In which the pond starts by nit-picking with Polonius and ends with a splendid serve of Stevo's full blown hysteria, with stops along the way for the Bjorn-again and the Angelical one ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

It seemed right and fitting for prattling Polonius to be back in his old position at the top of the pond's Sunday meditation page, especially as he seems to be invoking the spirit of Ming the merciless ...

 

But a dark cloud, in the shape of the venerable Meade's Weekly Beast passed over the pond ...

 

It was innocuous enough to begin with ...

 

Former Insiders regular Gerard Henderson, whose dislike for the ABC only grew when he was dropped as a panelist last year, has written another book. No, it’s not on his favourite topic, the ABC, but it is all about how the ABC covered his friend Cardinal George Pell.
Henderson has been a fierce critic of ABC journalist Louise Milligan, whose book Cardinal won the Walkley book award.
Titled Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-On and Collective Guilt, Hendo’s tome is published by the boutique rightwing publisher Connor Court Publishing, which has published books such as Stealing from a Child: The Injustice of ‘Marriage Equality’ by David van Gend and Green Murder by climate skeptic Ian Plimer…
 

But then it got nasty ...

 

...The executive director of rightwing thinktank The Sydney Institute, Henderson is an opinion columnist for the Australian, and he also publishes a weekly blog, Media Watch Dog, where he mainly writes about the ABC, nitpicking week in, week out about the alleged bias of the presenters.

 

Nitpicker! A week in, week out, nitpicker?! Suddenly all the bitter memories came flooding back ...

 

 

Never mind, on with the nit-picking nitwit ...

 

 

Ah the old rats in the ranks routine, but surely Polonius will have to crank up to eleven if he's going to attempt to blame Pinocchio's dismal performance this past week on the rats in the ranks ... 

But no, it's time for the usual tepid, torpid history lesson ... as if unity might trump pig iron ...

 

Oh good old climate science. What company was Polonius keeping with his publisher?

Green Murder by climate skeptic Ian Plimer…

Yeah, that'd be right ... and what an alarming dose of paranoia goes with it ...

 

Hmm, the pond is beginning to detect an increasing amount of nervousness in the reptile ranks. Rally around the flag boys, form the square. Oh no, the gatling's jammed, and the Colonel dead, and the sand of the desert is sodden red, red with the wreck of a square that broke, and the regiment blinded with woke dust and smoke ...

Perhaps it was wrong of the pond to discount the Keane thesis noted yesterday ... perhaps there is a messiah to hand, a hard man, a boofhead with steel-capped boots, who can sort out the defiance and the internal divisions and give the Speccie mob a clip around the ears ...

 

But which one? The head or the potato? Or do they mystically merge into a new form?

Luckily, Polonius prattled on for a bit about climate science, which provides a natural segue in to the next item ...

 

 

The pond has no idea why the reptiles stay so loyal to the Bjorn-again one, because he hasn't changed his messaging or his thinking this past decade, yet News Corp only recently went through a superficial hour of the woke when it came to climate science ...

There's nothing new to be seen here, just the usual pissing on the planet, but still the pond has to enter it into the record book ...

 

 

Now - spoiler alert - everyone knows what comes next and should be able to recite it off by heart. The pond itself has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by living off the bets its won as to whether the lines would appear ...

 

 

If the pond could just find and smash that macro on the Bjorn-again one's keyboard, what a service to humanity it would be ...

The pond guesstimates that talk of the wonders of new technology as the solution to everything would diminish by at least 111.13%.

As for the context, here is the full final gobbet ...

 

Well there was nothing to see there, so the pond naturally did another quick segue, this time to an unhappy Angelic one ...

 

 

The reptiles have been all a fizz and a tizz about the new religious suppression laws, a bit like the fizzy sherbet cones the pond used to get at the Dungowan general store for a ha'penny, now freely available again, with quite a bit of competition between Aldi and Coles ...

 

 

 

But enough of memory lane when tykes and proddies could enjoy freedom to speak their religion: Catholic dog, sitting on a log, eating maggots out of a frog, or proddy dogs, god didn't love them enough to make them Catholic ...

 

Uh oh, this is sounding ominous, and all because a few wretched progressives thought they might love their own kind. What happened to the good old days when they might be tossed off a cliff or thrown into the Torrens as a way of expressing Xian love?

 

Well so much for contracts in the world of the Angelic one. It seems if you don't like a contract you've signed with an employer, then you can just ignore it and carry on regardless, with the expectation that there will be no consequences whatsoever ...

Oh it's a sweet deal, though the pond suggests that if you should happen to go the grope in an office or send a dick snap, you might regret following the Angelic one's advice ... there might just be a clause in the contract some fuddy duddy employer will drag out ...

 

 

Poor old SloMo harried by both the woke and fundamentalist tykes, and the fundie tykes winning the argument by comparing the marketing man to Mao ... though it was disappointing not to hear the Stasi and the SS invoked in the same breath ... nor, as we're speaking of religious tsars, any mention of the Pope and the Catholic church's splendid Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which surely set the gold standard for deciding what and what isn't soundly religious...

And so to a final offering. 

Usually the pond would stop at three, much like the Ancient Mariner, but the pond is in the mood for a full-on reptile rant, and foreshadowed this rant yesterday, and it would not be right or proper to fail to deliver on the promise ...

Stevo, comrade Dan, punching bags, Stevo punching away, what more could anyone want on a meditative Sunday?

 

Beethoven? The pond really doesn't think you can blame the logarithms for having a crack at Beehoven's last ... the logarithms are just doing what a logarithms got to do ...

More disturbing is the way that Stevo seems oblivious to recent news ... which could have been found in the Daily Beast or the Graudian...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who knows what's going to happen. But one thing's certain, Killer Creighton has been silent of late and it seems that Stevo is determined to become the new Killer ...

 

 

Oh fucketty fuck, not the masks. The pond thought that Killer had that bit of turf all to himself in the lizard Oz market ... and not more blather about gold standard Gladys, when Stevo in his very first gobbet seems to have forgotten about how upset he was about the achievements at that gold standard Canberra sheep station ...

There's more than a hint of anti-vaxxer in that gobbet and naturally that made the pond look around for some good news, and found it at C and L here ...

 First to start with the spoiler ...

 

 

 And then the text ...

 

It has to be said that there's a morbid fascination to be found visiting sorryantivaxxer.com ...

It reminds the pond of an uncle who during the holidays used to drag everyone around cemeteries to inspect gravestones, causes of death, years lived, and such like. 

In later life, he turned into a hermit, and saw very few people, arguing with family members, and eventually dying alone ... they didn't find his body for a couple of days, and only then because the neighbours raised the alarm...

So it goes ...

 

Really, really fucking weird, and it certainly puts Killer Creighton in his place...

Poor old Killer couldn't manage that level of hyperventilating hysteria.

Personally speaking, having recently attended a Covid-inspired funeral service, the pond is grateful that this country decided not to follow the insanity abroad in the United States, and remarkably showed more competence - largely thanks to the states - than Boris or many European countries.

There's nothing that beats living as a lifestyle choice ... and being deeply conservative, the pond is in favour of a conservative approach to living. 

You won't find the pond breaking stop signs, driving on the wrong side of the road, refusing to wear a seat belt, or tearing off a mask, and crying freedumb or death ... in fact, perhaps the most dangerous thing the pond does is read the likes of Stevo, because you never know when dementia might take a grip and you find yourself thinking he's sounding sensible.

Next thing you know you're out in the back yard howling at the moon ...

 

A full, A grade, certifiable loon, full of rhetorical flourishes of the adolescent kind, and surely a fitting way to end a Sunday meditation.

The pond devoured too many cartoons yesterday, but here's one for Stevo ...

 

And here's TT, with more at Daily Kos here ... and the spirit of Stevo is at one with these many splendoured freedumb fighters ...

In which the bromancer, the dog botherer and "Ned" go into a pub, and never shut up ...

 

 

The pond was on high alert, though not necessarily alarmed ...

The Keane one at Crikey had issued this "watch the reptiles" alert yesterday in relation to the mutton Dutton and his barely concealed ambitions...

 

 

A bat-signal from the reptiles?

The tree killer edition seemed to bode well for signs and portents, with the brave warrior Mr Potato Head firing a shot across the bow  ...

 

 

But there seemed to be mixed signals in the digital edition ...

 

 

The mutton Dutton was still top of the page, but the dog botherer was also there, insisting that our very own Pinocchio was still kicking goals ...

As always in a crisis, the pond first turned to the bromancer, seemingly celebrating Mr Potato Head's wise words ...

 

 

It was a good start, that snap of a ranting dictator, the new emperor, and not afraid to use his power on domestic and foreign enemies. Who wouldn't turn to a saviour of the mutton Dutton kind when confronted by such a fearsome, terrifying sight?

 

 

Hmmm, an historic speech, disciplined, balanced, unanswerable in its logic, nearly pitch-perfect in tone, and not his fault that there's a glaring gap ...

Need the pond say more? Surely we have a winner ...

 

And so to the fine print, and here the pond should warn that the bromancer was on song and shrieked at some great length ...

 

Ah, those wretched tanks. The pond should have known there'd be a few flies in the bromancer's ointment, and it seems that the mutton Dutton failed to give the right response ...

Still, with a bit of bromancer coaching, might he not make the grade?

 

 

There you go ... we now have a new dating system. BD and AD, and while we're at the moment in the "before Dutton" phase, how long before the anointed one, the new messiah helps us to AD? A new awareness ...

At this point, the pond should note that the reptiles inserted a click video featuring words from the new messiah, and while the pond has neutered it, still the key point in the chyron is worth noting ...

 

 

Would you like to know more? Sorry, the pond has much more bromancer business to follow ...

 

 

At this point the pond was deeply shocked. Fancy withholding strategic information from Australia's top general!

How on earth could the bromancer conduct an asymmetrical war without full details? Surely the first stage of any military strategy is to publish details of state of readiness and strength in a national paper of the reptile kind? How else  to handle national security? Why the bromancer is still rounding up his resources for his war on China by Xmas, and they're not to the Field Marshall's satisfaction ...

 

 

Ah, it's a completely unacceptable mess ... but the mess belongs to? The Morrison government!

Surely with a new messiah in the shape of a potato, and the bromancer as the country's top Generalfeldmarschall, things could improve ...

 

 

At the end of it all, the pond was uncertain as to what the entrails were telling it ... 

Sure there was a final contemptuous flick of the hair at the Morrison government, but there was also a surly, curly tone to that talk of delivering great speeches but not delivering the goods required for the bromancer to start the war with China, and possibly world war three, by Xmas ...

Even worse for the Keane thesis, the dog botherer seemed not to have heard the news, and was busy providing fortifications for the old guard ...

 

The pond was immediately forced into a defensive posture, feeling the need to apologise at the get go. The pond does whatever it can to avoid leaking more Leak into the mainstream, this being a wretched example of an apple that fell very close to a weirdly warped tree ...

But there it is, and the pond soiled, and no chance to deploy an infallible Pope or an immortal Rowe in response, because we must get on with it ... 

Oh wait, there is one infallible Rowe to be found here, which offers some comedy in relation to the bromancer, and should get the dog botherer going ...

 

 

 

 

That's better, the pond needed that, because there's another long and tedious read in the making ...

It goes without saying that a natural born liar would naturally defend another natural born liar ... the dog botherer after all served time with both Lord Downer and Malware, before infesting Sky News after dark ... but the pond suspects all that righteous talk of the hideousness of personal attacks will soon fly out the window with a personal attack ...

 

There you go, it takes a really good hater to deliver that talk about the haters hating ... and in the process deliver a really good hating of the Tingle and Ramsey ... look, there's even a snap of the hateful couple, while Mark Latham's name is invoked ...

 

Clearly the attacks on SloMo have got under the dog botherer's skin, and there's every sign that they're working, but the pond was still waiting for a classic reptile sign that the dog botherer knew how to hate, and sure enough it finally came ...

 

Oh how the reptiles love to hate, how they love their punching bags ... and how they love that snap. 

In fact, they loved it so much, that it featured at the top of another story ... and what do you know, for the dog botherer illustration, they clipped out the reference to the much feared and loathed comrade Dan ... a lovely punching bag for the reptiles' personal attacks ...

 

More of that anon, perhaps in the pond's Sunday meditation ...  because for the moment, the pond must wrap up the hater delivering a jolly good hating ...

 

Yep, the reptiles are in a right royal pickle. It would take the pond all day to unpick all the scares in that final gobbet of the DBScare campaign, and unfortunately there's still a labour of Hercules to go ...

All the pond can note is that it seems that the reptiles, or at least the dog botherer, are going to stick by their Pinocchio, and the mutton Dutton will have to wait his turn ...

 

 

 

The pond sometimes wonders why it keeps on climbing the "Ned" Everest, but the simplest answer is because it's there ...

The pond could dress it up as a grand labour ... but it's all just in a day's work ...

(1) the slaying of the Nemean bromancer, whose skin she thereafter wore; (2) the slaying of the nine-headed dog bothering Hydra of Lerna; (3) the capture of the elusive "Ned" (or stag) of Arcadian reptile la la land …

So it's on with the hunt or the climb or whatever, but rest assured, it will be excessively long and tedious, and there will be no pause for the weak ...

An appeal to a higher order? Even before the blather begins the pond couldn't resist throwing in a cartoon ...

 

That might be an inspiration to some, but the pond must settle ... this is a long, winding, and tortured road, with the usual "Ned" handwringing and Chicken Little sighing at the sky ...

Of fuck it, full overblown portentous prose ... no doubt ripe for a "Ned" podcast, but the pond felt the need for another cartoon ...

 

WWJD?

He'd read "Ned" so he could finally understand the folly of all that nonsense he started long ago ... and clearly the reptiles felt the same because they slipped in a stained glass window joke ... back to the days of the cult masters when impostors of the leaking kind were just a dream, or a nightmare ...

Indeed, indeed ...

 

Okey dokey, time to settle down and do some hard yards, with a bit of bothsiderism, skewed mightily towards SloMo ...

This might suggest he might be a barking mad fundamentalist Xian, with the barking mad reptiles of the Catholic Boys' Daily fully on side ...

Indeed, indeed ...

 

Sorry, it should have been an educational institution ... but the pond has been shedding tears of blood for the unjust persecution of all those Xians out there, whose only crime is to cast the unrepentant into an eternity of hellfire, and perhaps while in the land of the living,  deliver unto them the odd persecution or shunning or shaming or whatever ...

 

 

What religion says disability is caused by the devil?

Pardon the pond's French, but what a fuckwit. This, here, in passing, in a paper about the treatment of the disabled in Kenya ...

 

 

Yes, everyone knows that disability is caused by God, as a just and righteous punishment for the wicked ... and don't get the pond started on sodomy and such like ... but soon enough the pond will be able to smite and smote mightily, all thanks to the marketing man ...

Phew, the pond was lucky that it only cracked a little right at the end of the journey, and now there's just one short gobbet to go, and they said that cartoons couldn't help the pond get through a scaling of the "Ned" Everest ...

 

The pond usually likes to give Kudelka a day's grace before referencing the Saturday Paper here ...but this is an extreme emergency, and the pond, having sinned mightily with impure thoughts and deeds and much reading of the reptiles,  wants to redeem itself ... wants to celebrate the reptile saviour in action ...

 

That's going to leave the pond short of cartoons for its Sunday meditation, but as they say, tomorrow is another day ...