In which the pond must play misère with the Oreo and the Caterist, but luckily there's an onion munching loon left over from the weekend ...

 

 

 

 

Once again the reptiles start the week by showing they have no shame, pocketing cash in the paw from the "cry freedumb" party ... and it's not just "freedumb", it's "freedumb freedumb" because you can never have enough "freedumb freedumb" ...

Sadly, there's other bad news as the pond cries freedumb to an uncaring world.

It seems the pond must start without the Major, who seems to have gone MIA, deserted the field, abandoned his post ... long absent lord knows how the Graudian, the ABC, the Nine papers and the like will carry on without his mighty and righteous blows keeping them in reptile line ...

Instead look who was elevated to the "cry freedumb" top of the digital page edition ...

 

 

 

The Oreo! And with an epic offering of both siderism ... while poor old Killer Creighton was reduced a piece of hagiographic "freedumb by Xmas" ...

Poor old Killer, he's been doing it tough of late, and the pond simply doesn't have the time to include all his work ...

 

 

That was his hagiographic effort on the weekend ... cry cool freedumb with a beer in the paw, and the Pacific made safe by one man sometime around 2040 ...

Ah well, it beats scribbling about a deep Freudian fear of masks, but even in the reptile world things move on, and so today other reptiles were featured at the top of the page, celebrating SloMo's plans for a clean energy world because how good is Australia? What an example to follow ...

Meanwhile, down in the business section ...

 

 

Mark Vaile? Now there's a blast from the past, but the pond hasn't got time to sup on climate science denalism and the Killer's hagiographic love of SloMo ... it must instead snack on the top of the page Oreo ...

 

 

 

 

Janet Malcolm once infamously observed, "every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."
 

Sadly, Malcolm's observation provided a couple of outs, and so many of the lizard Oz reptiles, who are both stupid and too full of themselves, are completely unaware that what they've done, are doing and will do, is morally indefensible.
 

The Oreo's both siderist effort this day puts her firmly in the in the morally indefensible camp … but  speaking of too stupid ...

 

Still, there's a certain masochist pleasure watching her writhe away in classic both siderist style ...

 

 

 

There is good reason? No, there's not, there's only Oreo both siderist stupidity, defending the sort of extremist loonacy that's come down from the likes of the mango Mussolini and the conspiracy theorists currently rampant in the United States ...

And it's all because there's limited public access to academic journals? As if we're suddenly all expert trained epidemiologists keen to do our own research and examine all the findings?

What a remarkably stupid woman she is ... and as for bodily autonomy, go talk to the Texas Taliban ...

The reptiles knew they were on a losing hand so at this point they flung in a click bait video which offered some frothy foam ... and the pond inserts a neutered cap just for the record ...

 

Now, record complete and in its proper perspective, back to the Oreo peddling both siderist nonsense ...

The pond has absolutely no idea of the point the Oreo is trying to make ... except that "et al" seems to be some sort of attempt to placate the mob, except that she's citing a study that hasn't been peer-reviewed. Even the pond knows that's an exercise in futility. If you're going to attend a conspiracy gun fight, at least take along a peer-reviewed pistol, or otherwise you might get a jam or a misfire ....

Even worse, the Oreo's attempt to placate the conspiracy theorsts is immediately undone by her decision to open her final gobbet with the line "There has been a degree of public sympathy for people resisting Covid vaccines..."

Maybe there has in the barking mad world of the reptiles and the Sky News after dark mob, but this sort of Ivermetcin hydroxy freedumb is a folly of the first water ...

What we actually have is studies in weirdness and futility ...

 

 

 

Feel free to google, or to cop the Oreo's degree of public sympathy, it's a never no mind horse paste choice to the pond ...

Good people die from pride? No, they die from stupidity and they want to ruin it for others, and the Oreo, in her usual way, isn't helping, by trying to butter both sides of the toast, and let them down gently ...

And so, in the absence of the Major, the pond can break with tradition and do a catch-up, because the onion muncher was out and about on the weekend, and only late in the day did the reptiles give him any exposure ...

 

Yes, it's an indulgence on the part of the pond, but it should never be forgotten that the pond's main task is to hunt out and celebrate the very best loonery, and the onion muncher was, in his time, one of the very best and most adept of loons ...

 

Luckily, none of this nonsense is available to women of goodwill, but the pond doesn't resile from the pleasure it takes in the onion muncher's preaching. Sure, it should have been in the pond's Sunday meditation, but every day is a day for meditating or munching on onions ...

 

 

There you go, and Janet Malcolm rolling in her grave as the onion muncher blathers about engendered humility ... as if suddenly we can wipe from memory his bully boy stand over tactics?

As for the rest, can anyone point to an irony in the sight of irrelevant scribbler and failed politician evoking memories of effective statesmen? Can any moral theologian have managed to make a bigger hash of things than the onion muncher as prime minister?

Okay, these are properly matters for a Sunday meditation, but look at what else the pond had on offer this day ...

 

The war on China, and the bouffant one exuding positivity, while simple Smon has to brood about the latest polling?

And there was the Caterist sinking the boot into comrade Dan yet again. The reptiles never get tired of this sport, with Fergo setting the pace on the weekend ...

You'd almost forget that Sydney is still in lockdown, except that the cops find it easier to cut off downtown than they do in Melbourne, and so the blocking of Parramatta Road is barely noticed unless you happen to be out on a stroll ...

The pond is very tired of this reptile game, but still, in the interest of maintaining Janet Malcolm's line, here's the cash in the paw Caterist doing his best to cry freedumb ...

 

 

Of course there were other things the cash in the paw climate science denialist might have turned his mind to for a beginning of the week game ...

 

... but the pond must play the moronic hands it's given, always full of Oreo twos and Caterist threes and misère not an option ...

Oh for fuck's sake ...

 

You know talk of semiautomatic rifles might make you think you're in Al Capone's Chicago, but you'd have to be smoking whatever the Caterist is smoking (hopefully the same as made the Canavan caravan think that pigs can fly) ...

The pond realises that the freedumb inclined Caterist wants to get out on the streets with anti-vaxxer yahoos, but what's with all the bleeding heart liberalism evoking the end days of Orwellian state rule? 

The pond's partner in exile was stopped in a park by a very polite Victorian plod on Sunday. After a NSW driver's license was produced - to some consternation - the discussion turned to the rioters, and it seems that the code for the day was to wear something white (yes, the partner in exile had on something white). It seemed counter-intuitive, what with the riot gear du jour being all black, but when you think about it, why shouldn't white supremacists be allowed to wear white?

As for the rest, the pond's partner wished the plod well, in light of duties for the day, and the plod wished the partner well, and there the whole affair ended ... but you won't find those sort of encounters scribbled about, not when the duty of the day is hysteria about comrade Dan ... and yet back in the day, protestors in the street, generally peaceful protestors at that,  wishing no harm on anyone, and certainly not the right to expose others to a pandemic, were a source for much Caterist soul-searching and deep concern, possibly even angst, and much worry about vulgar youffs ...

 

 

 

Oh yes, the danger of taking to the streets ... but that was then, and this is now ... and the Oreo has assured us there are two sides to the story, and the right to infect others in a pandemic is a most important freedumb to consider ... and now, it seems we must have a debate before a mindless rabble and a motley crew of riff raff intent on violence and pissing on assorted shrines allegedly sacred to conservatives are sent home ...

 

Yawn. Cry freedumb and remember to get that cash in the paw, just like the Caterist ... though it has to be said he prefers to be paid off by the federal government ... it being perfectly liberal and libertarian to get cash in the paw from SloMo ...

Okay, fair point, few construction workers have the chance of sitting in an office and writing applications to the federal government for funding, but how else would we come to understand the movement of flood waters in quarries or the mysteries of climate science?

And so to the last gobbet of class warfare,  conducted by a man accustomed to doing a concrete pour... or at least pouring out a lot of cow manure in the hope of making a shiny floor ...

 

The right to bodily integrity? Could somebody arrange an anal cavity search of the Caterist, in the hope of finding his brain?

Where was all this claptrap in the days of polio vaccines, or the campaign against measles? The pond in part blames the Murdochians because anyone scribbling inanities about the right to bodily integrity in the middle of a pandemic must take some fair share for the vaccine denialism that has produced rioting in the streets ...

What else? Well sadly we'll have to leave climate science denialism for another day, but dammit, the pond will celebrate the current kerfuffule, thanks to the abiding Rowe. This dude regularly abides, with more abiding here ...

 

Dame Slap and prattling Polonius as TV reviewers, and the bromancer as a bonus? How could a Sunday meditation of this calibre go wrong?

 

 

 

 

At one point on the weekend, the reptiles offered this startling juxtaposition, of Dame Slap blathering on about feminist porn and growing calls for net-zero emissions.

In her heyday, the IPA chairman was a proud climate science denialist, on top of the game, and a fellow traveller with the likes of "Lord" Monckton...

Now she seems to have lost her mojo, now it comes to this ... for want of a better description, a Bettina Arndt wannabe fellow traveller, a lightweight attempt to do a Clive James on the telly ...

 

 

 

Until the pond read that opening gambit, the pond hadn't realised how dire things had become for Dame Slap ... a TV reviewer, and of all things to review, an offering by Netflix, a company which shattered Sturgeon's Law by forcing a revision upwards to the law, whereby ninety nine point nine percent of everything on Netflix is crap ...

 

Even worse, after refusing to highlight "Ned's" podcast, the reptiles rubbed salt into "Ned's" wounds by deeming a wretched TV reviewer as worthy of a podcast ...

 

 

 

 

As for Dame Slap's thoughts, they're entirely predictable but what the hell, it's a Sunday meditation, so there's time to waste ...

 

 

That talk of Spot reminded the pond that there were real writers out there in the world, and they could turn Kermit the frog to some fair use and point ...

As you’ll have seen, these are some of the many conversations Johnson has done his best to avoid this week. Instead, he has been Macavity-ing it up in New York, saying “prenez un grip” to Emmanuel Macron, and using his big UN climate speech to quote Kermit. To which the most respectful response is: get that frog’s name out of your mouth (Kermit’s, not Macron’s).

And this ...

 

 

Once upon a time, Dame Slap knew how to channel her inner bitch, and let fly, but this outing is truly pathetic. Gone are the days when she donned the MAGA cap and celebrated the fine art of pussy-groping ... now she just gropes the telly ...

 

 

Tediously predictable? Write what you know, I guess, wrote another writer, and the pond guesses that Dame Slap knows how to sound tediously predictable.

As with most writing of a psychoanalytic kind, or should that be simply psycho, what is revealed is not so much the subject at hand as the Freudian issues deep within the scribbler.

That reference to Enid Blyton offered another sad reminder to the pond of Dame Slap's glory days, when she first earned her nickname ...

 

 

Now she's armed with a warm TV reviewer lettuce leaf, and she's not afraid to use it ...

 

 

It's not for the pond to ask why Dame Slap doesn't mention Westworld, surely another thought crime on planet Janet, and it's not as if there haven't been interesting things going down in the entertainment world ... whether it's the official response, as noted here ...

 

 

 

 

Or a more freewheeling sense of fun ... 

 

But what do we get instead? Dame Slap as Bettina Arndt TV reviewer lite...

 

As a  survey of what's on TV,  this is beyond the valley of the superficially pathetic ... with almost anything, even Jane Austen's novels, able to slip in under the header of feminist porn.

It's sad but true, Dame Slap has lost her mojo, and seems intent on slipping off to her own planet to do a lot of binge viewing. Could anything else match this offering as a big reveal of the lonely nights of a reptile gazing at endless hours of TV fodder? So that's where the pandemic has led Dame Slap ...

Of course the pond would have liked to dress it up as Shakespearian and in a male guise, as befits the Slappian thesis ... you know, oh, how noble her mind used to be, and how lost she is now. She used to have an IPA chairman's grace, an IPA scholar's wit, and a Gina's army soldier's strength ...

O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown. 

The IPA courtier's, the IPA scholar's, the Gina soldier's eye, tongue, sword, Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state of climate science denialism, the glass of IPA fashion and the mould of pussy groping form ...

But there was never much in Dame Slap's noggin to start with, so it's hardly surprising to find this vast and trunkless mind of stone half sunk in the desert of Netflix TV series ...

And so from one tragedy to another, and this time it involves the incessant buzzing of the ABC bee in the mind of prattling Polonius...

 

 

 

Here the problem arises from obsessive compulsive, richly anal watching of ABC television, designed, it seems purely to torment Polonius and send him into a doddering fury ... when he might be better off sharing popcorn and binge viewing feminist porn with Dame Slap ...

As it is, we've heard it all before, with the usual cut-out caricatures, mindless stereotypes and predictable villains ... 

 

 

First there's the obvious question - why does Polonius torture himself? And why is he so fixated on the ABC? Was it some childhood trauma involving Playschool? 

The fixation leads him on to weird moments, such as the notion that it "was barely covered in the media" ... when a nanosecond of goggling might have helped him out ... (screen cap, don't be a Polonius, do your own) ...

In fact, it's nothing new. Australia has been deemed a nuclear target since the days of Pine Gap and other bases ... and every few years stories have erupted at the way we're a nuclear target should we get to a Dr Strangelove moment ...

What a relief that Polonius decided to step outside his ABC cocoon for a little while, if only to attack Nine newspapers for daring to carry the thoughts of someone not in the Polonial hive mind ...

 

 

More of Keating anon.

Meanwhile, how pleasing that can always rely on Polonius and his little memory slips for a little light entertainment. 

As sure as Ming the Merciless gets a mention, his appetite for appeasement will be downplayed by Polonius ... and yet in his day, in his prime, Ming was a grand appeaser desperate to avoid war ... (he wasn't much of a man for fighting himself).

 

 

(Here). 

It required some fancy footwork, but Polonius was up to the job and immediately took to the ABC airwaves, because back in the day, the ABC and Polonius used to play footsy, before he got old and irascible and sulked and refused to come down from his attic ...

 

 

Oh yes, fancy footwork, but now to the final gobbet ...

 

No, it will be helped by brave, bold Polonius, attacking the quisling ABC, and joining in the war on China, as if that wretched appeasing Ming the Merciless had never existed ...

And speaking of the war on China, the bonus for the day is the bromancer, because when has the pond ever shirked its bromancer duty? And yes, comrade Keating will be set up for another coconut pounding, in due course ...

Sure to get to the long and tedious pounding is a long and tedious one, but when duty calls, the pond can tackle the bromancer as easily as climbing "Ned's" Everest ...

 

 

It might occur to a few jaded souls as they read the bromancer that they just read it all in prattling Polonius, but that's the way it goes when you stumble into the reptile hive mind ...

 

 

Why is this so? Well the pond did its usual survey of US newspaper cartoons in the hope that it might find a relevant US cartoon or two as illustrations to accompany the bromancer's piece. You know, a sure sign that superb publicity agents have been at work, and even insular US cartoonists were forced to pay attention ...

Sad to report, the pond didn't encounter a single US cartoonist moved by the world-class hyperbole. There wasn't one US cartoonist the pond could find in the whole world who responded seriously to the Australian diplomatic initiative.

No doubt there's a cartoonist out there somewhere, but the best the pond could come up with?

 

 

 

And the pond had a sneaking suspicion that it was about climate science rather than a terribly unique* (*ABC licensed) diplomatic initiative full of seriousness and gravity, ripe for a satirical thrust...

Never mind, time to give the perfidious French a dunking in cold water to bring them to their senses ...

 

 

And so to giving comrade Keating a pounding, though given the pounding he was given by Polonius, some readers might experience a severe case of déjà vu ...

 

 

In all this the bromancer has paid very little attention to the state of one of our key allies in the saga, and yet Marina Hyde did an excellent report for the Graudian on the strength of the situation in the UK ...

 

 

 

 

By golly that's the sort of well-run country you'd want on your side for the war on China, and frankly, the United States is also totally unified and in top notch condition ... at least if you happen to enjoy irony as a form of commentary ... but back to the bromancer, showing that he can pick fights with anybody handy ... 

 

Suddenly Chairman Ruddster is an expert to whom we must pay heed.? There's probably a passing irony there, and yet sadly the pond didn't have a relevant cartoon to match the situation ...

 

 

 

But back to the bromancer approvingly transcribing the thoughts of chairman Rudd. Must get in quick, because it might be some time before we see this happen again in the lizard Oz ... 

 

 

A final thought: the war on China lives in the bromancer's heart. Chairman Rudd doesn't say it, but Murdochism in foreign policy is traditionally paranoid, belligerent and militaristic. That's how the crusader bromancer was so hot to trot in Iraq, Afghanistan and the like. Most analysts think that Murdochism's economic and social policies will harm the Australian economy. Combined with aggression abroad, and subs patrolling the oceans, that's an extremely dangerous combination.

A final relieving thought for worried young pups: the subs won't be around until 2040, and then not all of them, and the pond will be long gone, and so will the bromancer and SloMo and Chairman Rupert, and many other villains and scoundrels, and in the meantime, we will be relying on the candle-driven power of the put-put boats the pond used to play with in the bath ...

And so to wrap up the day's meditation, off to a couple more irrelevant cartoons, with TT always to hand here ...