

Ryan gone and war by tweet, how's the stunning victory man handling it?

Oh dear … haven't the reptiles learned yet that the best way to communicate with the Donald on policy matters is to send someone off to Fox and Friends?

Never mind, if we must, but the pond will consider this strictly an entree ...

Uh huh, well the Pope knows where that's coming from, and more Pope here …

And so to the main meal, which the pond admits has all the substance of a meringue, or perhaps a rock cake …

You see, the pond has been noticing in recent times the way that the reptiles keep on keeping on with the onion muncher.

Somehow it sticks in the noggin and suggests that a leadership change will be on before Xmas …

See this yarn …

Uh huh … a few things to note in this story by a member of the Kelly gang: the unsniping, unwrecking onion muncher's call of Malware being a tricky dick is kept in the text, but the entire point of the yarn is to give space to the venting onion muncher's sniping and wrecking ...

Now fast forward a day, and Malware being a tricky Dick gets into the header ...

What do Clennell and Brown add to the original story by that member of the Kelly gang?

Not much, it's just the same yarn rehashed and reworked, in a way that keeps alive the notion that Malware is a tricky dick ...

This is how it goes with the lizard Oz. The moment that Malware called the reptiles false and untrue, his goose was heading off to the oven …

The story was yet another variant arising from the curious reptile mindset, which loves to invite in South African farmers while at the same time demanding that immigration be curbed …all the better if it has an Enid Blytonish "secret seven" angle to it ...

There's the clue. Within four short pars, the reptile yarn managed to link the immigration intake to the Barners' Xmas deadline …any excuse for a beat-up these days, and is it any wonder that the onion muncher remains top of the pond's page?

Of course Malware, in his usual way, didn't help matters by sounding like the complete prat he is ...

Meanwhile, that other member of the Kelly gang had gone back to special pleading … because there's too many migrants, unless they're of the right kind ...

So why the ongoing fuss?

Well the reptiles helpfully provide a graphic pointing out the political advantages ...

Imagine if the greenies had been so naked and bold about the advantages of shipping in certain kinds of migrants to help them in their cause, you know, seals for South Melbourne, whales to Werribee ...

The reptiles would have erupted in a raging fury, but this time their generous hearts melt with yearning ...

And so it goes … just another few days in the company of crusading reptiles, sniping and wrecking and undermining and backbiting …

The pond can barely remember where it began …

Oh that's right …

In which Lloydie feverishly works to save the day from the sight of the satanic mills ...

 

 

Having just worked its way in fits and starts through the thoughts of the most mendacious and duplicitous Nazi of them all - Sereny's book on Albert Speer - the pond was reminded yet again of the way that the Nazis keep on giving for SBS and academics, with books on stormtroopers recently bobbing up and noted at the NY Review of Books (sorry, inside the paywall here).

There's no doubt about it, for fighting we were born, and everything's a struggle, and naturally there's a point to this introduction, because the reptiles have triple blessed the pond with an extensive contribution from Lloydie on the struggle for power …kampf um macht, if you will ...

Now it's true that some appalling people suggest Lloydie's main purpose in life is to confuse, dissemble, conflate, and muddy the waters in a way that produces lots of energy, but little heat or light, on and off the grid.

These sceptics might even propose that Lloydie could start off talking about energy, and end up with nuclear plants.

The pond won't hear of it … Lloydie is a leading climate scientist and caring environmentalist, and besides, do we really need anything more than decent clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi?

Indeed, indeed, is it possible to imagine anything more demonic and horrible than wind farms to the reptile imagination?

To help us understand the enormity of the suffering, the reptiles even produced an indicative graphic, which indicates something, though the pond isn't quite sure what it might be … except the proliferation of renewable energy across the land like a swarm of locusts devouring the Hay plain ...

Now of course while discussing rent-seeking it would be inappropriate and ill-advised to mention subsidies provided to coal, or perhaps Adani, and certainly not the beloved reptile obsession with promoting the black stuff over all other forms of energy …

Remember, the primary purpose is to celebrate contending voices so that chaos and confusion might follow ...

Now at this point the pond must warn readers of a possible shock to the system.

Lloydie's text provided a number of illustrations, but somehow one demonic image slipped through the pond's careful editorial policies … crucifix shapes posed against a dark, lowering sky …

The pond isn't sure if the colouring is quite right for these rapturous end times ...

The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

Thank you Mark and Luke, but the pond and Lloydie will go with a darkening blue ...

Now around this point, the pond began to think that perhaps the sceptics were right, perhaps Lloydie was most adept at muddying the waters …

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves some windmills, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 
But the Lloydie came down to see the city and the windmills the people were building in most inappropriate locations as if some sort of gold rush was going on, quite unlike the way that the Liverpool plains should give up its coal. 
The Lloydie said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language and their reports and their plans, so they will not understand each other.” 
So the Lloydie scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the windmills and the Liverpool plains were dug up for coal and it was good. That is why it was called Coalel — because there it was that the Lloydie confused the language of the whole world, or at least the struggle for power.

So let us continue with the confusion and the contending voices brethren … remembering that climate science is either a theology or an ideology, take your pick, provided it's not a science ...

Indeed, indeed, but in this babel of contending voices, surely we should be paying attention to going nuke? Surely it shouldn't be arbitrarily excluded on the basis of specious nonsense about half-lifes extending a few thousand years or so?

And there you go. 

Who knows where things are headed, who knows whether it will work, all Lloydie and the pond knows is that carpetbaggers and a gold rush mentality has been unleashed on the land, when it's obvious enough that all we need is dinkum clean Oz coal, Adani - ship it out, ship it out - and perhaps a whiff of nukes just for a soupçon of delicious half-life flavouring…

By golly it's as noble an effort as the work being done elsewhere, and the pond is proud as punch to have presented it, in the pond's eternal struggle to produce enlightenment (actual light will certainly cost more if the confusion can be maintained …)

In which the reptiles' monkey's aunt explains a few things to Josh and ScoMo ...

That's the sort of casting the pond loves - remember he played a morgue night shift employee in Night Shift!

And now to put another few corpses to work. The pond has had an old Dame Groan lying around, and what else to do but get it out before it gets too smelly …

Perhaps there should be a warm-up, because the reptiles have been fretting endlessly about energy and coal, oi, oi, oi, and all the rest of it …

Come on down Josh, explain the free market vs. the onion muncher's five year nationalisation plan ...

Oh dear, this is just the sort of talk to make Dame Groan snap ...

Dearie me, clearly Josh hadn't paid any attention to Dame Groan, who gave that dreadful ScoMo a dressing down the day before …

Really the insolence of the lad … not embracing coal, while pretending to do it?

Perhaps the pond shouldn't laugh. After all, the reptiles won't give up on their crusade until renewable energy is put back in its box, and everyone learns to love coal … and Dame Groan has long been on record explaining how all this pesky climate science is ideological …

If sticking with the damaging renewable energy target and committing to a wildly excessive emissions reduction target under our commitment to the Paris climate agreement are not ideological, I’m a monkey’s uncle. (here, because the original's behind the lizard paywall).

Surely not. Surely at the very least, Dame Slap would be the monkey's aunt, unless there are things the pond doesn't know about?

Dame Groan can sense the reptile coal dream slipping away, and damned if she's going to take it ...

Look, the pond doesn't mind having a bob each way. ScoMo is an incorrigible suck, and the reptiles will keep berating the spineless, gormless mob of sucks until they realise the error of their ways and turn to the reptiles for enlightenment …and then dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi, will step up to the plate and save the day, as any monkey's aunt could tell you at great length ...

Fortunately Pope provided similar hope and enlightenment this day in the matter of plastics, thanks to Erica Botz …with more helpful Pope here.