In which a dread paranoid sense of persecution infests prattling Polonius, Shanners and Dame Slap ... with only our Gracie on hand to offer a form of reptile heresy ...

 

Here's something the pond should offered to nattering "Ned" as he blathered about climate science yesterday ...

 

 

 

Moving right along, there was clearly something in the reptile air or kool aid this weekend, and it wasn't just the demise of Gladys, though that might have been part of the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the reptile window panes ...

The pond's favourite reptiles had clearly done their columns before Gladys's farewell, and yet they were spooked, nervy, restless, and even the staid Polonius could see dangers lurking everywhere ... dark, threatening figures in the shadows, or perhaps monsters under the bed ... and curiously the monsters were related to the issues that traumatised the dunce in Kudelka's cartoon ...

While some might look at the opening snap below and think staid cardigan wearer, Polonius got more than a tingle, it was like an electric shock of alarm and panic coursing through his system ...

 

 

 

Tching! That's the sound of the pond dropping its zillionth coin into the Polonial swear jar for his zillionth rendition of "The ABC is a conservative-free zone without a conservative presenter, producer or editor of the Polonial kind, and just why did they drop me from The Insiders, when David Marr and I had a splendid schtick going?"

But here's where the hair on the back of Polonius's neck began to stick up, as he felt a blast of a demonic, conspiratorial, vengeful ectoplasm ...

 

 

See him scribble in a foaming, frothing frenzy about this fiendish conspiracy, which is more than enough to startle the horses and Polonius and lead to dire warnings of devilish mayhem ... and worse, you see, because they're all in the conspiracy together, the cardigan wearers and the deviants ...

 

Indeed, indeed, it's a difficult feat, warning both of an astonishingly dangerous conspiracy involving cardigan wearers and locals, and then at the same time discount the numbers as minor, trivial, of no import or significance ...

And there might be another reason for reporters wanting to do a novelty item outside the usual staid run of dull candidates. 

Why you might even find Ben Smee doing a story for the Graudian, What Campbell Newman did next: the making of an unlikely Queensland libertarian.

It was richly comic ...

“I think it’s truly amazing that Campbell Newman is running as a libertarian,” says Michael Cope, the president of the Queensland Council of Civil Liberties.
“He passed the most extreme legislation that was introduced in Queensland in my lifetime. From our point of view, he was Joh Bjelke-Petersen 2.0. He behaved like a classic Queensland authoritarian.”
Newman still defends the most extreme of those measures, the controversial anti-association “Vlad” legislation introduced after a brawl on the Gold Coast involving bikie gang members.
“That’s probably the major one where some people in the Liberal Democrats would have been concerned about,” Newman says, when asked about the apparent contradiction.
“What I say is that it was something that had to be done in the time, in specific circumstances. It didn’t happen because I decided one morning to go after bikies. It happened because bikies rioted.”
Newman’s government scrapped same-sex civil unions. He says the move was “democracy” and didn’t reflect his personal position; that he had “backed gay marriage publicly on national TV prior to Penny Wong”.
“I got into a lot of trouble over saying that. I think for a moment [the LNP] thought they’ve got the wrong guy here.”
Newman points to other policies – opposition to lockouts in the Fortitude Valley nightclub district and removing a statewide mandate for local councils to put fluoride in the water supply – as evidence of his liberal credentials. He has also spoken in favour of drug legalisation.
The former premier had been on the outer with the LNP for some time but a final straw came when the former president, Cynthia Hardy, attempted to install him as a party trustee – a position that would tap into his fundraising network. He was appointed but the nomination was opposed by many, including the federal defence minister, Peter Dutton...

Et tu mutton Dutton? And for a bloke intent on preserving precious bodily fluids from that vast Commie fluoride plot? And that's evidence of liberal credentials, as opposed to Dr Strangelovian loonacy?

But Polonius doesn't do comedy, he does conspiracies, and dark, dire warnings ... and everyone's involved, they're everywhere, raining down on him ...

 

 

Poor haunted Polonius, see how he suffers ...

 

Yes, the fix is in, and who knows what might happen ... as dank ghosts, millionaire radicals, stalk the battlements and dream of revenge ...

 

 

Ah yes, the deadly, dangerous, greenie leftie menace ... who knows where this fiendish plotting might end?

 

 

Speaking of fundamentalist Catholics, Shanners was in good form this weekend ...

 

 

Well it's easier than heading off to mass and listening to the sermon ...

 

 

She got a bloody good litany going there, and wonders of wonders, she called herself an illiberal reactionary, thereby saving the pond the trouble ...

You have to appreciate that sort of thoughfulness, much like someone dying in excruciating pain of a terminal illness, zonked out of their gourds and living in a twilight zone, would appreciate Shanners' deep caring ...

 

Actually the pond remembers its mother, who after suffering a bad fall, had no alternative but to head to a nursing home. It wasn't a bad home as things go, and had a friendly rustic atmosphere, if you could get past the demented ones howling at the moon, or others in pain, gibbering and wailing through paper thin walls.

The pond's mother was on a downhill slide and knew it, and she reached out and begged the pond, "just kill me, if you love me, you'll kill me ..."

Of course the pond couldn't, that not being the way that nursing homes work. There was no friendly doctor standing by to ease my mother into death with a dose of morphine, as the kindly doctor had done for the pond's father, and who thereby got off lightly compared to the pond's mother ...

But cruelty is a way of life for fundamentalist Catholics, it's a bit like the empathy shown in other areas ...

 

 

But how else are they going to get fresh babies to support their Ponzi scheme? And so for a last benevolent offering ...
 

 

Yes, in the world of Catholic fundamentalists, harm is a flexible concept, and carrying your rapist's child for nine months is just one of many benevolent ideas offered by them, until you're sentenced to an eternity in hellfire ... just as living a life of hell on earth is a splendid cause, for fear that you might get to live an imaginary afterlife in an imaginary hell ...

After that, the pond felt like a little palate cleanser, because - spoiler alert - Dame Slap will soon be on hand to do a tediously long rant as a closer ...

 

 

Good old Gracie. Remind the pond again why she sticks with the reptiles? As for not knowing what life will be like, here's a clue and a singalong in the same spirit as can be found among the correspondents at the bottom of the page ...

 

 

 

Our Gracie seemed to be the only reptile aware that a pandemic was still out and about ...

 

 

Even worse than all this attention to detail and talk of duty of care and such like, at the very end came an unmitigated heresy, which in normal reptile times would have seen our Gracie drummed out of the reptile league and sent to purgatory (limbo apparently isn't a thing anymore) ...

 

Comrade Dan? Responsibility? 

If the pond had a bar of sunlight soap handy, it would send it off to our Gracie, for washing out of mouth ... please never again talk of Comrade Dan's evil regime in that way ...

And so to a rousing finale, with Dame Slap gone quite hysterical ... and worse, at great length ...

 

 

How weird does it get? Well start with that tag to the photo suggesting that Dame Slap gives a flying fuck about activist judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her legacy ...

It's such an absurd proposition, the pond thought it might be impossible to continue, what with the tears and the laughter ...

But remember how we started with Polonial paranoia and persecution complex? Crank that up to eleven ...

 

Speaking of abominations, how is it that the abominable Dame Slap gets the podcast player treatment, when nary a mention was made of it when the pond contemplated nervous nelly "Ned" yesterday?

And the trans movement didn't exist in RGB's day? The pond's very dear trans friend transitioned in the 1960s ... and if you take a squiz at a timeline of transgender history, TG people have been around for a very long time, though you wouldn't necessarily know it from the likes of Dame Slap, still intent on wiping the trans experience from the record ...

Is it a movement to finally dark come out of the shadows, and cop the bigotry of Dame Slap and her odious crew?

 

Dame Slap is a live-and-let live kind of person? You could have fooled the pond. Kroger the pond dead, has there ever been a meaner, more spiteful and angry troller in the lizard Oz ranks ...

If the pond wants to read a woman writing about women, the pond would much rather spend time with Marina Hyde, this week dealing with something much more germane and relevant, compared to Dame Slap wanting to own the libs and the trannies.

All women know they are prey - and that no one with any authority seems to care ...

But back to Dame Slap blahtering on about permanently demeans women and the women's movement, as if that matches up to a copper putting on the cuffs and taking you off for a rape and a killing ...

Well the pond did mention a particularly rarefied and peculiar form of paranoia and persecution complex, but a recent TT cartoon identified another element in the strategy, in the form of that aforementioned trolling ...

 

 

More TT here ... but the strategy's clear enough, all that needs to be worked out is whether Dame Slap is so demented and hysterical that she's triggered herself rather than triggering the snowflakes ... because there's a lot more paranoid ranting about persecution to come ...

Ah, if you ask Dame Slap, trannies want to round up all the women and hunt them for sport. That should really trigger the base, and the fear of the other, as it's the pond's experience that few have met a TG person in person, and so got to know them, and so the fear of the other and the different is easy to stoke (in much the same way that few in Tamworth ever venture over to Coledale for an indigenous experience)...

 

It must seem weird to Dame Slap, but the TG person the pond knows very well doesn't want to treat "woman" as a dirty word, or even "womyn:, and doesn't seek to demean women. In fact, she acts, thinks, talks, dresses and lives as a woman, and she isn't consumed by the self-hated, the self-fear and loathing that devours Dame Slap.

Only a woman who's been Krogered into a form of woman-hating self-loathing would seem incapable of understanding this, and responding with a generosity of spirit ...

Fortunately the last paranoid, persecuted gobbet is on its way ...

 

 

 

Many women may look elsewhere for representation of their basic existence? Of course ... of course ... Dame Slap can don her MAGA hat and head off to Texas, and who knows, someday soon might be a respected and admired leader in the Texas Taliban movement, where women are treated with tremendous respect... (along with Shanners) ...

 

 

In which the bromancer offers thirst-quenching tears, the dog botherer a bitter ale, and nattering "Ned" is daunted, as anyone would be confronted by this amount of reptile verbiage ...

 

 

The pond is sometimes made aware by correspondents that envious reptiles are keen to steal the pond's attention away from the lizard Oz, and that only the other day the AFR reptiles made a bold move ...

 

 

Nah ...

But how did they get there?

 

Premiers' power must give way to positive change, and what's more you want the pond to give away its precious bodily fluid, its code, to find out more?

 

 

Nah ...

Forget it AFR, sorry Gladys, the pond only has eyes for the reptiles and this day, the bromancer was in a fit of manic depression, and nothing delights the pond more than drinking the tears of a sobbing bromancer ...

Yes, it's the beginning of an epic crying fit, part of a trinity of epic fits with which to kick off the weekend. Sure the bromancer has said it all before, but the pond loves it when he takes to brooding about exquisite and bitter ironies. 

Oh sup the bitter tears, better than the best bitter pale ale Pommie brew, especially if you're on the wagon like the pond ...

"Anderson wants"!? 

Is this some form of new weird bromancer game? Never mind, it's fun to play, because you can play "Anderson wants" until the cows come home, and Anderson will still be wanting ...

Good old jumbo Jimbo, though sad to say, rather like Anderson wanting, the pond will be long gone before Jimbo gets an answer to his question, or Adelaide gets nuked ...

But the pond isn't being serious. The bromancer has long scheduled the war on China to happen by next Xmas, and now he finds he's seriously short of kit ...

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, must the reptiles taunt the bromancer and his panel of experts working out the shape of a camel by putting a snap of a Collins-class sub into the piece? Talk about rubbing salt into the wound, or extra salt into the bromancer's tears ...

Oh dear, the tale of woe gets longer than the mouse's tail in Alice, but the bromancer has saved his finest form of analysis for late in the piece ...

Nuts! It's the bromancer's favourite term of abuse. His nuts go tremendously well with bitter British beer, though the pond recommends Carlton zero as an alternative ... as we sup on the last, albeit short order, serve of bromancer tears ...

 

Ah well, never mind, we'll just fight the war with China by deploying the lizard Oz reptiles to the front line, somewhere north of Cairns ...

And now, because the going is going to get extremely tough, please waiter, a refreshing Rowe before proceeding, with more refreshments here ...

 

 

 

 

You see bromancer? The country is in the best of hands, and now to sup on the bitter tears of the dog botherer ... and lordy lordy is he unhappy ... and does he go on about it at length ...

 

Um, actually, is it wrong to note that this country can't be trusted, and quite a few have noted it of late?

 Of course there's the perfidious French, but then there's the climate science denialism, of which the dog botherer has been a keen exponent ... and not even proposing that the mango Mussolini is in the same P. T. Barnum circus tent can erase the dog botherer's ability to create distrust. Would anybody want to buy a used ute from this bitter old hack? Let alone trust him to push for action on climate science?

It's always me, me, me and my with the dog botherer ... and sure enough we have to wander down memory lane to the days when he made a doc...

 

 

Uh huh ... and when the dog botherer intervenes - a poor choice of word because it evokes memories of utegate and his work with Lord Downer fucking Iraq - you don't know whether to laugh or to cry now that he's been demoted to News Corp, but still manages to spread his poison ...

And so to the next gobbet, and perhaps realising just how thin the dog botherer's material was this week - personal spleen dressed up as analysis - the reptiles felt the need to stick in a couple of snaps, though for some perverse reason, they failed to include the onion muncher ...

 

 

You know there's something particularly pathetic and sordid about the dog botherer proposing that former chairman Rudd and Malware might not have close friends or family. The pond has little time for either of them, but that's just pure, pitiful spite and makes the pond wonder if the dog botherer is doing a little projection about his own close friends and family ...

 

 

 

It's an old joke, an old wander down memory lane, but like the dog botherer, the pond never gets tired of the fun (and the Junkee piece still survives here).

Not to worry, enough of the projection and quickly through the last two gobbets because the pond still has its challenging Everest to climb ...

 

 

 

Yes, because climate science is just a hoax, oh we know, we know ... and yet when speaking of the unhinged, how unhinged is the dog botherer about Twitter - which he left because of his constant folly - and the ABC, which has a grasp on reality, and if occasionally distant, not so distant or weird as the sight of the dog botherer howling at the moon and many other things ...

 

 

Given the way the dog botherer has helped fuck political careers, it's all exceptionally rich, but the pond can't pause, because it's on to Everest, which is, as even passing readers would realise, code for climbing nattering "Ned" ... and what an epic climb it is today, so tough, such an endurance test that some might like to pause first for an infallible Pope ...

 

 

 

 

And so on with Ned, and his entirely convincing proof that endless, interminable emissions are possible ...

 

 

 

Once again, pond readers will have seen and heard it all before, though the good news is that there's not a hint of a mention of "Ned's" natter as a podcast ... so readers will have to imagine his words being rendered by his dulcet, mellifluous tones ...

 

 

A crossroads moment? What's the bet that we'll fiddle faddle while Rome burns, and "Ned" blathers, and wrings his paws in a deep fit of anxiety, and nothing happens ... because ...

 

 Oh it's a day for memories, and a few hearty chuckles and much waggishness ...

 

 

Yes, that's right "Ned", talk up the Canavan caravan, it's the proper reptile thing to do ...perhaps even a mug shot of the plucky lad as a remind of  his heroic "black coal matters"? (By golly, he's guilty of something, just look at the mug shot).

 

 

And what might be the consequences for Malware? He might lose his job as PM? Or even worse have his membership of the Liberal party snatched away? We already know he doesn't have any friends or family, thanks to the dog botherer, so there'll be no love lost there ...

What a fatuous fop this "Ned" is, and at such interminable length too, so hey nonny no, on we go ...

 

 

Credibility? Who could doubt the credibility of a man who speaks in tongues to imaginary friends, and knows the healing power of a lump of coal (not to mention the laying on of hands) ...

 

 

"Ned" and the marketing man might think you can spin on a dime, and forget all that he and News Corp have done for climate science denialism over the decades, thanks perhaps to a men in black zapping, but some have longer memories than a reptile gnat ... 

Never mind, at least we've reached the last gobbet, with nothing accomplished, apart from the usual sight of "Ned" wringing his hands in an anxiety attack ...

Yes, forget the planet being fucked, it's all about SloMo facing a truly daunting challenge ... which is to say, how to pretend you give a flying fuck, when you've spent your entire political career bullshitting about climate science and now must pretend that the bullshit smells as sweet as a healed planet ...

But why was "Ned" worried about a daunted SloMo? He should have celebrated the upside that the reptiles and the coalition have been working towards for years ...

 

The onion muncher vivant and the lizard Oz editorialist fully prepared to blame everyone else? Maaate, say no more ...

 

 

The pond is at the moment alert, and vigilant, neigh hyper-vigilant, ready to be alarmed by the slightest sign of reptile heresy ... 

What with nattering "Ned" dubbing the mango Mussolini a criminal, and the bromancer in a state of abject funk about the subs show,  or non-show as the case may be, what other reptile might cross the line?

It's come to a pretty pass when the bromancer gets quoted in an approving way in Crikey! 

...Morrison had damaged Australia’s national security with his deception and betrayal of the French, Turnbull said.
As a frequent critic of his successor, and as the man who signed the Naval Group deal with the Macron government, Turnbull could be expected to say such things. But he was followed up by Greg Sheridan in The Australian today. Sheridan explored the inanities of the decision (such as why the British are in the mix), the problems of trying to build the things ourselves, and, most of all, exactly how long Australia could realistically wait for its new generation of submarines to be operational. Sheridan suggests more 2061 than 2040.
Pretty much anyone who’s a significant contributor to this debate is likely to be dead come the 2060s, having left it to another generation to solve the problems created by Morrison’s decision.
But some of the problems identified by Turnbull and Sheridan will need to be addressed a lot earlier — by whoever is prime minister after the next election, be it Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton or Anthony Albanese.

 Oh Bernard, Bernard, the mutton Dutton as the solution? Is this where rampant heresy leads us?

The pond was hoping that the hole in the bucket man might provide the answer, draw a solid line in the sand, but alarm bells began to ring even louder, because our Henry was absent, or he was when the pond went to check his contributions tag early in the morning

Had he been banned, or was he simply derelict in his duty? AWOL without a pass from the hall monitor? Whatever, there would be no mud or straw to patch the reptile walls this day, and keep them solid.

It was with a sigh of relief that the pond looked a little more and discovered that the lizard Oz edifice, tattered, shoddy and teetering though it might be, was shored up by the arrival of a saviour...

 

No, not Sophie getting agitated about the woke rabble. Of course the lizard Oz is in favour of bashing wogs and furriners and slanty eyes and all that, and then settling back for a fish and chips fry ... so that could be left to Sophie, there being no reason for Hansonism to enter the pond.

But the onion muncher's return yet again? The dearly beloved ghost of political days past, a veritable Scrooge wandering the corridors with a howling and a clanking of chains?

There was another matter entirely. There's nothing like a glorious failure of future past to return to infest future present and future future, and the pond must honour the reptiles and repent for ever doubting them ... how they love their losers, how they stay loyal to them ... what need of our Henry when you might gobble down this?

The use of "real" makes it all the more fun ... because you know, eat an onion and you'll fee the real ...

 

You see? What need of Pauline when we have the mad monk to berate pesky, difficult furriners? Who else could remind us that 'woke' is just a wretched modern invention, and in the golden days, all the talk was of the "black-armband brigade" ...

As for the "sustainability perspective", who wants sustainability when we can loot, rape and pillage the planet like an out of control English policeman, and not worry about it in the slightest, because why worry, in 2050 the rapture will arrive and genuine believers will be snatched up ...

Oh the pond was vastly relieved, and feeling right at home as the old team got back together, and showed the way forward ... go Team Australia, yay team, gadzooks, odd bodkins, foreskins, mushrooms calling from a plane, and such like ...

Yes, yes, a coal-fired power plant. And instead of all this modern moaning about the fully woke, a moan about "political correctness" ...

Why just this day there was an attempt at political correctness in the lizard Oz ...

Ah yes, the proven, effective, wondrous ploy of carbon-capture and storage, so that the pillaging might go on in an untroubled way ...

Meanwhile ...

 

And so on to a last gobbet from the onion muncher in full rhetorical flight ...

 

The Hawke-Howard era? But what about the era of munching onions? Oh please, no modesty, what a tremendous program, making it completely unnecessary for the current useless mob to seek out advice from the always helpful Rowe, always on hand with advice here ...

 

At least he's still got his swollen balls ... but all that said and read, the pond remains shattered by the absence of the hole in the bucket man, and more than a little suspicious. Sure, they dragged the onion muncher from the grave of the musty past to remind us of his glorious legacy and possible future glorious paths to trudge, but what of the rest?

What a bunch of drop-kicks and no hopers. The Swiss bank account man on the Pauline train?

Sob and sigh, how the hole in the bucket man is missed. Oh sure there was Fergo at the top of the page, doing the usual, putting the boot into comrade Dan ...

 

But there was a hint of panic in both the tree killer edition and the top of the digital page ...

 

But wasn't this what Killer and Ron wanted? Cry freedumb, and let the killing fields catch fire, and soon enough we might be as free as freedumb loving Florida  ...

 

 

Oh dear, not freedumb and go full Florida in the run up to an election? 

Luckily the lizard Oz editorialist was on hand to place the blame on the right folk ... the bloody useless hospitals, and the bloody useless states ... 

Remember, Scotty from marketing doesn't hold a hose or insert an IV ...

 

Frustration among the states. Well that's nothing new ...

... and what's all this idle talk of SloMo being expected to deploy an IV or insert a catheter? How unseemly.

With the help of the reptiles, we might still achieve Florida freedumb ...

 

Indeed, indeed, and please, let not one of them ask whether Scotty from marketing has squandered any opportunity about anything at all in the run-up to the election ...

And so to the infallible Pope for the day ... maaate, how good is the leadership, go Sharkies ...