August 30, 2024

AUG 30, setting words to music: "THE WRECK OF THE DANISH ROYALTY", as would be sung by Gordon Lightfoot

   a) Reprise of material posted on August 30 in previous years ...


2020: singable satire, w-i-p (parody lyrics)
2021: singable satire, Fickle Twist of Fate 2 (parody lyrics)
2022: singable satire, F.O.P.-shop Wine (parody lyrics)
2023: singable satire, Funniversary Song (parody lyrics)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... Funniversary Song), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 30, 2024): 

PASTICHE with PARODY-LYRICS

POETIC UNDEPINNINGS:  Hamlet's Soliloquy, Act iii, Shakespeare's "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", 1600.

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is a  1976 song by Gordon Lightfoot dealing with a marine disaster in shipping on the Great Lakes. It is used here primarily for melody and meter.

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, 2014.

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. 

 To find ukulele and guitar chord-charts to help you accompany "The WRECK OF THE DANISH ROYALTY" on your favorite instrument, click HERE.

Ken Branagh as Hamlet ponders man's fate

THE WRECK OF THE DANISH ROYALTY

A RE-WRITE OF THE HAMLET SOLILOQUY

(to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald")

The question is …… Whether ‘tis nobler to suffer,
 Fate’s arrows and stings so outrageous
 Or to be, and take arms against troubling seas,
 And oppose them with action courageous?


To die, not to be; it's just sleep, possibly
- An escape from heart-aches flesh is heir to -
All quiet past that portal, where no longer mortal
- consummation we offer a prayer to.


To die, to sleep, perchance to dream; there’s the rub;
For death’s dreams may provoke dissolution;
And the puzzling dread of that something when you’re dead
Discolours our strong resolution.  


With dagger that’s naked we’d easily make it
To that land whence no traveller’s recovered.
But that puzzles our wills, rather bear our known ills
Than fly off to others undiscovered. 

Explaining persistence of troubled existence,
For Time’s whips and scorns, who would bear’em? 
The haughty, oppressors, and rejecting lovers -
The wrongs and the spurns they don’t spare’em.

And who would bear "fardels" - whatever those are -  
With a life grimy, sweaty and weary, 
Hauling tons of iron ore to the desolate shore
Of that low-lying lake some deem eerie? 

Yet there’s puzzling dread of that thing when you’re dead 
And the pale cast of thought which can sicken,
Enterprise of great moment and pith turns awry          
And thus conscience makes all of us chicken. 

The question lives on …… When the chips are all down,
To bear outrageous fate so much drearier?
Or to be, and take arms against troubling seas,
|And oppose them with action superior?|X2



The Fitzgerald in Nov '75, just prior to the iconic shipping disaster




August 29, 2024

AUG 29, postal places, USA: Duluth, MN

 a) Reprise of material posted on August 29 in previous years ...


2020: magical canal palindromes, A man ... Paris. (wordplay)
2021: amphibians, Kermit the Frog, reincarnated (illustrated poem) 
2022: exotic destination, Mt Pleasant, SC (photo-collage)
2023: defining opinion, envision (poem)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... envision), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 29, 2024): 

 




Authors' Note: MN is the official abbreviation for the American state of Minnesota, in which Duluth, a town with population 90,000 is situated. At the western end of lake Superior, the town was transiently, at the beginning of the 1900s, the busiest port in the United States.

The town's unusual name derives from the area's first known European explorer, the French soldier Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut. Duluth is now home to the annual "Magic Smelt Parade" and the University of Minnesota Duluth. Despite the region's French connection, the largest immigrant group in Minnesota has hailed from Scandinavia, accounting for the Swedish name of the verse's protagonist.

"Telephone-booth stuffing" was a short-lived global craze among college-age kids in the 1950s. Of interest, in the UK the activity was known as "telephone-booth squash", and the "rules" required that a phone-call be made from the overcrowded booth.


  At one swell foop, you can review all our postal poems about intriguing places in the USA and Canada, by proceeding to the encyclopedic blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE !

August 28, 2024

AUG 28, OEDILFian limericks: haiku poetry 1

  a) Reprise of material posted on August 28 in previous years ...


2020: new world palindromes, 33 (wordplay)
2021: culinary verse, zucchini/courgettes (illustrated poem) 
2022: saving the planet, summer air quality (poem)
2023: reptiles, painted turtles (illustrated poem)
lexicon of word-pairs, duplications U to Z (wordplay)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... duplication U to Z), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 28, 2024):  




 

August 27, 2024

AUG 27, flying 'back east'

 a) Reprise of material posted on August 27 in previous years ...


2020: anagram swarm, US scramble-towns, 8 (wordplay map)
2021: 
anagram swarm, US scramble-towns, 17-19 (wordplay maps)
2022:  anagram swarm, Canadian scramble-towns, 10 (wordplay map) 
2023: lexicon of word-pairs, duplication Si- to T (wordplay)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... mediastinoscopy), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 27, 2024): 

 Above the Canadian portion of the planet (photos by Giorgio Coniglio) ...

(dated Aug 25)

safety information in French and English, coast to coast



taking off from Nanaimo, British Columbia;
 very short flight to YVR (Vancouver)



rolling into Vancouver




starting out from YVR
across the Fraser River

icefields of the Rocky Mountains




flying over the foothills/prairies,
just east of the Rocky peaks



descending to the airport in Calgary, Alberta




next morning's descent;
 the final flight terminates in Toronto


August 26, 2024

AUG 26, photo-collage: great egrets, sunny afternoon (Toronto)

 

 Re PAGES: 

You, members of the audience of Daily Illustrated Nonsense, (D.I.N.), often have questions about the authors of this blog, and the purpose, history and organization of our online e-manations. To help answer these puzzlements, we have scrawled some material on the undated PAGES section of this blog. Please review these 'documents', although some remain under development. Although expansion of these explanations is contemplated, we admit to taking our time to write down what seems natural to us, but more outreach with this type of communication is planned.
So far, you can take a look at these important documents :
1) Our Blog (D.I.N.): Authors and Purpose (under construction)
2) Content of the blog, and its Historical Development
3) Distribution of Thematic Material
4) How Can I Contribute? (under construction)

a) Reprise of material posted on August 26 in previous years ...


2020: insects, gnat repellents (poem)
2021: anagram swarm, Canadian scramble-towns 1 (wordplay maps) 
2022: American satire, taking the fifth (illustrated poem)
2023: painterly poetry, Auvers-sur-Oise (illustrated poem)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... gnat repellents), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 26, 2024): 

 A sunny afternoon at the Duck Ponds, Toronto's High Park, as photographed using his i-phone 13, by Giorgio Coniglio... 



 

view of photographic apparatus
(see the detailed description)

















To see even more of these birds, you might want to review our posts "illustrated verse: white ibises",  and "folio entry: a white ibis couple". 

 

August 25, 2024

AUG 25, submitted palindromes, RANDOM PILES 49

a) Reprise of material posted on August 25 in previous years ...

2020: submitted palindromes, random piles 1 (wordplay)
2021: submitted palindromes, random piles 13 (wordplay)  
2022: 
submitted palindromes, random piles 25 (wordplay)
2023: 
submitted palindromes, random piles 37 (wordplay)


 49 missing??


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).


You can access this delightful entertainment right here by entering submitted palindromes in one of the two search bars at the top of this post and scrolling downwards through the wordplay posts that you will discover, OR, just follow the links indicated above. 
Devotees of palindromic wordplay can further explore limericks and other short verses about the classic palindromes (and quite a few recent concoctions) that are randomly scattered on this blog after September 2000, or collected into grouped postings on our more scholarly blog "Edifying Nonsense" -- start HERE.  




August 24, 2024

AUG 24, Olympic sport: long jump

  a) Reprise of material posted on August 24 in previous years ...


2020: American satire, miscellany (poems, various)
2021: poet's corner, free verse (poem) 
2022: patients and maladies, intermittent claudication (poem)
2023: Leslie Moore's suffixes, feckLESSNESS (poem)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... miscellany) , into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 24, 2024)

 

track and field, long jump


August 23, 2024

AUG 23, Captain R's impossible mission: quixotic dream

  a) Reprise of material posted on August 23 in previous years ...


2020: limerick variations, embedded illustrations (illustrated poem)
2021: limerick variation, C-rhyme extension (illustrated poem) 
2022: Canadiana, compassionate use (poem)
2023: scopes of medicine, endoscopic collage (selected poems)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... compassionate), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 23, 2024): 




Authors' Note: "Captain R" is a muse who appears episodically in the authors' dreams. R. is their abbreviation for rhotic (ROA-tik) dialects in English, i.e. those that honour R-sounds as they are written. The Captain, who clearly has been influenced by the nearby letter "q" as in Don Quixote, and wears a tight-fitting shirt emblazoned with a large "R", has inspired a quest that culminated in the other verses in this collection (at the website OEDILF submitted as articulateintrusive Rs, and articular.)

Quixotic, BTW, is used to described ideas and actions that are foolishly impractical and romantic.

You can find our other verses dealing with non-rhotic accents under the listing "Captain R's Impossible Mission".  Click HERE. 

August 22, 2024

AUG 22, planet-saving verse: enzootic viral ending

  a) Reprise of material posted on August 22 in previous years ...


2020: Toronto ravines, lower Don valley (photo-collage)
2021: Panama palindrome parody, A dog, ... a pagoda. (wordplay) 
2022: funny bones, olecranon (elbow) fracture (illustrated poem)
2023: patients and maladies, ganglion cyst (poem)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... ganglion cyst), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 22, 2024): 

 

                        this verse has been approved for publication at OEDILF, #125168

Authors' Note:  Having suffered the ravages of Covid-19, has humanity's ability to cope with outbreaks of infectious disease improved? Not too much. This pessimistic verse was written after seeing a TV documentary revealing updates on what we have learned about the potential threats of further epidemics. 


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

August 21, 2024

AUG 21, photo-collage: Long Lake, Nanaimo, BC

  a) Reprise of material posted on August 21 in previous years ...


2020: Greek prefixes, apo- (illustrated poem) 
2021: new world palindrome, #44 (wordplay map)
2022: classic palindrome, Dogma, I am God! (poem)
2023: terminal exclamation, YIPPEE! (poem)

To access the details of any item in slide format, type its title, as displayed above in red font (e.g. ... finale), into one of the two search bars at the the top of your blog-page. Underneath the slide(s) for each entertaining delight that you discover, you will find a clickable link that lets you easily explore a more widespread collection of wonderments (verse, photos, wordplay, song-lyrics etc.) on the topic of your choice. 

b) Today's Offering (Aug 21, 2024): 

  Photos obtained by Giorgio Coniglio, and edited on his i-phone 13 ...