In which the pond celebrates world famous climate scientist Moorice, thanks to the lizards of Oz ...

Credit where credit is due, and the pond honours the work of valiant Lloydie, given a splash in the tree killer edition and top of the page - or even the world - in the digital edition ...

And the pond honours the Terrorist's Tuesday attempt to provide the pond with distractions, as it continues deep in mourning for the Mooch gone missing, with only crossing the floor and the Caterists offered up as alternative sources of fun ...

It's pleasing to see that the arm-breaker's work is never done, and after his exemplary military service and sacrifice for his country - well there's no medal for battling taxi drivers and breaking their arms, but it's a noble duty all the same -  how joyous that he should head out to break a few TG arms ...

Yes, if anyone's in a position to talk about weakened Western nations, it's someone bludging for life on a handsome parliamentary pension ...

And there was sweet Marcus, thoroughly alarmed, but truth to tell, the pond has been alert and alarmed for a long time ...how was it possible to try and deny Australia's terror threat after that epic dust up in Broken Hill?

The pond likes to drag that story out every so often - funnily enough the pics come from the Smithsonian here, though Abdullah Mullah scored his own ABD listing here ...

And then there's Trove, where searching for Battle of Broken Hill produces a splendid array of hits ...

Okay, that's just by way of an extended tease...

Anyone who noted the header would have realised that the pond was going to pay heed to Moorice, unless they're in the habit of skipping any email heading of the Russian - Clinton kind before heading off to a meeting...

It should go without saying that the pond was going to devote itself to the latest offering from one of the world's greatest climate scientists ...

Now please don't ask the pond to list Moorice's many scientific credentials, just read and absorb the lesson for the day ...

Oh okay, and given the way that Moorice berates crony capitalists, the pond will admit that Moorice knows whereof he scribbles ... see this short CV at Macquarie University here  ...

The pond knew there was a reason it disliked Macquarie - but please, pay heed to the many, many scientific honours that have adorned Moorice's tremendous, illustrious career in science ... the CV positively groans under news of all his astonishing work ...

The pond had another reason for introducing this bit of star-studded scientific CV padding.

You see, the second Moorice gobbet is distressingly short.

Oh sure, it establishes a gigantic world conspiracy, no doubt funded by the United Nations as a way of introducing world government by Christmas ...

... but as the pond remembered while sitting down recently on a sentimental journey to re-watch Annie Hall, it was all over much too quickly.

Despite Allen's later disgrace, it's still a funny show, albeit one now with a remarkable period sheen to it, of lost times and lost tribes, and it began with a joke now aged, hoary and much repeated ... 

There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says: "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such ... small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.

And the same could be said of Moorice. Full of conspiracies and rage and shouting at clouds and climate scientists and much unhappiness, and yet it's all over much too quickly ...

There's another joke too ...

The other important joke for me is one that's, uh, usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but I think it appears originally in Freud's wit and its relation to the unconscious. And it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing: Uh ... "I would never wanna belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life in terms of my relationships with women. Tsch, you know, lately the strangest things have been going through my mind, 'cause I turned forty, tsch, and I guess I'm going through a life crisis or something, I don't know. I, uh ... and I'm not worried about aging. I'm not one o' those characters, you know. Although I'm balding slightly on top, that's about the worst you can say about me. I, uh, I think I'm gonna get better as I get older, you know? I think I'm gonna be the- the balding virile type, you know, as opposed to say the, uh, distinguished gray, for instance, you know? 'Less I'm neither o' those two. Unless I'm one o' those guys with saliva dribbling out of his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag screaming about socialism.

Wait for it, it's a slow build to that guy with saliva dribbling out of his mouth, wandering into the lizard Oz with a shopping bag screaming about international conspiracies and socialism  ...

And so to the pond cartoon for the day ...

The pond has already noted this bizarre natural phenomenon, observed in South Australia recently, featuring a remarkable, motley gathering of crow eaters ...

It came to the attention of Rowe, who sagely noted that there was something in the water that explained the phenomenon, with more sage Rowe available here ...

And now, with the pond still deep in mourning, it's simply unable to let go the Mooch - 2.738m hits and rising testify to the Mooch's star pulling power. Oh how he'll be missed ...