OCT 20, singable satire: Hoagy Carmichael sings "STAR-NOSED MOLE"

 PARODY-LYRICS

ORIGINAL SONG: "Heart and Soul", Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael, 1938.

PARODY COMPOSED: Dr.G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio, February 2015.

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

Explanatory notes: The star-nosed mole inhabits wet low-lying areas of Canada and the northeastern US. It has been much less well known than its lawn-disturbing cousin, the common Eastern mole. National Geographic recently suggested that it may be the weirdest creature on the planet.

 

STAR-NOSED MOLE

(to the tune of "Heart and Soul")

Star-nosed mole – I fail to grasp your charms -

Fleshy snout, thick tail and flipper arms

Slit eyes,

No need to use a mirror:

You won’t be ogled by peers.

  

Star-nosed mole – a neuroscience find -

Tactile nose, hunts prey though eyes are blind

Feelers (tentacles)

Discern where kisses land,

Just like an eye or a hand.

Star-nosed mole – bolts half its weight each day

Stim-response? – Earth’s quickest, Wiki say,

Nostrils

In midst of quivering nose,

Stay underwater closed.

Strangely evolved for digging, feeding, swimming. 

How do you get to breeding, her-and-himm-ing?

So, you can ‘see'

By integrating touch,

Brain can ‘watch’- snarf yummy worms and such.

Somehow

You find cloacal holes

Of other star-nosed moles. 

You can find a poem about the star-nose mole, with informative notes, on our blogpost 'Mammalian Wildlife'. Click HERE to access it.

 

OCT 19, photo-collage, Carolina lowcountry: wildlife revisited #1

black-crowned night heron

 

mud crab

brown pelican

downy woodpecker

great egret, in marsh

great egret 

OCT 18, oncology verse: benign tumors, a guidebook

Authors' Note: Readers should be aware that the guidebook deals primarily with the lexical aspects of benign tumors, and is therefore of interest primarily to word-nerds and Scrabble-players, rather than pathologists or other health professionals.

  Also, visitors to the online site OEDILF.com might note that close to thirty verses dealing with benign human tumors already grace the 'pages' of that dictionary-in-progress. One-third of these were written by the prolific SheilaB, a retired physician, including acoustic neuroma, angioma, cementoblastoma, chemodectoma, cystoma, dicytoma, hamartoma and lipoma.

 You can view all such verses in a wider context by proceeding to the collection of "ONCOLOGY VERSES" on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE!

OCT 17, palinku (poetic novelty): identity

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

 You can view all our "palinku" verses 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.)

OCT 16, Toronto ravines: Sherwood

If you are interested in wending your way through an encyclopedic collection of four blogposts stuffed with photo-collages on Toronto ravines, click HERE.

 

OCT 15, neologism (personal): POTUSA (abuelita latina)

Authors' Note: 

abuela: grandmother in Spanish

abuelita: 'little grandmother', an honored family role in Hispanic-American culture

POTUS: President of the United States, acronymic title that has so far been applied only to males, few of whom have been bilingual

POTUSA: (A = of America), a title, influenced by Spanish wordforms, for a female American president; and if she's a Latina, so much the better

 (Ed. Note:) To make this effort easier, we have now collected these neologistic verses in a collection on our parent blog "Edifying Nonsense";  click HERE.

OCT 14, English literature survey course: "The Raven" (Poe's poem)

Authors' Note:   Edgar Allan Poe wrote his best-known poem, "The Raven", in 1845. "The lost Lenore", and “quoth the Raven, ‘nevermore’ ” are famous phrases repeated in the poem. 

   An established classic, the poem will likely remain in the pantheon of poems ad infinitum (evermore).

You can review the entire curriculum for our 'English Classics Survey Course' at "Edifying Nonsense" by clicking HERE.

 

OCT 13, mammalian wildlife: batty idioms

Authors' Note: BATS, the flying mammals, are found in many idioms, which mostly give them unfavorable press, including:

batty,

old bat,

to have bats in the belfry,

(take off) like a bat out of hell,

as blind as a bat.

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 !

OCT 12, folio-entry, couples: loons

 

Enjoy an illustrated poetic 'brief saga' featuring the common loon, Gavia immer, by clicking HERE. 

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

OCT 11, garden intruders: gnome adventures

 

Authors' Note: The propensity of garden gnomes to travel, often against their will, is explained here. The author does not condone the trespassing, theft or kidnapping inherent in the services proposed by the narrator to expunge egregious esthetics from one's neighborhood.

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 our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense", click HERE!