NOV 30, singable satire: "POLYVINYL for MILLENIA"

SATIRICAL LYRICS

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS: "Carolina in the Morning" written 1922, best-known version is performed by Al Jolson.

PARODY COMPOSED:  Giorgio Coniglio, January 2014. The initial accompanying photos are borrowed from various online websites; the final pair are attributable to Giorgio and his trusty cellphone camera.

PARODY-SONGLINK: To find ukulele and guitar chord-charts to help you accompany "POLYVINYL for MILLENIA" on your favorite instrument, click HERE.

POLYVINYL for MILLENIA


(to the tune of "Carolina in the Morning")



What could be more drastic than our seas awash in plastic for millenia?
Plastic junk accumulates and traps or blocks the GI tracts of fauna.
Landfills are offenders; poly-bags wind blown,
Threatening fragile creatures in the intertidal zone.

Vortices of sea-dumped trash, like "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" keep growing;.
Astronauts can even spot them from their place in space; up there, they're showing.
If we had Aladdin's lamp and only one wish, 
We'd ask, not me, but seals, whales and fish - 
Every Jane and Michael, it's not hard, so please recycle all your pla-a-astic. 

What could be more drastic than our seas awash in plastic for millenia?
Particles accumulate, then hydrocarbons degradate in fauna.
Population's highest, polluting near the shore.
Altering constitution of the worldwide ocean floor.

Jellyfish get jealous of those gels the plankton relish for their vinyl,
Seasoning our seafood and inciting crude reactions that are final.
If we had Aladdin's lamp and only one wish, 
We'd ask, not me, but seals, whales and fish,

Every Jane and Michael, it's not hard, so please recycle all your pla-a-astic. 

real-life brown pelican
 perched on a post 

Pete, the  plastic pelican 

NOV 29, mammalian wildlife: horsing around

 You can review the whole collection of illustrated verses about mammals (both domestic and exotic) by checking out the more extensive post on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE !

NOV 28, decorative touches: "Oberlin Road" (fabric art)

 Y

 Decorative Touches: "Oberlin Road" 

 fabric art by R.C.H., presented with thanks

NOV 27, poets' corner: doggerel (brief sagas)

NOV 26, magical palindromes: more from Paris

 

You can become an expert fan of our wordplay concoction 'magical palindromes' by reviewing the explanatory material found  on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense" HERE.

NOV 25, submitted palindromes, RANDOM PILES 40

 

You have reached the "Submitted Palindromes" thread on the blog "Daily Edifying Nonsense", a light literary entity that emanates through the blogosphere daily (almost), i.e. 30 times per month.

  On the 25th of each month you will find a slide-filling group of palindromic phrases submitted to the editors by a panel of 7 palindromists. These folks have all been working on this project since January 2020. The personal profiles for each of these contributors are displayed in panels published here at the start of things, and then, we have asked them to provide (palindromically, of course) their views on one of the iconic items in the classic literature, starting with "A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama", continuing with other well-known phrases, such as "Dennis sinned". Otherwise, their contribution will be grouped in monthly random piles (a phrase that you might recognize as an anagram of the word p-a-l-i-n-d-r-o-m-e-s).

NOV 24, decorative touches: more abstract pieces (fabric art)

a) Diptych: "Countryside Abstract"

fabric art by R.C.H., presented with thanks

 b) "Decorative Touches: "Untitled Abstract"

fabric art by R.C.H., presented with thanks

NOV 23, Canadiana: crept and leaped

 

Authors' Note:   We have the good fortune in Canada, in some instances, of choosing either standard British grammar or the American version thereof. In the US, the commonly employed past tenses are "creeped" and "leaped"; these would alter the rhyming of the poem's second and fourth lines. A US-compatible version of this poem is also in the works, but to date preliminary efforts remain heaped under the carpet.

You can review poems, pictures and diverse nonsense related to Canada on the post "Canadiana" on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense".

NOV 22, pinkos (forward thinkers): vegetarianism

 

Authors' Note: The authors, Ontario anapestrians, have not eaten meat in two decades. The restaurant scene in Ontario, as in some other world-wide destinations, has gradually become more hospitable to vegan and vegetarian preferences, such as Theresa's and the authors'. This development can be attributed in part to our influx of newcomers from south and east Asia. Meat-eaters can still be readily accommodated, however.

You can help save the planet by viewing all our verses in this series at "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE!

You can review all the poems in our collection "Pinkos: forward thinkers" by clicking HERE.

NOV 21, ambulatory verse: reverse

Authors' Note: 

do a 180: a colloquialism for reversing direction deriving from half the number of degrees in a complete circle; here, as elsewhere, voiced as one-eighty

The author, an old palindromist, finds it appropriate to mention in the context of 'doing a 180', a few palindromic phrases using the verb reverse. These include:

Codes reverse, Doc; Noses reverse, son; Dikes reverse, kid; 

Drawer: sides reversed is ... reward; and the very dark Nooses reverse soon. 

NOV 20, singable satire:- "TURKEY LEFTOVERS", a pair-ody for Thanksgiving

PASTICHE with PARODY LYRICS subbed into TWO WELL-KNOWN SEASONAL SONGS, another pairody.

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS:

Original Song#1: "The Christmas Song" (Chestnuts...), written by Wells and Tormé  in 1944, and recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio 1946.

Original Song #2: "Good King Wenceslas", John Mason Neale 1853, but often now mistakenly referred to as 'traditional'. Neale's piece, (based on accounts of the Bohemian Wenceslas legend, and a 13th century 'spring- carol tune) was highly criticized in the 1920s as "ponderous moral doggerel"; see the interesting description in the Wikipedia essay on this topic.

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, January, 2015. 

PARODY-SONGLINK: To find ukulele (or guitar) chord-charts to help you accompany "TURKEY LEFTOVERS" on your favorite instrument, click HERE. 

TURKEY LEFTOVERS

(to the tune of The Christmas Song - "Chestnuts Roasting")

Essay featured in Economist,
Turkeys' origins disclosed -
Centerpiece of each year's Yuletide feast,
Subspecies bred in Mexico.

Dolts like me believed that gobblers and that Mid-East land -
Names were mere coincidence.
Ottomans, trading ships, caravans -
I understand, it now makes sense.

Each year I prove I'm such a goof,
I try create too late a spiffy Christmas spoof,
But with a month's delay I'll get it right
Helped by this article about "Turkey's Flight".

And so I'm offering this paraphrase
Of what the author claimed was true,
French - d'inde, and the Turks call them "hindi" - what jerks!
While in India, name in Hindi,
And in Portugal's "peru".

To the tune of "Good King Wenceslas")


Montezuma once bred fowl tastier than pheasant; 
Shipped the Spanish queen a thou - funky kind of present.
Isabella loathed the birds, trimmings too displeased her;
No use for leftovers, she didn't have a free-eezer.

'Turkeys', Moors, then Jews were banned from the royal kitchens;
Legend says that's how began Spanish Inquisition - 
Cortes later sacked the lands of the Aztec ruler.
Phil or Izz-and-Ferdinand ? Can't say which was cru-ueller.

Avian émigrés toured through, crowns of Europe hosting,
Though few of their lackeys knew oven-time for roasting.
Hot or cold and steep or flat, exiled birds were living,
Prospered in those countries that didn't have Thanksgi-iving.

Thus this misnamed flock did cope through the 16th century,
'ventually hens copped some hope with the English gentry.
For some time they settled down,  breeding they found boring,
Westward they shipped out again, restlessly explo-oring.

Turkeys in America, native home recovered,
Quirky and hysterical history discovered -
Essay we would clearly rank best of the Econ'mist,
Author we should dearly thank-(s)he remains anon-ymous.

NOV 19, exemplification: house

                                 

 To review our whole collection of "exemplary exemplifications", click HERE. 

 

NOV 18, basic medical science: visual cortex

Authors' Note:   Korbinian Brodmann (1868–1918) was a German neurologist famous for his definition of 52 cerebral cortical areas based on their histological (tissue-architecture) characteristics. Functional correlates were defined for many of these areas, and the primary and subsidiary areas of visual interpretation are often described by their Brodmann numbers. 

   The primary visual cortex, straddling the calcarine (Latin: spur) sulcus (fissure or slit), is located on the inner surface of each cerebral hemisphere's occipital lobe, well protected from injury.

Readers can enjoy our whole collection of verses devoted to "basic medical science" by clicking HERE. 

NOV 17, palinku (poetic novelty): sweet treats #2

 

  In this post, we continue with our novel form of poetic wordplay. 

  Inspired by Japanese haiku poetry, the "palinku" is a terse verse with a total of 17 syllables displayed on three lines. Unlike its earlier English-language forerunners, this concoction does not mandate the precise distribution of the syllables among the three lines, but does stipulate that each word in the poem be included in a palindromic phrase or sentence  (i.e. one that can be read either forwards or backwards). 

  To help the reader discern the origin of the lyrics, each palindrome, generally occupying one of the three lines of the poem, has been color-coded. Readers will note that we have been publishing verses of this type on the 17th of each month.

 You can readily view all our verses of this type if you proceed with a single click to our more encyclopedic blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE. (Or if you prefer, you can stay on this particular blogsite and look for the offerings for the 17th day of each month -- there are now more than 60 of these.)

NOV 16, decorative touches: studies of the Ravenel Bridge (fabric art)

 

Decorative Touches

 fabric art by R.C.H., presented with thanks

NOV 15, appended adventures of Leslie Moore (suffixes): meanINGFULLY

Authors' Note: The Yiddish loanword bupkes literally means "beans", but is figuratively applied to items or concepts that are worthless.

Readers might enjoy reviewing our complete collection of poems about the adventures of linguist Leslie Moore in the land of suffixes. Click HERE! (or if you prefer prefixes, click HERE).

NOV 14, decorative touches: three untitled abstract pieces (fabric art)

a) Decorative Touches: "Untitled Abstract 1"  

   fabric art by R.C.H., presented with thanks

 

b) Decorative Touches: "Untitled Abstract 2"  

 fabric art by R.C.H., presented with thanks

 c) Decorative Touches: "Untitled Abstract 3"  

                                              fabric art by R.C.H., presented with thanks

NOV 13, terminal (poetic) exclamation: KERPLUNK!

Authors' Note: Kerplunk is an onomatopoeic expression for the sound produced as a non-buoyant object suddenly sinks below the watery surface.

You can review our collection of poems on the topic of "Terminal Exclamation (Limerick Variations)" as it evolves on our more encyclopedic blog "Edifying Nonsense"; click HERE.  

NOV 12, folio-entry, couples: broad-headed skinks

 

To learn more about these reptiles, you might want to review our posts "illustrated verse: broad-headed skinks",  and "photo-collage: broad-headed skinks". 

You can view samples from our portfolio of 'Couples' portraits in a wider context on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE.

NOV 11, poetic non-sequitur: hoggishly

 

The collections of short verses entitled "Non-Sequiturs" on our parent blog "Edifying Nonsense", contain 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.

NOV 10, a brief saga (ambulatory verse), creepy verbs

 You can review all our verses on this topic, accumulated for you on our companion blog "Edifying Nonsense", by clicking HERE.

 

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, constituting a single submission to the online humor site 'Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form'. On the OEDILF site, rigorous standards for content and format are involved in a collaborative editing process that may take several weeks to over a year. 

 There are now over 40 of these lengthier bits of doggerel featured at OEDILF in Giorgio's "Author's Showcase". The OEDILF number for each accepted multiverse poem is shown here on the slide with its first verse. We have been blog-publishing these poetic adventures here monthly since January 2020. And the good news is that almost all limerick-derived verses can be set to music!

To access the next 'brief saga' on this blog (November 2023), proceed to ...

To access the most recent previous 'brief saga' (October 2023 ), back up to 'Leslie Moore's suffixes'.

To access all of our 'brief sagas' by the year of their creation, click on your selection below.

2020
2021
2022
2023.