The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

It's been a while since I have posted anything from my all time favorite cartoonist. Generally because so much of his stuff recently has been about local politics which requires too much explaining for anyone overseas.

But this one reminds me of the Golden Age for political cartoonists when they had Trump, Bojo, Bolsonsaro and Trump to play with.

I am still peeved that FUX settled the Dominion libel case. The court case would have been worthy of its own television series.

As always with David Rowe, the Devil is in the details.

It is hard to believe that it's the day before the election.
Exactly 3 years and a day or two since the 2019 May Miracle that got Scott Morrison the top job for the last 3 years. It feels more like 33.

Back then he had only been in the job for 8 months and aside from the odd rant about the joys of coal, he had not done too much to piss many people off.

That all changed in December 2019 when he was in Hawaii on holiday while Australia burnt. I don't think most people resent a Prime Minister having a Christmas get away with his family. But it was what he did when the shit hit the fan that revealed his true character.
He tried to hide the fact that he was away on holiday. He did not return to Oz as soon as he realized the seriousness of the fires but tried to lay low hoping it would all blow over. Then he really put his foot in his mouth firstly by insisting that Jen and the kids wanted to go to Hawaii, then the immortal words that may be written on his gravestone "I don't hold a hose, mate"

Ted Cruz then did an encore of sQomo's performance by escaping to Mexico while Texas froze.

When Scott Morrison finally returned and did the hard hat, hi vis tour of the bushfire affected areas, he managed to turn it into a bunch of sQomo photo ops. Particularly appalling were the endless rounds of non consensual hand shakes with exhausted fire fighters who had every right to be peeved because in April of the previous year, a group of them repeatedly tried to get meetings with him to warn about the upcoming fire seasons from hell along with a list of actions to mitigate such disasters. sQomo kept fobbing them off.

The Feds did reasonably well during the beginning of the COVID pandemic but mainly because they were dragged kicking and screaming by the states. sQomo wanted to do a Boris Johnson. Just let it rip, herd immunity etc long before a vaccine was even near the drawing board.

Then he spent the best part of 2021 pissing off the women of Australia with the cover ups of a rape that took place in the offices of Parliament a few doors down from his office. Then the stories came out about dirty deeds done on desks and how the cleaning crew was sent in to the rape crime scene instead of detectives.

I can only hope that Australia thinks of 3 more years of sQomo the same way that the USA thought of 4 more years of trump.

The alternative Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has done a lot of stumbling, bumbling and fumbling on the election trail but I'd rather vote for a party led by some one incompetent but decent who delegates to the smartest people in the room (which he had to do when he came down with Covid while on the campaign trail) rather than a party that cares only about big coal, big gas and big bucks led by a nasty narcissist who is not only incompetent but also malevolent.

A creep who tackles seven year old kids at a football game just for photo ops. Such a lack of judgement is far worse than not knowing the current Reserve Bank cash rate or the unemployment rate.
Because it is much easier to change what you know than to change your character.

If sQomo does get the boot, I will be all ears to hear what Emmanuael Macron will have to say about it.

No need to knife a man who is already committing political suicide.

It's one thing having your enemies say nasty things about you but when the worst insults are coming from your own side, then you really have problems.


I guess sQomo will pull the election trigger sometime this weekend. I bet he wishes he could do a Xi or a Putin and declare himself to be Prime Monster for the next 20 years.

The latest date he can choose is Saturday 21st May. Only 2 months ago, that seemed very safely far away. But now sQomo will definitely need another miracle to win this time.

Since I live in a marginal seat, life is about to get very interesting.

I've just crawled out of the serpent snooze sack for a quick Christmas squiggle. Once again, I keep procrastinating when it comes to going near the Big Mac.

Normally at this time of day, I would be out and about watering the weeds. But it is still nearly 40 celsius outside. I got in early and did the poor critters this morning around 6am when it was still a gorgeous cool and breezy morning. I watched the birds flittering about and the odd gecko or two scurrying up and down the old gum tree. But by 9am I had gone inside and battened down the hatches. I put down the roller shutters on the eastern windows and sliding door and they will not be coming up again until some time on Tuesday when this infernal weather comes to an end.

Last Christmas we also had a 40 degree day but then I could stay out in the garden until midday before it finally got too hot. I think it cooled down a bit the next day. This time the heatwave started on Friday with a 39 and we will have a 44 tomorrow, a 40 on Monday followed by a 39 on Tuesday. But the devil is in the detail. With minimum temperatures of 25 plus, there will be a lot of sleepless nights for anyone with air conditioning or fans in the house.

Meanwhile, Covid has finally found its way to Dursleyville. The first i heard of it was an email from Transperth informing all potential passengers that masks would be mandatory on all public transport as of 6pm that evening.

An unvaccinated backpacker arrived from Queensland just one hour before the deadline where Queensland changed status from low to medium risk. After midnight all inbound travelers from there needed to be double vaxxed or to go into 14 days quarantine.

He had been night clubbing most of last weekend then suddenly fell sick on Wednesday. He took a Covid test and it came back positive. So that was the trigger for the mask mandate.
No snap lockdown like last time but all the close and even casual contacts from a very large list of hot spots are exepcted to go into isolation for 14 days with varying rules for the 2 different categories.

It turns out that Patient 1133 has the Delta variant and not the more infectious Omicron. i guess that explains why there are only 7 cases linked to him so far.

David Rowe delivers the most delicious Easter Eggs ever.


I guess the Silkie on the far left is Boris Johnson. I cannot find Barnaby Joyce near that roost but the Battery hen is a stroke of genius. (sQomo had been stealing - sorry - recycling - the electric vehicle policy that opposition party took to the 2019 Oz Federal Election)

I think this little tweek would make the Scomo monument the most brilliant thing ever. It would be hilarious if someone crowd funded it or at least got the David Rowe cartoon on a billboard or two. Mind you, that would be a huge conflict of interest for the artist if a political party was behind it.

Just when you think that David Rowe has reached the pinnacle of his powers, he produces yet another masterpiece. The last 4 weeks he has been on fire. The hottest ever. I am dying to see what he does with the gentle Santos joeys.

I am so hoping that sQomo bumps into Prince Charles at the hot air summit in Glasgow. They can compare kilts because they have nothing else in common. (I was supposed to update with all sorts of Dursleyville dramas but I am now far too brain dead especially when DW now does such wierd stuff with spacing)

I have watched hardly any Olympics at all but I will miss David Rowe's amazing Covid Coverage


. ( Track and Trace ) And that ends the Oz olympics coverage for another 3 years.


David Rowe has also drawn some amazing Trump toons too. It's much harder to find them now since his presidency is almost ancient history. I have saved hundreds of them. I really must download them to the Big Mac. Just the phone and the Google cloud is not sufficient for this paranoid python.

I have been a political cartoon junkie since the USSR invasion of Afghanistan and aside from the Irish Martin Turner, I have never encountered a cartoonist even remotely as good as Mr Rowe


PS This is the second time I have enountered the ghastly space stealers on Dreamwidth.

The monsters gobble all the paragraphs and space. I find that i have to go to Rich Text edit to fix up the fugliness.

Has anyone else had this problem?

There are just layers and layers of hidden Easter eggs in this wicked work. Aside from the obvious Covid cover ups and stuff ups, there is also a new book spilling the beans on the creeps in sQomo's Old Boys Club cabinet.



Menacing Controlling Wallpaper

In the meantime, I have been having my own dramas with tradies. No wall paper jobs. Just plumbers. First thing I have learned is that they operate in a world with the wierdest clocks.
A 9am job is considered EARLY if they turn up at 10am. 12.30 is more like it.

But beggars can't be choosers. It is a seller's market. I guess it always has been and don't they know it.

Meanwhile, over in the Badlands of Sydney, it turns out that the Gold Standard of contact tracing and containing the virus without SHUTTING DOWN THE ECONOMY has turned into lead. They are averaging 30 cases a day and with the more infectious Delta variant and exponential growth, those numbers are going to explode any day now.

Over here in the west we are the other extreme - going into short sharp lockdowns with only a couple of cases which has happened 3 times so far this year. I suspect they could safely up that number to 4 or 5 before triggering the nuclear option. But the virus and its variants have been around long enough now for people to see what happens when you just let it rip because The Economy. People who get sick don't go working or spending nor do people who are afraid of getting sick.

Look after people's health and the economy will take care of itself.

I have to wait another 6 weeks before getting my second dose of AZ. Since it's the first one that usually causes the trouble, if there is trouble, I guess I am pretty much out of the woods on that one.