February 29, 2020

FEB 29, Carolina lowcountry: unusual wildlife


a dock-coyote


ecology; plastic pollution; Mt Pleasant;South Carolina;  Giorgio Coniglio
Pete the Plastic Pelican
garden decor; plastic; kitsch; South Carolina
lawn unicorn, Mt. Pleasant, SC



a flock of flamingos







February 28, 2020

FEB 28, American satire: Disingenuous Don




Author's Note: Rex Tillerson, formerly a petroleum-industry executive, served for just over a year as Secretary of State under the contentious 45th president. Tillerson disagreed with his chief on a number of issues, the press reporting that Tillerson had referred to his boss as a "moron". Although this report was denied, Tillerson was publicly challenged by his leader to an IQ contest, and then was summarily fired in March 2018.


We hope that you enjoyed this verse. You can find 30 more on this topic in 5 collections on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE to start!  

February 27, 2020

FEB 27, a brief saga: sabal palmetto trees












trees; sabal palmetto; swamp cabbage; Mt. Pleasant; South Carolina











Authors' NoteSabal palmettosnative trees growing along the southeastern and Gulf coastlines of the United States, are also distributed and planted in the temperate portions of the country further west.


You can review these illustrated verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Uprooted Verse: 'Poems
 about Trees' on the full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". 



February 26, 2020

FEB 26, the Charleston garden: garden-tour docent

gardens; docent; Giorgio Coniglio






You can review these illustrated verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Poetry Praising the Charleston Garden' on the full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE!



February 25, 2020

FEB 25, American satire: 'covfefe'







We hope that you enjoyed this verse. You can find 30 more on this topic in 5 collections on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE to start! 

February 24, 2020

FEB 24, canal verses: the Paris canal - St-Martin




              

You can discover a bunch of silly illustrated poems about canals by checking out the collection on "Edifying Nonsense" entitled "Panama Palindrome Parodies".

February 23, 2020

FEB 23, insects: fire ants



Authors' Note: The authors note, with regret, and with continuing scratching of their inflamed ankles, the opening of the 'fire ant season'.      




Even in the winter, they can be activated.
Watch out!




You can review Giorgio's other verses about pesty and occasionally beneficial insects, as  collected in 'Buzzwords: Verses about Insects' on the full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE.







February 22, 2020

Feb 22, bottom line of medical humor: gastro-intestinal pact



Authors' Note: The concept of a formal truce was approached by both parties following the authors' misguided indulgence in the preparation for an endoscopic procedure. 

 You can view these informative verses in a wider context by proceeding to the collection 'The BOTTOM LINE of MEDICAL HUMOR' on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE!

February 21, 2020

FEB 21, American satire: revision of NAFTA




Author's Note: NAFTA is the acronym for the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact formed by the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 1994. The trilateral pact has been the target of invective, and the subject of renegotiations by the Republican administration in 2017 to 2019.


We hope that you enjoyed this verse. You can find 30 more on this topic in 5 collections on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE to start!  



February 20, 2020

FEB 20 (2020), singable satire: "CONSTANTINOPOLIS" (the seer of Byzantion)

 PARODY SONG-LYRICS


ORIGINAL SONG: "Moscow Nights"(Подмосковные вечера Podmoskovnie vechera), Chad Mitchell Trio, 1963. You can listen to the well-known Trio's version on YouTube here, or a version with English translation here.
The original was created as "Leningrad Nights" by composer Solovyov-Sedoi and poet Matusovsky in 1955, but changed at the request of the Ministry of Culture for use in a documentary about a national athletic competition. The tune was subsequently popularized in the West, in the middle of the Cold War era, by Van Cliburn in 1958, and recorded with commercial success by Kenny Ball and the Jazzmen, and the Chad Mitchell Trio in the early 60s. 

PARODY COMPOSED: Dr. G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio (registered pseudonym) , August 2018. This post deals with Graeco-Roman history during the Byzantine period, and was in part inspired by trips to Turkey and Greece, as well as by the song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", a swing-era hit with a very catchy tune whose lyrics are a bit truncated re history.

UKULELE and GUITAR-FRIENDLY LINK: Our whole series of songs can be found in a friendly format for ukulele (and guitar)-players on our sister blog "SILLY SONGS and SATIREwith chord-charts for both the parody and original song, as well as helpful performing suggestions. 
Click HERE to proceed to this site.


CONSTANTINOPOLIS

(to the tune of "Moscow Nights")


Said Byzántion’s seer,* “Constantine will found,
Nova Roma, his new cosmopolis.
They’ll construct right here;  
Then we Greeks will cheer
Rome’s second home: Constanti-no-po-lis.” 

“In Rome’s legions march with a martial sound,
They’ll build Fourth Century’s eastern cosmopolis --
Grand Sophia’s dome,
And a huge Hippodrome
Rome’s second home: Constanti-no-po-lis.”

“Who’ll unite this Empire too vast to rule?
Few the Caesars who exert such might.
Year Three-Ninety-Five (395 A.D.),
Things take a permanent dive --
East/West will split; West drops out of sight.

“In clean-shaven West, ‘barbarians’ storm the gates,
Middle Ages will settle there to stay.
Vandals, Lombards, Goths –
Old stomping grounds get lost,
Down East here, ‘Roman’ power’ll hold sway.”

“Who will dogma craft for new Christian creed?
Peter’s primacy;  Roman popes’ll.
We’ll counter Holy See
With Eastern Orthodoxy,
Here in Byzantine Constan-ti-nople.”

“Vicious wars with neighbours” quoth our sooth-saying seer,
Peering in his Prophet-Kit prism,   
“Charlemagne and Popes
Will undermine our hopes,
And result in an East-West Schism.”

“Things take a bad turn with the Fourth Crusade,
Frankish knights, their mission quite hopeless --   
Retake Holy Lands?
But no! They’ll change their plans,
Seize and ‘Latinize’ Constantinopolis.”

 “Fifty years to rid the place of Latin louts
Then two centuries, invasions we’ll stop. All this
Has an end, it’s clear.”
States our seer, with tear,
"When Turks topple Constantinopolis.”

Then we took our seer out for lunch that day
To a small café by the Bosporus.
Name of the café
Where we ate that day,
Was ‘Istanbul (Not Constantinopolis)’.

*  the prediction was made by the Seer early in the fourth century A.D.
Byzántion (Greek), later known as Byzantium (Latin) was at that time a moderate-sized Greek colony-city on the Bosporus. It was chosen by the Roman Emperor Constantine to become the eastern capital of his empire.
As capital of the Roman Empire (also called Romania), the grand city was known as Constantinopolis, or Konstantinoupolis, for most of its history, i.e. until 1453 A.D. (later as Istanbul by the Turks). The term 'Byzantine Empire' has only been in use by Western historians since that time.

February 19, 2020

FEB 19, waterfowl: Canada geese










occasional aggressive stance adopted by a Canada goose,
as suggested here 


You can review a collection of illustrated verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Immersible Verse: Limericks about Waterfowl' on the full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. 






February 18, 2020

FEB 18, pathos and poetry (gun control verse): Second Amendment rights

 




We hope that you enjoyed this verse. You can review our entire poetic outpouring on the important topic of gun control by proceeding to a post on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'; click HERE.



Also, you can find 30 more verses on the topic 'American Satire" in 5 collections on  'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE to start! 




February 17, 2020

FEB 17, wordplay maps: American Scramble-towns 1,2


Who would ever have guessed? It turns out that an unparalleled word in generating anagrams (letter scrambles) is P-A-L-I-N-D-R-O-M-E-S. We have taken advantage of that property to create this unique series of wordplay maps of imaginary American (and Canadian) locales, each one completed by its official two-letter state (or provincial) abbreviation. 









LINKS: 
Forward to U.S.A. map #3







February 16, 2020

FEB 16, non-sequitur: epistaxis

 Here's a verse that exemplifies use of the prefix EPI- ...



Authors' Note
peccadillo: loan-word from Spanish meaning 'little sin’
epistaxis (eh-pih-STAK-sihs): bleeding from the nostrils
  


Our collection of 'Non-Sequiturs' on our parent blog "Edifying Nonsense", contains an admittedly bizarre assortment of nonsensical odds-and-ends, that don't quite fit into other topic-based offerings. But should you want to review the entire collection, click HERE.

February 15, 2020

FEB 15, wordplay maps: new world palindromes (#7,#8)

TO ENLARGE any slide or stand-alone photo on this blog, just click on it. To reverse the process, and return to this standard view, find the little 'x' in the upper right corner of the black field and click there.











You can view the entire collection of these 50 wordplay maps, by accessing the collection 'Tourists Palindromic Guides: The Americas'. Start by clicking HERE

February 14, 2020

FEB 14, holidays and celebrations: Valentine's Day

TO ENLARGE any slide or stand-alone photo on this blog, just click on it. To reverse the process, and return to this standard view, find the little 'x' in the upper right corner of the black field and click there.


"The Kiss" by Auguste Rodin, marble, 1882
(photo by G.C. at Rodin Museum, Paris, 2019)












February 13, 2020

FEB 13, classic palindrome: 'never odd or even'




Authors' Note: 

odd or even: binary classification of whole real numbers, related to basic counting, as in the idiomatic ‘counting sheep’ remedy for insomnia
never odd or even: classic palindrome that seems to revel, perhaps excessively, in the profusion of numbers that cannot be classified by the above simple scheme


You can review these illustrated verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Reversing Verse: Limericks About Classic Palindromes' on the full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. 





February 12, 2020

FEB 12, magical palindromes: examples #6 to #10






You can become an expert fan of our wordplay concoction 'magical palindromes' by reviewing the explanatory material found in ancient days on our full-service blog "Edifying NonsenseHERE; then, you could check how we applied this technique to 'canal palindromes' by viewing this more recent post.

February 11, 2020

FEB 11, garden intruders: common (eastern) moles


Keep more to yourself for a while, wash your hands frequently, remember to laugh on occasion, and stay well!








Readers, you are fortunate to have available all our poetic comments on creatures (animal and vegetable), devoted to subverting your gardening plans. To view this collection on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense", click HERE!


February 10, 2020

FEB 10, poets' corner: the depressed poet




Authors' Note   In the limerick verse, neologisms include dehiscitude (reminiscent of 'dehiscence'), and remissitude (reminiscent of being 'remiss' in the sense of 'culpable'). Wound dehiscence, or 'failure of primary (wound) closure', is a feared surgical complication, found mostly in the province of abdominal surgeons and trauma surgeons; it seldom affects the professional practice of psychiatrists or limericists.
     

You can find lots of other verses on this blog under the listing "Poets' Corner".  Click HERE.

links for any date: scroll over to the calendar-based listings of 'Past Posts' in the righthand column on this page, choose your year and then month of interest, and then select (by clicking) the post of your choice.


February 9, 2020

FEB 9, anagram swarm: tribute to a Senator



Picking up on last week's news, here is our tribute to an individual, Senator Mitt Romney, who decided to voice his opinion, even if that would result in invective and scorn being heaped on him by those who hoped to pressure him to toe the 'party-line'.


(You can enlarge any slide or individual photo on this website by clicking on it. To exit the viewing-mode, click the small 'x' in the right upper corner of the blackened field.)


wordplay maps; anagrams; American politics; Mitt Romney; political parties; postal abbreviations





February 8, 2020

FEB 8, wordplay maps: new world palindromes (#5,#6)













You can view the entire collection of these 50 wordplay maps, by accessing the collection 'Tourists Palindromic Guides: The Americas'. Start by clicking HERE


February 7, 2020

FEB 7, a continuing brief saga: Chemainus, British Columbia part #2

Continuing from part #1 (the first three stanzas of this six-verse poem) ...
Click HERE to see part #1.








Authors' Note:   For ecological reasons, the mining of uranium has been banned in British Columbia for several decades. Uranium has been extensively extracted from pitchblende ore at sites elsewhere in Canada, and is present in the reduced or 'uranous' chemical state.
   In the late 1890s, copper, gold and silver were discovered at Mt. Sicker on Vancouver Island. A gold-rush ensued, and mines were operated profitably in the area until 1909.   
   Today, the town of Chemainus (sheh-MAYN-uhs) is best known for its extensive exterior wall-murals which depict the history of its once-thriving resource extraction industries.
   The Dominion Astrophysical Laboratory, site of many important discoveries about the Milky Way, is located 70 km south, in Saanich BC.


 For the purpose of this blog, a 'brief saga' is defined as a poem, usually narrative, but occasionally expository, that tell its story in at least 15 lines. Most commonly, the format involves three stanzas in limerick form. Your blogging team has been presenting these concoctions at the rate of one per month, mixed in with the shorter poems, wordplay and other  and other general offerings.    
To access the next 'brief saga' on this blog, proceed to 'Walrus and Carpenter (Carolina lowcountry version)' .

 

February 6, 2020

FEB 6, Carolina lowcountry: Shipping News



News simulation; cargo ships; Sullivan's Island; South Carolina; Giorgio Coniglio



And a more current news story (see yesterday's blogpost)...

                
                                                             DAILY ILLUSTRATED NONSENSE
American politics; impeachment; Charleston SC Post and Courier;