In which the pond builds walls with our Jim and our Henry ...

It was, it should go without saying, reprehensible of the pond not to provide the splash for prattling Polonius's survey of the year …

It went top of the page, Ma, top of the page!

Some fools might have thought the Donald was worth featuring, when they really should have known it was all the ABC's and Malware's fault …

Remember …you do remember that inn, Miranda, and the bedding and the shedding and the mutton Dutton …

And in its survey of holiday reptile reading that the pond missed, how to explain overlooking the real explanation of all that's wrong with the world?

Those bloody useless millennials and their badly wired brains!

The youff of today simply doesn't have a clue, what with the way they use their logarithms to devise and project the theology of climate religion!

Luckily there was a solution.

All that's needed is for the youff of today to sit down and read a jolly good reptile-approved book - and yet still there are some rogue elements that alarm all the reptiles, and especially the urbane Urban by trying to ban good books…

Oh the shame, oh the heresy … and there in a nutshell, with bonus little Johnny pic, is why they can't understand maths ...

Meanwhile, other great minds were on hand to explain certain sorts of duds …

"An elite of the correct-thinking"!

Of course, of course, what was needed was an elite of the ill-thinking, the foolish thinking, the mathematically useless thinking, the dullard thinking, or if you will, the angry old reptile man shouting at clouds thinking …

But enough of thinking that being a deplorably dumb fuckwit is the sensible way forward, because it's time to move on from holiday reading missed to holiday reading present, and who should be present and correct on the digital page this day but our lad Jim?

Sadly, the pond was under the impression that our lad Jim was actually not going to be taking it anywhere come the next election … but there'll always be a home for him at the lizard Oz, even if his take on the Donald seemed mildly heretical ...

Now before our Jim induces a fainting fit in sensitive reptile readers …

… the reptiles had the good sense to include some reassuring words from the bromancer ...

Ah yes, the man who helped give John McCain that most excellent Sarah Palin is just the man we needed …

More on that most excellent comedy of winner-picking here, but it's time to get back to our Jim lad, still worrying away ...

Really Jim lad? Take a chill pill and relax with the bromancer.

All is well in the world, and the bromancer calls it like it is ...

Still unsure that the man who gave McCain Sarah Palin is yet another bromancer winner?

Take care, or you could end up moaning and hand-wringing like Jim lad ...

By the end of this round, the pond was starting to fret.

Oh sure, picking Sarah Palin as a winner suggested we were still winning bigly, possibly hugely, no matter that Jim lad might be saying, but the pond needed even more reassurance, and who better than our Henry?

Now some correct-thinking, which is to say mendacious and irascible bloggers, might use our Henry as an excuse to run a few wall cartoons …

But the pond is inclined to incorrect thinking - how else to explain running a Stiglich cartoon? - and it hungered for some incorrect thinking from hole in the bucket Henry, sounding the alarums ...

Actually, according to a pond survey of American Indians, there are at least 300 million US migrants, with a mere 1.6% passing the smell test (or so Greg Hunters found here).

But let's be adult about this, and have an adult discussion of an adult issue in an adult hole in the bucket way …

Now here's the marvel. Those who can remember back to when our hole in the bucket Henry worried about the flood of illegals will be tremendously reassured that the wall halted everything and everybody in its tracks ...

Indeed, indeed, and the pond is reminded of one of those great books that the Ramsay centre keep on insisting millennials should be reading …

Now it goes without saying that some unscrupulous people are only too willing to exploit desperate people … and so know whereof they legislate …

More here at WaPo, but now it's back to our Henry ...

But why not go ahead and do it anyway? The fomenting and the fear-mongering, that is … see how those indolent, insolent Mexicans are having a good laugh …

And so to a final gobbet of our Henry, entirely forgetting who was actually supposed to be funding the building of the wall (and never mind the tosh about it being effective) ...

There's no fool like an old Henry fool … here, have a funding cartoon Henry ...

Of course the pond refuses, in solidarity with the reptiles, to run footage from fake news land of the MSNBC kind, especially from that dreadful Ari Melber, with his faux beard and his constant references to rap lyrics, or even worse, Beyoncé, but still and all, he does have a point to make about the Donald and the funding of the wall, and maybe, just maybe, hole in the bucket Henry should rap along with him …

In which the pond embarks on the New Year with hope, but ends up with Barners and the bromancer ...

Around this time of year, the lizards of Oz fall back on old routines, with summaries of the year past, or projections for the year forward …

Even dear old Polonius, jaded roué that he is, used the cornball device … and while it was interesting to discover that he was full of self-loathing, perhaps because of his numerous historical distortions and false prophecies, the pond wanted instead to play tribute to those who stayed at their posts, 'personning' the culture wars, while indolent types of the pond kind went dancing with waves, or stared into the sun, or just glazed out …

You know, like the venerable Sexton …

This was so astonishing that the pond didn't bother to read it.

The pond had the impression that Mueller had kept his cards close to his chest in best holyday 500 style, but here was the venerable Sexton, who knew everything he had and hadn't discovered, and was able to reveal it all to devoted lizard Oz readers down under. Perhaps necromancy was involved, perhaps it was false prophecy, perhaps it was just delusional.

But still, he stayed at his post, keeping the wars alive, just like the urbane Urban and the nouvelle vague  Varga …

Bravely done …but feeling stifled, the pond skipped on …and lo, Flinty was keeping the Tom Hanks inspired move back to the typewriter alive …

And of course, delayed, but how was Flinty to know when he slipped the paper into the machine?

And speaking of prophecies, our Adam came up with a ripper …

Then there was domestic politics, and for some reason, the mutton Dutton had a dummy spit of a massive kind…

But could even the mutton man match this?

He jumped? There was no pushing?

Marvellously, wonderfully, the Caterist also stayed hard at it …

 

Um, is there any way taxpayers can get back their wasted tax dollars?

Oh it's good to start the new year with an ancient ritual … and lo, Moorice also did his duty, scoring top of the page with a demonic figure …

There was comedy just beneath Moorice too, as the world famous climate scientist worried about dinkum clean true blue Oz coal oi, oi, oi …

Bobby giving advice? Did he finish fucking over Louisiana? Sad …that somehow he should turn up in the lizard Oz dispensing advice to Democrats in the holyday season …

And so at last to today's splash …

Sheesh, it isn't just Bobby coming back from the dead, Barners is out and about too ...

Now it was a tad remiss of the pond, but it paid no attention to what Barners was saying - it being the usual guff - but rather the pond focussed on the manner of the saying.

See how all the trite, repetitious warnings come out in short sentences. Only that last par had a few sentences, and an actual attempt to stitch together an argument …

The rest was just 'panic, panic, panic', there's a headless chook in the back yard.

It was like reading a barely literate child trying to sound forceful by keeping it simple, or perhaps Barners' simplistic ...

Fuckaduck he even slipped in a plug for his book … but we've been there before …

 

Sheesh, not Beetroot Man, with Kevin Spacey perhaps playing the villain.

Never mind, on with the rest of the rant … with a reminder that the lizards of Oz thought this was top of the page holyday reading ...

Pitiful, pathetic, though Beetroot man somehow manages to veer from drama or tragedy to rich, ripe comedy …and just below Barners, there was more movie mayhem, thanks to the bromancer ...

The bromancer really is a stupid man, but the pond is amazed at the monstrous level of stupidity he regularly manages to display …

You see, it's a movie, a biopic, and so by definition, history and factual matters are entirely beside the point … unless you happen to be as dumb as the bromancer and want to rail at the elite arts world …

Never mind, the bromancer was blessed by a Lobbecke, and so was granted the reptile badge of cult authenticity for the day ...

And there in a nutshell is the tragedy of the bromancer. You see if the pond wanted to read a movie review, the very last person it would consult is the bromancer, who actually wants to boast about how he spent some time with Dick… two dicks together, so to speak …

If the pond wanted a review, it might head off to this one ...

You see, these are people, here, looking at the movie as a movie, as a piece of entertainment using assorted movie devices, familiar from a previous show, without much attention paid to the alleged 'facts' ...

As the immortal Sam Goldwyn was reported to have said, "pictures are for entertainment, if you want history, hire Edward Gibbon" ...

Perhaps the pond got that wrong, perhaps it was something about sending messages by Western Union, or ads full of facts, facts, facts …

Meanwhile, back in the world of the bromancer, there's more blather about 'facts', and not a angle reference to other movies, in the way all movie buffs expect ...

Oh okay, to be fair, the movie buffs also stray into politics ...

...this depiction of W. as a good-ol’-boy airhead, a patsy puppeteered by Cheney, will only further absolve him of responsibility for his disastrous presidency—just as we’ve seen in the media, who not only line the pockets of his former minions (see: David Frum, Nicole Wallace) but also have been hell-bent on rehabbing his public image, portraying one of the worst presidents in history—a man who conned us into war, mainstreamed torture, destabilized the Middle East, and sank the global economy—as a candy-passin’, joke-crackin’ eccentric artist.

Oh okay, enough of the history, back to the bromancer getting agitated ...

We're a long way from looking at a movie as a movie … so far in fact that the bromancer seems to think that only people of bromancer status, skill and insight - you know ones with exceptional knowledge and memory of arcana - should actually be watching the show.

The rest, the deplorables, the uneducated, the imbecilic, the 'average viewer' wouldn't understand that the war in Iraq wasn't the work of a criminal cabal, but rather was an astonishing foreign policy triumph  of the kind only a bromancer might truly celebrate, with just the facts ma'am…

Well, it wouldn't  be a proper bromancer piece without a preening of the feathers and an exotic feather display, because it takes a truly impressive journalist to interview a truly impressive Dick ...

Roll that last line around on the tongue again, because it's a true treasure ...

"Politics is downstream of culture. That is one reason conservatives struggle."

Actually conservatives struggle when they think that a movie about politics is going to be anything other than an entertainment aimed at a target demographic …

There's another reason they struggle. If you scribble condescending crap about average viewers they might conclude you're so up yourself there's no point caring what you might think about a movie …

And speaking of walls as metaphors, if you think life is a river, maybe you should just try pissing into the wind, for fear your pissant political nonsense will float downstream …

And so to a final holyday treasure that no doubt many will have already enjoyed ...

What a trifecta. There's the 'truly unique gifts', there's talk of Happy Holydays instead of Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year, and a final bow on top is that spelling of "Holiday's!"

And Greg Sheridan thinks politics is downstream of culture?

Surely, politics, the Donald and the reptiles are really downstream of literacy and hypocrisy …

Here, have a New Year cartoon or two …