In which the pond scores a Sunday trolling by the bromancer ...

Like any sensible conservative, the pond often yearns for the good old days, the golden years, when each Sunday could be devoted to the musings of the frock-fancying Pellists in the Terror and the jovial complimentary women-loving Jensenists at work in the temple of Calvinist fundamentalism over at the Sydney Anglicans ...

Once upon upon a time, the strident Jensenists would be out and about celebrating Luther in his 500th year - what a chance for a public holiday - and banging on, albeit indirectly, about the whores at work for the Roman Babylon, and at certain times of the year, the pond could celebrate the war on Xmas or the deviant perversity of that great satanic ritual of the American dead ...

The Vatican issued a warning to parents, saying they should not allow children to dress up as witches or ghosts for an ''anti-Christian'' celebration of ''terror, fear and death''. The warning came in the Vatican paper, L'Osservatore Romano, in an article which said: ''Halloween has an undercurrent of occultism and is anti-Christian.''

But that was back in 2009, and by 2016 the Paddington Anglicans were hosting a Halloween spectacular ... no wonder they call it the deviant five ways church ...

Would no one step up and bring the pond reminders of its ancient, pagan, primitive joys?

There is a god, and She still delivers!

Well we can step past John Pasquarelli - that splash was as big a laugh as the pond needed - and get right down to it with the bromancer ... even the google splash hinted at the mad fun to follow ...

Listen to your inner voice?

But which one, there are so many of them ...

The pond knows the bromancer is expert at talking to himself in a schizophrenic way, but the pond doesn't have quite the same control. Should the pond listen to the inner voice that chants on a monotone Lord of the Flies way, kill the copper lovers, kill the multinodal heretics?

Perhaps not, perhaps it's better to get on with the bromancer feast ...

Now from the get-go, the pond isn't going to argue with the bromancer.

The pond never tells small children that Santa Claus is an invention of parents to shatter their belief system, and make them tough, cynical and worldly wise. Harden the fuck up, there is no Claus, is a bitter lesson, and perhaps we're better off never learning it.

The pond never mocks Santa or even those who worship the Easter Bunny, because truth to tell, you can still pick up a mint-flavoured block of Lindt chocolate for a humble two bucks ... so there is a Santa Claus, in the best commercial sense of the word ...

If somebody tells the pond they've seen fairies at the bottom of the garden, or dabbled with an ouija board and perhaps Conan Doyle was right, the pond nods and smiles ... (and checks under the table for knives).

If someone says they have no real empirical evidence that they are the child of the parents, the pond might recommend DNA testing as a way of getting an answer, but if people prefer mumbo jumbo and infinite stupidity, who is the pond to question them, or disturb their infinite complacency ...

It's enough that there's an abundance of seasonal treats ...

The pond sensed it was that seasonal goodwill that had motivated the bromancer ...

After all, anyone  who has faith that a car will work clearly never drove an FX or a Morris Minor, and are wantonly stupid when it comes to mechanical matters ...

The important thing to recognise and acknowledge here is that this is the man, who in other moments, passes himself off as the foreign editor for the lizard Oz ... when it turns out he's just another delusional superstitious believer of the Daesh kind ...

The pond always finds it remarkable the way the religious can invent their own version of god, and then argue about what She thinks and what She does and what's the best way to believe in Her ...

Of course the bromancer doesn't go into any of this and restricts his discussion to the question of of a kind of generic god, which is a tired and obvious ploy ...

The pond's interest might have perked up if the bromancer had got on to some interesting questions, of the kind that always pique the pond's interest ...

Alas and alack, the bromancer doesn't have the wit or the style to explain what it feels like to head off on a Sunday for a sustaining chomp on human flesh ...

Now about this point in the discussion, the pond should probably confess that, unlike most Catholics, it read the bible from cover to cover at a very early age, and discovered it was a bunch of myths, legends, fairy stories, tall tales, and metaphorical, symbolical yarns, and even if Homer was a better, richer read, it had lots of moments for which words like logic and reason and coherence seemed quaintly inadequate ...

But it does allow the pond to provide a link to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, which has lots of fun insights and answers many questions, and also provides hot links, as can be found here ...

If nothing else, the bromancer's trolling provided this opportunity ... so there is a Santa Claus ...

Of course there's a price to pay, because those with an uncertain faith frequently bray the loudest and the longest ...

Now remember, this is a bear that purports to be the foreign editor of The Australian, but even in theological terms, is clearly a bear of little brain ...

If the mind is shaped by evolutionary theory to irrational ends throughout history it might just as well be shaped to irrational ends when it embraces the Donald. This is not what the pond believes but it is an inescapable implication of the bromancer's style of silly Xianity ...

And around this point, it should be noted that the entire exercise smacks of clickbait trolling of a particularly mindless and futile kind ...

Naturally there were a few barking mad lizard Oz readers who took it as living proof that monumental stupidity was the way forward, while others just took the bait and ran with it ...

With the greatest respect to Richard IV, there's absolutely no point getting too excited or carried away. 

It turns out that the bromancer is a Linus in desperate search of a blanket. What if his inept scribbling for years for the lizard Oz turned out to be a meaningless, comprehensively futile waste of time, and he was perhaps not just a speck in time, but an abomination in the eyes of the Lord?

She is after all fairly fierce on matters of humbug, and the reptiles are notorious deliverers of countless amounts of distilled, pure essence of humbug ...

How would they know how God would behave?

They read the fucking bible, you silly, silly man, unless of course you're going to do a modern believer routine, and drop the entirety of the Old Testament out of the canon because it shows a malicious, malevolent, fickle narcissist god not above a bit of genocide and behaving occasionally in the manner of the Donald ...

The bromaner's trolling produced some 263omments by the time the pond dropped in, and they were still turning up to be trolled this Sunday morning ...

The last time the pond got an update the trolled were still indignant at the trolling ...

Sadly, the trolled didn't have much of a clue ...

Sorry John, when it comes to foreign affairs, he's just as much a dipstick and a foolish fuckwit, which is why reptile lovers adore him so ...

And that's the reason the pond can't be be prideful.

The pond was trolled and the pond bit too ... there's no bigger mug than a nostalgic blogger in search of ancient kicks and old-fashioned Sunday pleasures ...

It wasn't up there with a decent bit of frock-wearing ...

But it'll do, bromancer, it'll do ...

And now, see where apocalyptic Xian fundamentalist thinking of the Daesh bromancer kind has led the United States ...

No wonder She's left the swamp, and She's headed for them thar hills ...

In which the pond sacrifices much but refuses to give up a dose of Polonius ...

Sacked by Mark Latham? Now that's a sign of genuine distinction and rare quality ... and why it seems Mr Spencer can recognise that once again Tamworth is at the centre, the very heart, of the known universe ...

Will Tamworthians live up to the responsibility? Probably not, in the pond's personal experience, there's very few reasons to attend the school reunion ... talk about a bunch of galahs in the wheatfield of life...

But there's no time for brooding, because today the pond would like to talk about the personal sacrifices that it makes each day while attempting to cram in as much reptile watching as possible.

Today CNN went wild with news of the first charges filed as a result of the Mueller investigation - well it was Friday night their time, but the United States is always in the dark.

Sure nobody knew who, or what, or why, or what it all meant, but heck what fun for an endless dose of long-winded speculation passing as analysis ...

It left absolutely no room to soak up a decent dose of transphobia from Dame Slap ...

The Dame is always amongst the first cabs off the rank when it comes to phobias and bigotries and hate fests, and with the polls hinting at the way gay bashing might be going, it looks like transphobia might be the new thing, which will cause the ponds TG friends some distress. But they are used to it, with the persecution relentless and fierce ...

It also meant that there wasn't enough time for that long-winded gasbag and epic bore, nattering "Ned" Kelly, shrieking yet again in his Chicken Little way about the sky crashing down ...

Chaos? Try the USA for chaos ...

But in all the excitement, there's one thing, one man, the pond will never give up, even if it means squeezing him in late on a Saturday ...

Dammit, the pond knows it's as perverse and as weird as ordering a lemon squash in the front bar of the Central Hotel - women should think they're lucky to be allowed inside, and if they're extra nice they might have the Donald and Mark Halperin join Barners and the cockies as drinking buddies - but the pond will never give up on its addiction to prattling Polonius ...

There's something ineluctable and eternal about his charms ...

Phew, straight away, the pond knew it was in need of a Marie Antoinette joke, or perhaps a cake trickle down joke, or a 'they've never had it so good, the uppity bludgers' joke, but settled for another Barners joke instead ...

And then it was on to the main game ...

There's something very Dr Johnson about Polonius talking about Marx, a bit like that dog that managed to walk on its hind legs ...

But enough of the sight of Sydney Institute folk preaching, the pond will only make one note, though many will find the urge to provide many more corrections and insights ...

It's that matter of the proletariat also being called the lumpenproletariat ...

Why, if that was the case, would anyone bother with two words, when one would do?

Actually Marx distinguished between the two, because he thought the lumpenproletariat might be unlikely ever to achieve class consciousness and therefore be lost to revolutionary struggle and socially useful production, and might not be helpful in bringing about a classless society.

Only a pedant without the first clue would lump the lumpenproletariat in with the revolutionary proletariat ... but the pond can understand why Polonius might be sensitive on this matter, because there's every sign that Marx would have fancied him as a member of the lumpens ...

See what Marx wrote about them in 1852 ...

Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks , lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux, brothel keepers, porters, literati, members of the Sydney Instittue, organ grinders, bloggers and social media addicts, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars—in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.

By golly he was a visionary, and so we must return to the final gobbet of that shrewd old mountebank ...

And that line ... that arcane, impossible, extremely silly line, is why the pond loves Polonius prattling so ...

Here, roll it around on the tongue ...

And then there is social media, which gives an insight into the lives of the rich and famous that was not known to earlier generations ...

Poor Scott Fitzgerald, beavering away scribbling about The Great Gatsby, but really the first clue we have about the lives of the rich and the famous apparently only came with social media...

What a waste 1920s Hollywood and the Jazz Age were ... not to mention the great age of the Robber Barons ...

Strange that the poor would bung on  a riot and be beaten down with pickaxes when they really didn't have the first clue that the rich and the famous led slightly different lives ...

And then came that other line "Generally, in the West, the poor are not getting poorer..."

Good old trickle down, and generally in the west, it turns out that the poor are not getting as rich as the rich are getting richer ...

Professor Piketty said Australia had a tradition of being an egalitarian country with a small income gap between the wealthy and the poor compared to other countries. However, widening income inequality, as measured by the income share of the top 10 per cent of earners, hit the highest level in 2013 since 1951, at 30 per cent...

Armed with data and dozens of PowerPoint slides, Professor Picketty said meritocracy was a "fairytale" perpetuated by the beneficiaries of the capitalist system. 

"There is a western illusion about modern inequality as opposed to ancient inequality. Meritocracy is largely a myth invented by the winners of the system," he said, noting forces such as racial discrimination and access to finance and resources such as oil helped to create and sustain inequality...  (may be paywall affected)  

And if that sort of comedy can't convince people of the joys of following Polonius, you'd better to head to Tamworth, where the streets will soon be paved with gold ...

And now there's also just time for a Rowe cartoon celebrating equal treatment for everyone ...with more equal treatment Rowe here ...

In which the dog botherer responds to the latest crisis by blaming social media ...

Shock ruling?

You mean the High Court can read English, but it's beyond the Donald ... and the average reptile journalist?

Naturally at a time of great crisis, great reptile minds will turn to the key issues of the day ...

Sheesh, who let the dogs in? Won't someone let the dog botherer out?

Now it's not as if there aren't any number of minds that have tirelessly worked away at this mindless meme ...

And so endlessly on and on ...

Of course back in the day, the meme was the way that coffee and coffee houses and gossip newspapers were ruining everything ...

That last illustration,  of nouvellistes gossiping and reading in a café of the Palais-Royal (from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France), could be found in Robert Darnton's piece, Blogging, Now and Then, back in 2010 for the New York Review of Books, and luckily outside the paywall at the moment ...

In the spirit of serving up tidbits, Darnton ended his piece this way ...

The answer to that question is already in. 

These days there are respectable, mainstream blogs, who have in fact adopted the guise of conventional old school media - the Daily Beast kind, where it's impossible to pick the difference between the farmers and the pigs ... while most other blogs have the disruptive force of a sodden paper bag or a warm lettuce leaf, used to give reptile journalists a ritual spanking ...

The day of the lengthy blog has long past, the days of bemoaning koans for their brevity has begun ...

But enough of this trip down memory lane, no doubt the dog botherer will provide a generous dose of his own rich, ripe stupidity to an analysis of the situation, and instead of blogs - long forgotten by the reptiles as their prime source of discontent - it will be all about modern social media, and the newest discontents, because everything and coffee houses must change so that everything can stay the same ...

What a twit he is, capable of making even twittering seem like an intelligent response ... but please excuse the pond, because it had promised itself that the next time it came across a mindless reptile repeating in a moronic way, talk of virtue signalling, that it would run this cartoon ...

It might require clicking on for readability, but the pond just had to do it, as a way of clearing the decks ...

You see, when twits get to talking, mindless shorthand of the "virtue signalling" kind always comes out of the keyboard like a cliché in full featherless flight

Now there are many windmills in the dog botherer piece that the pond might tilt at, not least that the dog botherer represents mainstream views, as opposed to wanton childish climate denialism of the destructive kind, all the more ironic when this fringe dweller asks if it's social media that's dumbing us down, when the dog botherer is a walking, scribbling, example of dumbness in action in old media ...

But there's a more important question coming, and that's how far the dog botherer can disappear up his own fundament, as if imitating a plastic clad arm intent on inseminating a cow ...

The answer comes in the next gobbet ...

There you go, there's the answer, the dog botherer is so far up himself there's no chance of anyone spotting a glimmer of the sun ...

Pious, sanctimonious, righteous, virtuous, the teacher of valuable lessons, the ineffable fair reporter, the humbug talk of a good lesson well learned ... and coming shortly another snide reference to climate denialism ...

Without seeming to understand the how or why of it, the dog botherer once again proves what a wonderfully risible right of centre figure role model he is ...

It goes without saying that for the rest of his piece, the dog botherer excretes the usual sort of right of centre twaddle ... because dog botherers must do what dog botherers must do ...

Remember this week that evidence emerged that a staffer of a senior minister tipped off the media so that an unseemly police raid could be turned into a media circus ...

That last line about inferiors says a lot about the rich insecurities, the deep paranoia, and the sublime condescension of the dog botherer ...

Scratch the veneer, and underneath there's a ponce quoting Plato about his inferiors ...

Why all we need now is prattling Polonius rabbiting on in Marie Antoinette style about how lucky the workers are to get their cake ...

Eek, he really did ...

No wonder each day the pond feels like it's sitting in Plato's cave, gazing at the shadows cast in the weird, wacky world of the reptiles ...

Is it any wonder that at every chance, the pond forsakes the shadows on the wall and heads off for a Rowe, with more Rowe here ...

In which the pond does a magical mystery tour in time with the meretricious Merritt ...

Glorious days ...

There's the Donald revealed as part of a deep state vast government conspiracy to hide the truth about Ted Cruz's father ...

How long before the final redacted papers turn up, and Ted Cruz's father is found guilty, and/or Cruz finds a spine?

And there's the rooster Malware, who personally in his infinite wisdom, told the High Court what to think, and then they generously gave him a piece of their own sensible - the pond might even say obvious - mind ...

And the result? Why social media gone wild with a sense of fun ...

 

But the pond had other fush and chups to fry. 

You see, sensing that it might come in handy one day, the pond clipped this piece by the meretricious Merritt ... it will be noted that it's dated to the delusional day of 11th October, back in the magical mystery tour time of some long lost reptile Brigadoon ...

M'lud, if it might please the court, surely this is a desperate attempt at vainglorious thinking by a deluded buffoon who dares to call himself a legal affairs editor ...

The dog botherer might offer this as an explanation ...

But it seemed clear enough that futtocky fuckwits scribbling for the lizard Oz was what ruined politics ...

Why offer a straw of hope when a Malware is likely to seize it as a way of fixing the hole in the bucket?

And so this day, the pond was hardly surprised to discover the meretricious Merritt featured near the top of the digital page with an entirely different story ...

Say what? This vandalism needed stopping as Malware battles to save himself from his own preening, smirking stupidity?

Yep, the meretricious Merritt once more waded in the deep end ...

Better late than never? 

The age of reptiles clutching at straws is over?

The meretricious Merritt finally came to his senses?

Actually, apart from the ongoing matter of Ted Cruz's father, there are two mysteries that continue ... why Merritt keeps on scribbling, and even more peculiar and inexplicable, why the pond keeps following the reptiles into the labyrinth of their mindless nonsense ...

There is, however, no mystery in why the pond enjoys a Pope cartoon, with more papal hysteria here ...