In which the pond is full of dread at the return of the onion muncher, and the Oreo turns out to be just the usual calcifying of the arteries ...

 

The pond's heart sank to the very bottom of the well this day, as if weighted down by lead. Its very eyes were in peril, as it minded the biblical lesson to pluck out that kind of offending organ if it offered offence (or a gate or whatever)...

It wasn't the war of words between dictator Xi and the brave bromancer that got the pond agitated - the pond had covered that yesterday, and was as full as a goog with bromancer thinking. 

Nor did the pond much mind the absence of the Caterist and Major Mitchell, apparently so downcast that they've felt the need to take a break.

No, it was the sight of the onion muncher, the bromancer's best buddy, munching away at the top of the digital edition early in the morn ... and the pond was compelled, knew what it had to do, and yet was full of revulsion at the deed, and perhaps might spend the rest of the day roaming the craggy corridors, trying to wash the blood from the hands ...

There it is: the comical boasting, the peacock preening, the cliché-laden text, not least the "people caught between two worlds" drivel, which might have worked in Kipling's day, but proves yet again what a cloth-eared clown he is ... though it might have been worse, they might have been caught between two stools, or two tools ...

And it didn't get any better ... with more "I convened here's" and "I wanted the system to be more hands-on", but strangely no mention of "being fair minded in a cliché-laden hands on way, I was a total fuck-up as a PM, especially when possessed by the clot notion that a week in the bush would help sort things out ..."

Was it only on Saturday that the pond reported that, of all the reptiles, the most extreme, the most intractable, the most inclined to bark or howl at the moon, the dog botherer, had delivered a different assessment ... including but not limited to ...

Importantly, a voice would be only advisory; all power would rest, as ever, with the parliament. The scare campaign from Turnbull and Tony Abbott about a “third chamber” of parliament, therefore, is erroneous and alarmist – there is no veto, no lawmaking or law-breaking capacity.

Barnaby Joyce employed the “third chamber” attack but later admitted it was wrong and apologised for using it. The recommendations of an Indigenous voice would carry great political weight, of course, but no constitutional power.

People on the conservative side of politics rightly eschew symbolism in favour of constructive outcomes. They should be reassured that the push for a voice was driven by a desire to achieve practical outcomes from the constitutional recognition process; Indigenous leaders argued that mere symbolic recognition would sell them short, while direct input into laws and policies concerning their welfare would deliver ongoing workable change.

There was more, and the pond was traumatised by the astonishing transformation, but knew the reptiles could soon defang it ...

All the same, to trot out the onion muncher a mere two days later was too brutal, even by reptile standards .. like a northman with gym and trainer daily to hand and pretending to be real ...

Oh the shame, the unendurable shame the pond must suffer in its study of the reptiles, compounded by that reference to Pearson.

It took just a nanosecond to discover that Pearson had been one of three cited by the Sydney Peace Prize, quoting him thus ...

As long as First Nations peoples remain unrecognised, then Australia is missing its most vital heart. The Uluru Statement was the answer to the Commonwealth’s desire to recognise First Nations in the Constitution. The evidence four years later is overwhelmingly that Australians will support giving us a Voice. It’s time.

What to do? Best forget about the many betrayals, the abundant treachery, the pious bullshit, and move along ... but to what? With no Major or Caterist there wasn't much to choose from ...

A reminder that someone like Brennan makes the onion muncher look like a speck of flyshit on a bootlace? No, no, that would just get the pond agitated. 

And the pond has always ignored simplistic Simon saying "look, no conflict of interest here Bid", in much the same way that it only breaks lizard Oz editiorialist glass in emergencies.

The pond checked out the bromancer, but sadly it was full of impotent fuming and raging, and a turning to Indonesia, and besides, after yesterday's special late arvo edition, even the pond had had a surfeit of bromancing.

Sorry, it had to be the reformed, recovering feminist, getting agitated about Liberal women ...

The pond does appreciate that reference to Judeo-Christian values, no doubt including the angry Sydney Anglican's endless search for complimentary women (what's gone wrong with in-store giveaways?) or perhaps the Catholic church's solution to power-sharing, which is to send difficult women to a nunnery where they might pray away the day ...

But then the pond looked at the tree killer edition and wondered what the stupid bloody woman was banging on about ...

You see, there on the far right of the far right rag, "Dutton makes way for women."

Now, actually, that doesn't mean that Dutton's made way and given up his position for a woman, or has done much beyond tokenism, but surely that should be enough to silence the petulant whining of the Oreo, always wanting more gruel ...

Not really ...

Sheesh, there's a click bait video of the mutton Dutton himself, announcing 10 out of 24. What more could he do, given the decline in numbers? Why is it that bloody difficult women want to make it hard for him? Has the Oreo forgotten that she's no longer a feminist, she's just a reformed, recovering feminist? Seems likely ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, after all that blather, that wretched whining and carping - bloody women - it's safe to say that Librul women are doomed ... but never mind, they can still fulfil a joyous Complementarian role ... perhaps help serve a nice cup of tea at meetings, together with scones and jam, though the fast modern set might like to clog their arteries with a serve of Oreos ...

And so to the Rowe of the day ...

And now the pond will admit, with remorse, to another failing. 

Apart from a modest outburst from the Angelic one, devoted to a mission from God, the pond has failed to mention the just passed jubilee, but points out that's because the reptiles stepped around it ...

The pond did however read Nick Cohen comprehensively dumping on aspirational Prince Chuck ... and thought it worth a celebration, as a premonition of things to come ... some strange beast slouching towards parliament ...

..Times change and aristocrats are no longer frightened. There will be no sense of caution about Charles III: only a sense of entitlement. Without self-consciousness, he denounced young people with ideas above their station in 2003. “What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? People seem to think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.”

He showed no awareness that he was the beneficiary of, if not genetic engineering, for any half-competent engineer could produce a better product, a genetic fluke. In his mind he will be a self-made monarch who will succeed to the throne on merit rather than by luck...

And so on, and on ...

Greenish readers who believe that interventions from an ecological King Charles would be welcome should look at where his environmentalism comes from and where it leads. Charles’s widely unread Harmony: A New Way of Looking at the World is another book worth forcing yourself to plod through. It sets out an obscurantist vision that is so reactionary it opposes all aspects of modernity from the scientific revolution on. Hence his fondness for the dictatorial petro-monarchies of the Gulf. They may cause devastating environmental damage but at least they are free from the democratic constraints the Enlightenment put on European royals. Hence the belief in quack “alternative” medicines, the damage to health they bring notwithstanding.

His wide-eyed mysticism takes him far from the Anglicanism of his mother. One can only pity the archbishop of Canterbury when the next supreme governor of the Church of England explains how he has found the ”sacred geometry” of the orbit of Mercury sits “within the orbit of the Earth in such a proportion that it fits exactly over the pentagon at the heart of the five-pointed star”.

And then to a rousing end ...

When dominant prime ministers or CEOs retire after only a decade of achievement, their successors struggle to repeat their success. How much harder will it be to follow 70 years of a reign that even republicans concede has been an accomplished performance? The more so when an accident of birth has thrown up a silly, vain, zealous and fatally unself-conscious monarch, who, to use his own anti-meritocratic notions against him, doesn’t know his place. In other words, the UK is heading for a smash-up. Après ma’am, le déluge.

And in honour of all that, the pond found this Rowson irresistible ...

in which the bromancer sorts out the defence of the country in time for World War III and the pond sorts out the bromancer with a cartoon assault ...

 

The pond regards itself as a blog of record when it comes to reptile thinking, and it has long seen itself as tending to the bromancer's every thought and whim ...

There was something of a reptile log jam this weekend, but still the pond couldn't let the bromancer go shuffling into the night without some attention being paid ... even if it was by way of a dismal late Sunday arvo slot ...

Part of the problem was that the bromancer did a full nattering "Ned", and while the pond is into reptile bloatware in a big way, this was just too much.

The happy compromise? Run the bromancer's open letter on its own, with just a few cartoons for relief ...

Here's the thing. The bromancer adopts such a smarmy tone, first names and all, and yet everything he's said, he's said before, sometimes at the same interminable length, and that's why the pond was sorely tempted to walk on by ...

Sure he's poured his heart and soul into his open letter, with the third world war due by Xmas, but all that repetition of old talking points. The urge was to shout give it a bloody rest ...

But what about some cartoons to help wash it all down? They don't have to bear any resemblance to the text ...they just have to be distracting ...

The pond still marvels the old loon was given a peace prize, but now refreshed, back to the bromancer arming the country for world war three ...

Fuck knows what that waterfall metaphor means, but there are still some gun cartoons to go ...

That cartoon is almost enough to send the pond off on a rant about a handgun and a vest up against an assault rifle firing armour piercing rounds, and the childish way that westerns and crime dramas have always proposed to Americans that the best way to sort things out is with a gun (though to be fair, with only the third act and a coda to go in a 45 minute drama, how could you fit in a trial and all that jazz, when just taking out the gun-toting villain with a gun provides a tidy resolution, and all those courtroom extras fees can go into the wrap party).

Sorry, sorry, back to putting the country on a war footing ...

Of course the pond readership has heard all this before, the talk of drones and the uselessness of tanks, but the bromancer loves to repeat himself, and in compensation, the pond always has its cartoons ...

The pond has no regrets - all these images of guns are inspirational ... and handy seafood extenders for the bromancer's repetitions ...

Could the pond scroll back a bit, to that "Not likely. But surely possible"? Talk about undercutting your own message. If the survival of the country is at stake, then we must prepare for world war III, no if's billy goat butts, or maybes ...

Stay hard, bromancer, stay firm, refuse distractions. Don't be like the pond, ready to wander off into the field with Toot,  when a stray reader wonders why the pond never mentioned that trial.

Wonder no more ...

Trial done and dusted, and just what the pond needed when doing its prac teaching.

Each time the pond slips in a cartoon or two, the bromancer yarn grows longer, but somehow more tolerable ...

Missiles, tanks, and yet surely what we need is a well-regulated militia, without any regulations ...

Meanwhile, the bromancer is still going into a state of deep despair and funk, further evidence of why the pond settled on a cartoon-led recovery ...

Yes, piss more money against the wall on subs, it's the only solution ... a bit like those pesky doors will provide the answer to defending schools...

At this point the reptiles decided to do their own pictorial, and dropped in a tasty bit of kit to make the bromancer get excited ... only for the bromancer to get agitated, because what we need is new old subs ... or old new subs, or whatever ... not some useless heap of frigging frigates ...

At this point, the pond had reached a final gobbet, but was still hooked on gun-driven solutions ...

It was with great sadness that the pond finally reached the last of the bromancer advice ... sure Dame Slap had been railing about middle class welfare, and our Gracie was insistent we shouldn't spend more than we have, but the bromancer was keen to go on a spending spree of some kind ... except on tanks! Don't mention the bloody useless tanks!

Mike Pezzullo? That doofus? That's when the bromancer fully lost the pond ... 

Despite the emphasis on cyber and emerging technologies, the Department of Home Affairs – a key national security agency with responsibility for domestic cybersecurity – appears to have not played any significant role in landing the Aukus pact.

Pezzullo has had a high public profile this year, in part because of his controversial comments in April warning that “free nations again hear the beating drums” and were “bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war” to protect “our precious liberty”.

There was also speculation earlier this year that he might follow his former boss, Peter Dutton, into the defence department, where Pezzullo served earlier in his career. (Graudian a lot more here)

The bromancer might think a mutton Dutton man is the answer, but the pond believes that its cartoons have have pointed to a well regulated citizens' army ready to defend the homeland ... and then we can end up just like the United States ...

In which the reptiles continue to be confused, and nobody does it better than Polonius, Dame Slap and our Gracie ...

 

The reptiles have definitely been out of sorts this weekend, befuddled and confused, lacking direction, settling into the new reality, offering advice to the government, but painfully aware that nobody is going to pay much attention ...

"Who did you pass on the road?" the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay. "Nobody," said the Messenger. "Quite right," said the King; "this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you." "I do my best," the Messenger said in a sullen tone. "I'm sure nobody walks much faster than I do!" "He can't do that," said the King, "or else he'd have been here first.”

It's probably wrong for the pond to joke about it, but nobody does existential despair like prattling Polonius ...

Still brooding about the teal-coloured curtains! And still in Polonius's inimitable fact laden style, as he notes the fact that Labor has won, which is a fact that might have escaped the attention of factists had it not been for Polonius's diligent fact-checking ...

All the pond can do with this sort of wailing and sobbing is feast on Polonius's tears and no matter if they're teal-coloured or tinged with bilious green...

Did the pond forget to mention it was all the fault of the ABC? Why bother, when you have to hand the weirdly obsessive compulsive, deeply paranoid Polonius? He really needs to take a break from that incessant listening to the ABC. Take a stand, listen to 2GB ...

The pond made the mistake of catching a story on the 7.30 report about corruption in Victoria, which was shot at night with noirish lighting and a wet down of the roads to get a glistening mood (though to be fair it was probably a natural wet down rather than a fire brigade assisted one). 

It was a comical attempt at drama - to conceal that there was three fifths of fuck all of actual content in the story - as it became clear that even the pond had more clues about corruption and incompetence in the Victorian government than they did (why no mention of a department dropping 2,500 phone lines in the name of efficiency and cost-saving, only to discover some of the numbers were being used, and so at vast expense new numbers were required?).

Anyway, the point is, the pond resolved to make sure it was more careful when it came to switching on the telly and catching a dose of current affairs bullshit ABC style, even if Fritz Lang would have been pleased at the expressionist stylings (if only Peter Lorre was still around the play the sinister, shadowy comrade Dan).

The pond can't help but think Polonius routinely misses the point ... and this final bleating gobbet did little to change the pond's mind ... but perhaps because he's still in mourning, the tears were the cause of the problem ...

Unintended consequences? It's important to know? For Polonius perhaps, but it's done and dusted and is what it is, and nobody should waste their time brooding about what went down, because nobody does it better than Polonius ...

And so to Dame Slap, and here is an example of a reptile in an allegedly helpful mood, trying to steer the comrades into a correct socialist position ...

This is a new guise for Dame Slap. She has suddenly become a class warrior, deeply appalled by middle class welfare, dismayed and concerned at the suffering of the poor. Reading it, the pond almost felt the need for a new sobriquet, perhaps Comrade Slap ...

Once Dame Slap gets on a roll, there's no stopping her, and so she slips into full comrade mode with style ...

Who'd have thunk that the pond would be reporting this weekend on the dog botherer going gung ho for Uluru and Dame Slap gung ho for people on lower incomes?

Of course Dame Slap only went full comrade after the election ... back in the day she was a culture war warrior concerned about more vital and pressing issues than more sordid matters of cash in the middle class paw...like Social engineers determined to remove the wonder from childhood ...

What happened to that Dame Slap? Surely the problem isn't helping out the rich and giving the poor a hard time. Surely it's all about social engineering and the ruining of vulgar youff.

Where did that valiant culture wars warrior go? Where did this working class Comrade Slap come from? Is it a way for a far right warrior to adopt the guise of a far left warrior and smote the leftists from the left?

The pond is finding it difficult to cope with all the weirdness currently afoot in the reptile world, and was relieved to discover that our Gracie had discovered her lost self, and returned to best Micawber, or, if you will,  Uncle Ebenezer form ... again replete with advice ...

This will be a handy cudgel in due course. Having inherited a mess ...

... the gotcha will come if they attempt to do anything about it. 

And if they do nothing, or are half-hearted about what they do, that will make a splendid gotcha too ... and those the News Corp model of fear and loathing can keep chugging along ...

Right now, our Gracie is setting them up for the big spending racket the reptiles and the onion muncher so loved back in the day ...

See how the gotcha works? Dame Slap has already shown that they're shameless big spenders helping out the filthy rich, shovelling cash with no regard to the morrow ...

And yet our Gracie is keen for austerity to kick in ... no doubt emboldened by the way  the coalition is now well along on the road to the sensible centre ... with nobody to stop them on their march ...

And with that, all that's left is a final short gobbet promising hellfire and damnation for those wretches who ignore the redback in the purse...

Indeed, indeed, and meanwhile, on another planet, the earning goes on ...