NOV 30 (2023), singable satire: Muddy Waters Sings "CRAYFISH ETOUFFEE (Inferno, Canto 6)

 PASTICHE WITH PARODY SONG-LYRICS

ORIGINAL POEM:  Canto#6 of "Inferno" by Dante Alighieri, the first book in the triad, "The Divine Comedy", written in the early 14th century.
ORIGINAL SONG: "Baby, Please Don't Go", Big Joe Williams 1935, popularized by Muddy Waters, used here primarily for music and meter.

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, November 2015.
PARODY-SONGLINK: To find ukulele and guitar chord-charts to help you accompany "Crayfish Étouffée" on your favorite instrument, click HERE.

In the Third Circle, Dante sees the fate of gluttons like his friend from Florence named ‘Ciacco’ (the equivalent of ‘Piggy’). No fire used for torture here; the climate sounds like Toronto in March. The poor souls confined here in the freezing mud are tormented by a demonic three-headed dog, Cerberus. I took some liberties with Ciacco’s tale; in the original, he discusses the complex politics of 14th century Florence. The details I provided re Ciacco's gluttonous exploits are imagined. Eschatology is the part of theology concerned with final judgment and the destiny of the soul.  Étouffée is a delicious Louisiana dish of seafood, usually crayfish, in a Cajun roux sauce.

"Cerberus", W. Blake

New Orleans style crayfish etouffée

DANTE, GO AND SEE 

(to the tune of "Baby Please Don't Go")

Sono al cerchio terzo,

Dov'è'l crudele Cerbero

La pena di golosi; mi veggio intorno

Novi tormentati.

Dante go and see

Dante go and see

Dante go and see what’s in Circle Three - 

They punish gluttony.

Virge led me way down here

Virge brought me way down here

Another Ring of Fear, fiend in charge appear

Be a three-headed dog.

Thermostat set low

Pelting rain, hail, snow

Sinners grovel, sit in freezing mud, like sh*t

Hounded by that cursed dog.

Guy who waves hello -

Dante used to know,

‘Ciacco’, brought so low; he’s a Florentine

He tells his story, so …..

'ALL YOU EAT - ' , sign say - 

'CRAYFISH ÉTOUFFÉE'
Stayed all day and ate food from New Orleans

Now Circle Three’s my fate. ”

Virgil’s prophecy:

Eschatology -

Our friend ‘Piggy’ sit in that freezing sh*t

‘Til final trumpet blow.

So baby, please don’t stray

Don’t pig out that way

Don’t eat étouffée down in New Orleans

Or Circle Three’s your fate.

Dante go and see

Dante go and see

Dante go and see what’s in Circle Three - 

They punish gluttony.

NOV 29: mammalian wildlife: horsing around

 

NOV 28, savoir-faire: franglais (DTbb)

 

a) reprise from November 2020

NOV 28, savoir-faire: franglais

Authors' Note:

en visite (ahn vee-ZEET): ‘while visiting'

les touristes (lay too-REEST):  'the tourists’

non-français (non frahn-SEH): ‘not French (speaking)’

ils causaient (eel koh-ZEH): 'they chatted‘

Québécois (kay-bay-KWAH): ‘resident of Quebec (province)’

franglais (frahn-GLEH): ‘Franglais, a mixed lingo’

 You can review verses on this topic in a wider context on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Check the post 'Vers Francais: Savoir-Faire' by clicking HERE. 

b) Decorative Touches 

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

NOV 27, defining opinion: Haversian canals

 

Our blogpost "Defining Opinion" on the topic-based blog "Edifying Nonsense" shows a selection of similar verses submitted to OEDILF (the online Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form). You can see all of these on one visit by clicking HERE.

NOV 26, portraits of couples: turkeys

 

reprise from November 2020

NOV 26, portraits of couples: turkeys, domestic and wild

HAPPY AMERICAN THANKSGIVING TO ALL !!!

Enjoy an illustrated poem about domestic turkeys by clicking HERE.

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

NOV 25, pinkos (forward thinkers): the Communist Church

                                                                            

Authors' Note: Liberal thinking seized Europe towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Emboldened by the partial successes of the politically-targeted Chartists, intellectuals were drawn to idealistic social movements such as communitarianism. According to Wikipedia, John Goodwyn Barmby (1820 – 1881), one of its principals, introduced the term 'communist', based on the French le communisme and founded a revue called The Communist Chronicle. Seeking a spiritual path, he later founded the Communist Church, a sect that had congregations numbering in the teens at its peak. When the church folded in 1849, Barmby became active as a Unitarian minister.

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

NOV 24, 2023, waterfowl: great egrets

 

 reprise from November 2020

 

NOV 24, waterfowl: great egrets

great egret, stalking slowly

great egret, striking

takeoff  from railing,
Shem Creek Park, Mt Pleasant SC

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

NOV 23, palinku (poetic novelty): global warming

 

 In this post, we continue with our novel form of poetic wordplay. Inspired by Japanese haiku poetry, this new form is used for a terse verse with a total of 17 syllables displayed on three lines. Unlike its classic Japanese analogue, 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 in English (i.e. one that can be read either forwards or backwards). 

   And, just in case you have forgotten what palindromes are about, your blogsite hosts have arranged a serial set of brief lessons on the topic ('Political Palindromes') which you can review by clicking HERE. 

 (Ed. note:) Verses of this ilk have continued to accumulate. You can view them all at one swoop if you  proceed to our more encyclopedic blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE.

NOV 22, birdlore: desnooded

 

reprise from November 2020

NOV 21, birdlore: turkeys, desnooded (pre-holiday fling)

 You can view an encyclopedic collection of illustrated poems on this topic by proceeding to the post 'Poems about BIRDLORE' on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE. 

NOV 21, defining opinion: hover

 Our blogpost "Defining Opinion" on the topic-based blog "Edifying Nonsense" shows a selection of similar verses submitted to OEDILF (the online Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form). You can see all of these on one visit by clicking HERE.

NOV 20 (2023), singable satire for Thanksgiving: "TURKEY LEFTOVERS"

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

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 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, portraits of couples: broad-headed skinks, llamas

reprise from November 2020

NOV 18, portraits of couples: broad-headed skinks, llamas

 

Enjoy an illustrated poem about the broad-headed skink, Plestiodon laticeps by clicking HERE.

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

NOV 17, Canadiana: urban portaging

 

a) reprise from November 2020

NOV 17, Canadiana: urban portaging

 

From the Archives: An Illustrated E-Mail about Urban Portaging, 2017

GxxHxxxxx <gxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>@gmail.com>
to Mike, Josh, Paul, Dr, Alec, Art, Marna, Eric

I encountered this on my late afternoon cycle-ride through trendy Rosedale on a rainy autumn afternoon. In its second year, 

this festival, I found out, brings together people portaging canoes across a 17 km ancient aboriginal trail between the

Humber and Don watersheds. At this point, the portagers had just crossed the Mt Pleasant Expressway.

b) current birdie-pic

                                         

               

NOV 16, sleek Greek prefixes: DIA- or DI- (DTaa)

 

a) reprise from November 2020

NOV 16, sleek Greek prefixes: DIA- (and DI-)

Authors' Note: Click HERE, for your entertainment, to review a verse about diarrhea; and HERE's another one, about diaphoresis (sweating).

 Clicking HERE will introduce you to our entire collection of verses about the Greek prefixes!

b) Decorative Touches 

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

NOV 15, 2023: patients and their maladies: horseshoe kidney

 

Be sure to check out the multiple collections of verses on 'Patients and their Maladies" by proceeding to our full-service blog ,"Edifying Nonsense." CLICK HERE !

NOV 14, pandemic poetry: social distancing (DTz)

a)v reprise from November 2020

NOV 14, pandemic poetry: social distancing

You can review these illustrated verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Pandemic Poetry' on the full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense".

b) Decorative Touches

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