In which the pond gets its Saturday off to a fine start with a goodly, bigly, hugely Polonial prattle ...

Everybody, just everybody, loved the Donald's Fox rant … it was the bestest, and everybody had fun tracking the bemused faces of the hosts, and it quickly turned into a meme ...

Colbert had fun with it, so did Seth Meyer ...

That's for anyone who sensibly wants to avoid reading on as the pond asks, 'so where were the lizards of Oz on this great rant?'

Well this morning it's as if nothing had happened, either digitally or in the tree killer edition …

The Donald had been vanished, disappeared completely, was nowhere to be found, like the girlfriend that gets lost at a petrol station, and then has to endure a terrible re-make …

Instead they sent out prattling Polonius to utter soothing words, and spread reassurance like ripe chook manure …because it's all good and it's in the best possible hands, and please don't send us to the corn field ...

It seems everybody but Polonius knows that the Trump administration is in chaos, and finds it hard to attract anyone to work for it, with people fearing their careers will be left in ruins … as the high comedy continues and people assess the risks of being a flak-catcher for an unstable president …

Yes, Tim was briefly distracted from his Monash mission back in January, at the ABC here …

But this is surely to miss the point.

The reason we need an Ambassador is that anyone the Donald's administration is likely to nominate might well contribute to the circus, and we need to be in close touch with the circus …and what a circus it is ...

Never say that the pond never provides alternatives to prattling Polonius, as he prattles on about the way everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds … which admittedly is comedy, but surely not able to reach the high laugh bar that the Donald has set …

Lordy lordy, and no doubt there will be some deviants who pick up Polonius's prattle as a fine example of forelock-tugging, abased obeisance and sublime subservience to the Donald and to his version of the USA …

But is that because deep down Polonius actually fears that the Donald might spring a dud on us, someone who will offer a peppercorn of laughs?

Never mind, the pond is pleased to learn that US ambassadors are generally useless, and the last thing we need down under is another useless, albeit insignificant ambassador, because somehow it seems to fit the general mood in Washington …

Waiter, a little déjà vu for late Friday cultists wanting to add to their collection ...

The pond is particularly pleased that its late Friday array of crockery is part of a spectacular set.

It comes with the oscillating fan's other works, which the pond will know cultists will want to collect.

Why we can't discount possibility of a Labor win

Why we can't discount possibility of a Coalition win

Completists will want the full set, which also includes

Why we can discount possibility of a DLP, One Nation or Greens win …

and

Why you too can pick a horse race a year away from starter's orders. Here's how ...

With every complete set, there's a bonus item not sold in store:

Why you won't learn anything about the actual outcome of the next federal election by reading on …

Questions, questions, but it's so terribly hard to know.

Well at least the oscillating fan kept it short …

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,  

"There's a Labor party apparatchik close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. 
See how eagerly the Liberals and the agrarian socialists all advance! 
They are waiting on greenie and Pauline's preferences – will you come and join the dance? 
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? 
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

Anyone experiencing déjà vu is likely watching an old movie, getting ready to read more meaningless reptile predictions and speculations, or perhaps has stopped by a Pope cartoon to pick up some papal wisdom, with more papal déjà vu here …

Lloydie redux and other matters ...

The pond is always delighted when others share in its love of the reptiles, and Amanda Meade is as good a reptile enthusiast and herpetologist as any doing the rounds …

The pond was reminded of this when checking up on the Graudian's Weekly Beast, which sadly at time of writing hadn't produced a new edition, but which in its 20th April incarnation here, celebrated Lloydie and the octopi from outer space …

Meade had kindly provided a link to the Lloydie yarn, but of course anyone clicking on it immediately hits the lizard Oz paywall … and it occurred to the pond that it hadn't actually put up Lloydie's latest contribution to the advancement of science …

Of course there were also the windmill stories mentioned by Meade …

… but in the TGIF spirit, here's Lloydie redux, as a community service, because the pond can do things that Meade must, in the spirit of fair play, not do …

Pure genius, and up there with Lloydie's many befuddling contributions to climate science …

Speaking of befuddling, one of the reasons that the pond reverted to Lloydie - apart from its interest in spreading objective scientific reptile studies far and wide - is the ongoing disappointment that Speccie mob represents.

The pond fossicked through the rubble like a panner hunting for gold at Bowling Alley Point and came away with not even a speck of the real deal. There's a lot of iron pyrites in the Speccie mob - the pond blames the Caterists - and this effort by one Simon Collins was typical …

It began well enough ...

While the pond is currently in the middle of The Square, it enjoyed The Death of Stalin, and citing Robert Conquest is good old-fashioned old school Spectator … so the pond carried on to the next gobbet, celebrating the battle to the death of the onion muncher and Malware ...

And allowing that talk of hits and hit lists in Australian politics is designed for comic effect, then things got a little funny …in the peculiar sense ...

Whoa?! 

How did we end up there?

One minute the pond was grooving along to the berating of Lenin and Stalin - it's hard to stick up for a mass murderer like Uncle Joe - and the next we're supposed to take a fancy to the Russian people for their refusal to feel any guilt or self-loathing, but rather regard them with affection for their yearning for good old-fashioned Stalinism, and its reincarnation in good new-fashioned Putinism?

"People, in short, who are proud of their nationality."

And then it's used as a stick to berate un-Australian, un-patriotic, un-national Australians?

Talk about befuddling. Not that the pond thinks much of any form of any nationalism, anytime, anywhere, but since when did being proud of harbouring mass murderers or dictators become a decent form of nationalism? Especially as Australians are generally proud of their ancestors and the way they did a proper, decent invasion, and dished it out to the blacks …and almost managed a genocide in Tasmania and now have inspired the world with their very own gulags ...

Or some such thing …

It's always a little weird and provocative to stumble on the Spectator going into RT mode …a bit like the shock the reptiles experience when Fox News has a close encounter of the weird kind with the Donald …

At that point they have to revert to AFP to handle the cognitive dissonance …

Barking mad, and Avenatti was tweeting with delight, and the prosecutors were off to court with the news, and so on and so forth …

It's a treat to see the Fox mob when they realise that they've unleashed the kraken, and it slowly dawns on them … and speaking of hits, the head mobster was ready to slip his Fixer under the bus ...

Oh well said Hughie baby, why soon enough you can write for the Speccie mob about your love for Putin.

Lordy lordy lah di day, up against this circus, what chance do Lloydie and the Speccie mob have?

About the only thing that can distract might be a miracle of the turning water into wine, or wine into blood kind …

... or perhaps ScoMo's astonishing transformation, as noted by Rowe, with more Rowe here … 

It's not just Dr Strangelove, you know, the ones that can walk ...

In which the pond turns to the circus for reliable entertainment ...

Another bleak day at the pond as the Speccie mob continue to disappoint. 

No Giles, no Flinty, what's wrong with them? What are they thinking? A report on the Royals is no substitute for pure essence of Flinty ...

Instead the pond had to turn to another form of reliable entertainment, which has been cranking up to 11 of late, what with dandruffgate, the Fixer taking the Fifth, the Candyman taking a hit, the Donald ranting endlessly on the telephone about anything that comes to mind, assuming that mind is the right word, and so on and so endlessly forth …

… in which context the pond really has to call out James Merlino for being a sook and a spoilsport ...

What a doofus. As if Priebus was anything but a loser dropkick in the shallow end of the pool, dismissed by tweet…and how unkind to Paul Ryan and all the other GOPers who did their Ayn Rand best for the deficit disaster known as the Donald's tax plan.

So unkind and so thoughtless. Preibus's presence down under would be of enormous benefit to Labor, the pond, and the rest of Australia as the circus came down under. 

It's true Priebus is one of the lesser clowns, but who knows, he might well love the Andrews government's plan to build an even larger eastern distributor so that even more cars might get dumped in the massive traffic jam known as Hoddle street, while making sure a train or other public transport isn't part of the solution …

It's true that the Victorian Libs might have selected a better class of used clown to come down under … 

The Donald has gone through an abundance of dopes and useless fools, and hard questions have to be asked about why the Vics preferred Priebus when Sean Spicer, the Mooch, Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Tom Price, Omarosa, Rob Porter, Hope Hicks, Gary Cohn or sexy Rexy might be available to help …

And that's just scratching the surface of the options, and there's more likely to join the list of the unemployed by the day.

As for this talk of far right politics, it's an outrageous misconstruing of the current GOP …

The pond urges Merlino to backtrack on this one quickly …how we yearn for a touch of the magic turning up down under …

And how sulky we get if the Donald picks the fluff of someone else ...

The Donald makes a flip-flop Captain's call? Who'd have thunk it?

The pond appreciates where the writers are coming from … they too want to be touched by a visit to the circus, they too want direct access to the Donald's mind, assuming that mind is the right word … and be favoured and blessed like others have been …

The pond can understand the bitter disappointment, the sense of loss, the realisation that the French have been blessed with a better class of dandruff treatment ...

How long has this circus run, and still there are people furiously scribbling about Trump and wanting him to act like a conventional politician rather than an out of control maverick inclined to twittering frenzies, flip flops, and revisions of indecisions, and a churn rate that even cable cutters couldn't match?

Oh okay, the pond will admit it, this was just the usual ploy of finding a couple of reptile stories and using them as an excuse to run a few cartoons.

The pond's secret furtive life, watching cable news and late night American TV shows send up the Donald must occasionally come to the surface, and these were just a convenient prop …

And so to a few more cartoons in closing …

In which the pond joins Sukkar in refusing succour to termites ...

Right from the get go, the pond should say it has no problem with crushing enemies …there were screams and shouts of dismay from the couch that the pond heard distantly as the robots began to mount their slaughter of the humans in the second series of Westworld.

It seems there weren't enough shots of Dolores taking shots in the killing fields …

Go Dolores, but even worse, it seems the soppy Dolores and the other robots had got it into their heads that true love was the way forward.

So the pond is all in favour of Michael Sukkar's keen-eyed attitude to termites.

Why at the next Liberal party meeting, he might favour the dress code currently favoured by the lizard Oz for the military: full skull and crossbones in basic black.

After all, what's the point of being a devoted Stalinist and fundamentalist ideologue if you can't take it out on stray termites?

The pond has an array of termite remedies, along with healthy doses of glyphosate, with blackberry killer in reserve for the tough jobs - well when you live under the black soot of used Avgas, where's the harm in a few chemicals?

Sukkar's the sort of man who can spot splitters, deviants and perverts at ten paces … and deal with them ...

It was only after reading the yarn, that the pond began to have doubts, and not just about the tautological exactitude of talking about "left wing socialists", given of course that right wing socialists, and agrarian socialists of the Barners kind are abundant in the land.

Why the onion muncher himself has lately been a five year planning 'nationalise the coal' Stalinist of the old school, and perhaps shouldn't show up anywhere near Sukkar.

Hang on, what's that?

Well there's no arguing that he looks good in a photo …

What a relief. No Balkans, everyone Liberals and even a few liberals allowed, provided they're not voracious termites.

But why termites? After all, they're just industrious builders of mounds, and they're much more active in the northern parts of Australia than down south.

What's wrong with standard invective about the watermelons and the pinko red perverts? Would locusts, or correllas or a mouse plague or even the humble rabbit have been a better class of metaphor?

In South Australia, there's an obvious villain. While they're not out and about as much as they were in the 1970s, during the great plagues, in South Australia any decent Sukkarist would be comparing the socialists to a mass of millipedes - as noted at the ABC here…

Step on one of those and you'd get a good socialist stink.

In Queensland and other parts north of course, it would have to be the cane toad, and in Sydney no one would look past the cockroaches …

There's nothing more satisfying than crushing a left-wing cockroach … though some of them have right-wings too …

It seems that Sukkar must stand charged with a grievous lack of imagination … as well as the standard sort of kool aid bigotry to be found in assorted thuggish, head-kicking schoolyard bullies, anxious to reduce enemies to a kind of sub-human status, of the insect kind …

The pond suggests this Sukkar still has much to learn when it comes to delivering a decent childish schoolyard taunt, perhaps by sitting close to the ample stomach of the master, as illustrated by Rowe, with more splendid Rowe guides here …

In which the pond just squeaks in a chance to celebrate the return of the savvy Savva ...

A responsibility to the sheep!

Won't someone think of the poor little baa humbug lambs because all they want to do is be live slaughtered in the middle east.

Talk about a mission statement:we owe it to those baa humbug lambs, who just want to die proudly for the bigly cause.

Even for a devoted meat eater of the pond kind, David Littleproud managed to sound particularly stupid … but that serves to introduce a little meditative reflection on the part of the pond.

You see, come 20th July, the pond will have been blogging away for a whole decade, ten years of reptile mayhem, and now the pond can sense that it might well have achieved one of its key missions.

Over the years, the pond developed and refined a mission statement whereby it would cut back or perhaps give up blogging altogether, provided either the Chairman passed on, his company went bankrupt or passed into other ownership, the reptile tree killer editions came to a halt (sucks boo to the Major), or as a substitute, the commentariat were locked away behind a firm paywall, out of sight and out of mind, except for those mad enough to subscribe - delusionals, and perhaps anthropologists interested in delusional cults …

This morning the reptiles did their very best to stop the pond celebrating the return of the savvy Savva, and it was a narrowly run thing - the abiding principle of the pond being that to subscribe to the lizard Oz is hardly a sport, like tickling a trout in the bathtub and claiming it as a catch.

The pond suspects that soon enough the reptiles will shut down everything just to spite the pond, and retirement then comes a day closer. Or perhaps the pond might just recycle the Bolter abusing the Savva for her craven love of Malware?

It would be a desperate solution, narrowly avoided this day, and yet, when the pond eventually landed the savvy Savva, a vast wave of existential ennui came over the pond.

Nothing had changed in the Savva universe, she was still Malware's hagiographer, and it mystified the pond why anyone would bother to lock her up … but an even greater mystery was why the pond would care to pay attention …

Does the masochism run even deeper than the pond realised?

Waiter, a goodly serve of the Savva kool-aid if you please …

Of course it isn't just straight out arse-kissing. Savva is too cunning for that. Malware's flaws are paraded for inspection, but then judged acceptable, while the boot goes into the onion muncher, and his lickspittle lackies, and who could argue with that …

And the savvy Savva manages to keep this going for an entire column … as she weighs rivals, contenders and hypocrites, and finds them all wanting against the mighty Malware … and outlines strategies for victory, but sssh, don't mention the NBN ...

And then just to confirm that Savva is living in something of a delusional world herself, comes the mantra of hope at the very end ...

Businesses will realise more jobs and higher wages for workers are the way forward?

Yes, and sheep are lining up for live slaughter in the middle east.

Yes, and has the pond got a first rate top notch copper to the nineteenth century NBN node to sell you …

Never mind, the one thing the pond will miss if the savvy Savva disappears behind the paywall is the chance to run much more savvy Pope cartoons as a Greek chorus to the text - or should that be Spielbergian sharks - with savvier papal advice always to hand here …

Victory … or should that be a Donald cap slip, VICTORY ...

Old jungle saying: "To defeat a Nazi, one must become a Nazi" …

The defeated:

Silly old dodderer - probably grew up in a time when the Poms downplayed all that Nazi stuff and promoted the idea that they were different and more civilised ...

Where did that get them? And besides there was Dresden, so why not just get on with some decent Nazi imagery?

Say what? Only the opportunity to "seek exemptions" when everyone knows that to defeat the Nazi, it is essential to become the Nazi … eye of the tiger etc etc, yadda yadda …

The victors:

Fearing nothing, not even the fury and dint of battle, the reptiles flung themselves against the barbed wire …

The pond hesitates to list the entirety of reptile Mark Day's record as a war hero … it's almost as long as the pond's, but what a ripper image he led with, and how admirable it is …

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds …

There's the path towards democracy, and then there's bombing the shit out of countries, as a way of bringing them to peace and civilisation …

The choice is clear enough. Do it in a mealy-mouthed, milk soppish, foppish way, or do it with style, and decent blacks and proper leathers ...

Oh they always had the best iconography, and that's why Melburnians still wear black as the old guard head to Mario's for food poisoning ...

Silly old Pom lover with all that rah rah stuff …

Get with Marvel comics, or get over it …

Mark Day understands that to defeat a Nazi, it is wise to become one … and as for Isis, well, we all share some fundamental values, or at least Xian evangelicals do, and if that's not a good enough reason to introduce death imagery, what is?

Now the artist behind "Death Smackdown" might sound like some sort of wimp ...

The central character of the Medic was chosen to represent an easily identifiable figure in the Defence Force as someone who saves lives. His call sign PK, Pahpah Kilo, Kilo is the generic call sign for all medics. As Dickie commented "it captures what Medics in the Australian Defence Force try and achieve every day. Sometimes they must possess 'godlike' skills and deliver them swiftly in order to save lives." (Greg Hunt it here, if you've gotten over the shame of the hunter's last outing).

There's death in the imagery, and we all know what that means ...

Gott mit uns ...

Naturally the reptiles were on hand with some images to put female flight crew at ease …

Let's face it, showing a saucy woman in a provocative pose goes towards fostering camaraderie and bonding ...

Wait a second, there are women flying planes in the military?

Where did we go wrong?

Dammit the next thing you know they'll be talking up the way a female pilot with the US navy brought a crippled bird down to land …

Come on reptiles, show Tammy some inspiring imagery ...

Ah yes, that's the sort of sensitivity we need … 

Talk about sublime comedy ...

Indeed, indeed… perhaps a little more nose art to keep the good ladies on side?

   

 

There's nothing like a little inter-species mating, or pillaging or raping, to evoke the essence of civilisation … and why not a little ball-crushing as well?

Dammit, it's all the fault of political correctness, when killing and destruction is what it's all about.

Forget that blather about bringing democracy and peace, why not celebrate the bringing of death and destruction, and killing and bombing and slaughter, and the more massive the better …

And what a relief that the reptiles are riding to iconographic victory … and righteous slaughter ...

And now, for those who missed the pond's last effort celebrating the reptile warrior spirit, the Game of Thrones of Australian tree-killing endeavour,  here's a couple of Mitchell and Webb sketches celebrating the joys of being Nazi ...