It's Friday, as good a day as any for the rats to maintain the rage with the rat ...

(Above:the Terror maintains the rage. All the leadership scandal that's fit and unfit to print).

The tone of the tabloid Terror is set by its gaggle of right-wing commentariat ratbags. And what a rabble gaggle they are ...

But how, you ask - since rhetorical questions from the void are always handy - do you know this?

Well take the "exclusive" in today's Terror by Simon Benson, announcing Kevin Rudd branded a coward as Julia gags her MPs.

Embedded within the "exclusive" beat-up is a ritual denunciation of the gagging Gillard, and the now standard whipping up of more foam-flecked frothing about a leadership frenzy, comes the invitation to blog with ....

... Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Miranda the Devine, and Piers "AC/DC" Akerman.

Oh come on, could we sup with the devil instead, perhaps on a little goats head soup?

Have we just stumbled across the four horsepersons of the apocalypse, or merely a few heads of the hydra? We merely ask rhetorical questions and you decide.

Meanwhile, the Terror continues to maintain its war with Peter Slipper, whom it loves to show as a rat with whiskers.

Now it's a rat with a bow tie, as featured in Patrick "the Lion-hearted" Lion's Speaking of swank, take a bow Peter Slipper. (No, the pond never calls the zoo asking to speak to Ana Conda or Rory Lyons or even G. Raffe, like they do in Ireland with the Dublin zoo).

Lion of course is intent on proving that talk of attacks on Gillard's hairstyle and dress and manner and femaleness is not idle sexist chitter chatter, because men can be similarly accused of mincing and poncing and bunging on a do. Yes, sexism can go anyway you like.

Call it a reverse striptease. Speaker Peter Slipper upped the parliamentary fashion stakes again yesterday, adding a crisp white bow tie to his increasingly flamboyant wardrobe as he oversees the antics of question time.

Oh the shock, the shame and the front page horror. The man dares to wear a bow tie in parliament, thereby distracting the rest of us from the strange white streaks in Gillard's carrot top.

Now you know where to turn for breath-taking insights into parliament, and the compelling issues of the age.

The Terror rides at the top of parliamentary fashion, and promises to keep paying attention to this vital and compelling new variant in sexism:

"He has worn something different each day thus far," the Speaker's spokeswoman said.
"I imagine we will have to wait and see what he brings out next week."

And so we will.

Oh no, not that, anything but that. Can you throw me into the briar patch instead?

Can't you just run another picture of Slipper as a rat? Or perhaps spend an endless amount of time yammering about whether he's actually a priest, as they did in the bizarre new religion and ethics report on the ABC, The Priest in the Parliament.

But stay, you ask - since rhetorical questions are ever so handy - was there any word from the Lion Heart about Slipper's actual performance? Apart from the news that he booted out Wyatt Roy, and that his love of fancy dress of the pomp and glory kind is ... tradition-loving and conservative-loving, and looking back to the past-loving?

Not really, for that you'll have to trot off to Crikey, and A note of civility, care of Slipper. It seems Slipper doesn't give a rats about who he offends:

Yes, he whose head is still being photoshopped into a rat on the front of The Daily Telegraph, who was widely maligned for the rumour that he was about to wig-out for his new role (he opted for a slick robe instead, the choice of coalition speakers before him), the man for whom the word “Slippery” is usually fronting his first name, is actually garnering some good reviews.

You can find links to the good reviews there, but keep it up and maintain the Terror rage lion-heart, and whatever you do, never dress in anything other than a white non-iron nylon shirt and a brown pair of slacks, perhaps with fawn socks while writing your incandescent stories of rage about the perfidy of bow-ties.

Meanwhile, speaking of blogging with the Devine, we caught up with her latest petulant outburst about an anti-smoking advertisement on the back of a bus, and how the sight of some unseemly blood on a hankie from the driver's seat caused her great upset. It's all here in Forget coughing up blood - I nearly vomited up my lunch.

Which raised the point as to what might be more unsightly.

A spot of blood on a hankie in true romantic Keatsian style, or - inspired by the header -imagining the Devine vomiting up her lunch in a car. Chundering, barfing, doing a technicolor yawn, spending her round trip meal ticket, as Bazza might say ...

Phew, waiter, bring me a hankie, so I can cough a little blood ...

Yes those were the days. Consumption (tuberculosis to you), pale languishing, lofty melancholy, the suffering of Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Manne, the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frederic Chopin ... blood everywhere and yet they struggled on, and created art, and here's the weak-kneed Devine thinking about vomiting up her lunch because she's seen a spot of blood ...

And we fondly thought of her as the Lady Macbeth of the commentariat blogotariat ...

At the time of writing, a day after the posting, only one person had bothered to blog with the Devine:

Because it's unpleasant, because the model is not pretty, because it forced you to think about real health issues that affect every single Australian you want it gone? I say to you, grow up and stop being so selfish...

And so say all of us ... or at least the pond.

And now, since there's much more to life than politics, and it's Friday, and since poor old Dennis Atkins is feeling his age and his grey hair in What happened on the road to Splendour in the Grass, and since the notorious Ryan Adams is touring, here's the pond's favourite Adams' song.

First set the scene Billy Wordsworth:

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind. (the rest here)

Now take it away Mr. Adams ...

Hang on, hang on, you kindly ask, you lover of rhetorical questions, what about intellectual property rights?

Oh heck, it's not a misuse of intellectual property rights by The Punch and the pond, why it's just fair use to set the mood (and if you believe that, are you ready for a job at News Corp or what, since embracing contradictions is the prime ingredient needed to become a Murdoch warrior).

You see The Punch merely linked to Ryan Adams and the Cardinals in session and recorded by the BBC, and nothing wrong with that:

What was that The Punch said about loading up its pages with free videos from YouTube? It's on the intertubes so it's all fair game?

Strange, here's the message you get with the pond's actual favourite Ryan Adams' song:

Oh well, we've put it up, and if it doesn't play, at least you can watch it on YouTube. So at last, here it is the pond's favourite Ryan Adams track:

By golly, the pond is going out to rip a movie by Twentieth Century-Fox today, and expects Chairman Rupert's full approval ...