AUG 13, birdlore: cattle egrets

Authors' Note: The cattle egret is a wading bird most closely related to the herons of Ardea species, but is also a cousin of the common egret and snowy egret. Unlike the latter birds, it may breed in drier areas further inland, and consume terrestrial insects as a substantial portion of its diet. Recently documented changes in its range include expansion to much of the United States, South America, southern Africa and Australia. In general, the bird's enlarged domain has followed that of domesticated grazing mammals.

As bovine may have the meaning of 'dull' or 'stolid', the author was delighted to ascribe more emotional responses to these beasts.

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

AUG 12, poems about parasites: order of fleas

Authors' Note: The fleas, wingless blood-sucking hopping insects, infest and make miserable a variety of warm-blooded host species including most famously man and dog. In America, the vast majority of infestations of domestic pests involve the cat flea, Ctenophalides felis.

You can review Giorgio's other verses about parasites, both external (ecto-) and internal (endo-) on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE.

AUG 11, defining opinion: holdout

 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.

AUG 10, a brief saga (American satire): Mar-a-lago, the dacha

Authors' Note: 

NARA (NAY-ruh): acronym for the US agency National Archives and Records Administration

‘M.B.S’: Mohammid bin Salman, Saudi prince

 The name of the Florida estate, Mar-a-lago, might have been better formulated by its builder Marjorie Post in Spanish as Mar-al-lago, or in Italian as Mare-al-lago. 

  It is noted that the following are palindromes:

Deified  (but not ‘declassified’)

Dacha: ah!, cad. 

Mar-a-lago: O, gal, a ram!

  The Mar-a-lago estate, purchased by Donald Trump in 1985, served since 2016 as the 'Southern White House’. In 2021, having lost the national election of November 2020, Trump decamped from the White House to Mar-a-lago, taking with him, contrary to regulations, a substantial number of government documents.  

  John McCain and Jeff Flake were Republican senators from Arizona who became vocal opponents of DJT. 

 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.

To access the next 'brief saga' (September 2022), proceed to Beri-beri (vitamin B1 deficiency).

To access the most recent previous 'brief saga' (July 2022), back up to 'Careers --  pluralia tantum' (Grandpa Greg's advanced grammar). 

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

2020
2021
2022
2023.

  If you have enjoyed these verses on the theme of American political satire, you might like to proceed to view other items in our collection including:

- 'American satire: A Term of Endirement'

-  'Poetry and Pathos: Gun Control Verses' 

- 'The Fun with Impeachment Collection'

- 'political palindromes A through P' (click HERE to start)

  There are also some parody-song lyrics posted in 2019 and 2020, that you might like, including: 

- 'Brennan's Tweet'

- 'Rosenstein'- 'Kooky Presidential Views' 

- 'Jailhouse Now'

- 'Vlad Putin's Blogger'

- 'Indiana Song'

- 'Get Me Roger Stone', and 

- 'The Ballad of Giuliani', part I and part II.

AUG 9, origin of "bloggerel": part #1 -- song-lyrics and poetry

SONG LYRICS: Starting in 2011, we had contributed parody song-lyrics to "AmIRight", the most extensive website publishing this type of doggerel on the internet. That website offers authors the advantage of immediate publication, but does not provide editing or post-submission modification. Not surprisingly political and social satire are major elements in AmIRight's table of contents. As I (G.H.) was still personally in sober professional practice at that time, I attributed the submitted works to a pseudonym, and Giorgio Coniglio, a registered practitioner in that field volunteered his writing talents arduously in that regard. After a few years we had contributed some 150 singable entities, but the intense polarization in American society threatened to disrupt the enjoyment previously experienced by AmIRight's cadre of volunteer writers. You can find some of those earlier songs (with familiar tunes, but bizarre lyrics) posted on our current blog "Edifying Nonsense".

  

POETRY: Although, Giorgio and I occasionally still launch into song, we turned our attention in 2016 to poetry. (To be honest, a dozen or so poems had been published earlier as "filler" in medical journals).  We found a "home" for many of our poetic inclination in OEDILF (the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form), a more-or-less collaborative website, that insists its mission was to create a dictionary with a definitional poetic "tribute" written to every meaning of every word in the language. To ensure this goal is approached in orderly fashion, OEDILF has gradually widened a narrow alphabetic window starting at A-, so that after almost 20 years of effort, poems are being submitted for dictionary entries with key words starting with the letters Ho-, but no further. Acceptance of verses for publication involves mandatory adherence to strict rhyming and scansion, and the use of grammatically correct, standardized language appropriate for the part of the English-speaking world from which the author hails, modified by specific dictionary requirements. 

  Topics that we found of interest include medical and health terms and issues, Canada and Canadianisms, wildlife and nature, wordplay and foreign languages, particularly French and Italian, among others, influenced primarily by our life-experience. Our personal take on this editing process provides difficulty, as we are prone to extend our verses, albeit with limerick-like structure, to more than the customary 5 lines (we ourselves have called these longer verses "limerrhoids"). The rigorous editing process involves polite acceptance or impeccable disputation of colleagues' suggestions, with eventual approval by 4 other members, and further intervention by an assistant editor, and may take anywhere up to a year. To date (2024), we have almost 700 verses accepted, and over 100 more in the works. 

  The use of illustrative photos or computer art, and the merging of these multi-media concoctions are in no way related to OEDILF; they are the concepts and creations only of the authors. Moreover, we should mention that we have also blogged a variety of other types of poetry, not in the purview of OEDILF, that includes Shakespearian blank verse and haiku.

AUG 8, reptiles: update on anole coloration

   During the first week of May, 2022, with spring seriously underway  in the Carolina Lowcountry, little lizards were out doing their thing in our yard (I presume that's hunting for insects, looking out for potential mates, and patrolling their territories to keep out intruders). 

  Harking back to previous reference on this site to anoles, I came across the following illustrated verses:

Carolina (green) anoles

brown anoles

anole coloration

'the Lizard Lair' 

  Events around our yard 'today' (May 3, i.e. taking down an old fence) made it a good day for further observations of green anoles and their remarkable penchant/ability to change colour, even though biologists insist that they are not true chameleons. 

'Ollie' the green anole,
looking greyish on old post

'Ollie', posing again, in our backyard,
on Ocala anise branch,
2 minutes later 

a different creature,
('Ollie's cousin?)
climbing down crepe myrtle,
few minutes later, 100 feet away

You can review photos and illustrated herpetologic verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Verses about Reptiles (don't worry! no snakes)' on the full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense".

AUG 7, pluralia tantum: 'dependent' -- cooking ingredients

 

Authors' Note: 

clunky: slang for 'awkward'

Our disappointed grammar-buff is right: a lot of grammar is not derived from logical principles. All languages face the problem of characterizing masses and groups of undistinguished small objects as singular or plural. This dilemma seems to reach its peak with items that are the basis of cooking. Despite an attempt to find rules, there is no dependency on particle size.

Nouns used only, or principally in the plural form are known as pluralia tantum; those used excusively in the singular form are known as singularia tantum. This usage varies from one language to another. We find some foreign uses 'incomprehensible', as in the general Hebrew plural form mayim for 'water', despite the fact that, on occasion, "Still waters run deep."

We have discussed in other verses here the relationship of pluralia tantum to life-cycle celebrations, and to medical nomenclature.

Grandpa Greg asked us to pass on this messa

ge: "You can view the entire collection of verses about 'pluralia tantum' by clicking HERE."

AUG 6, death and the afterlife: dining in Heaven

 You can review more poems about 'Death and the Afterlife' in context on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE!
 

AUG 5, mythed opportunities: dryads

 a small reforestation project,
 Port Bruce, Ontario, 2000.

You can take advantage of the whole spectrum of illustrated poems dealing with 'Mythed Opportunities' that we have collected on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE!

AUG 4, binomial phrases: rhyming pairs

Authors' Note:   When the paired grammatical elements in the phrase happen to rhyme, the appeal of irreversible binomial expressions, such as surf and turf, is further increased. The above verse shows in italics several of these intriguing idioms.

  The larger group of these idioms (such as fish and chips) is exemplified, explained, and possibly defined in verses here by the author, including binomial expression, fixed order, echoic binomials, and fossil words.

  Although cookbook and shake in your shoes are musical expressions, they do not qualify as binomials.

To review our poetic effusion about binomial phrases proceed to our blog 'Edifying Nonsense', click HERE ! 

There is also an entire collection of lyrics to patter songs, somewhat older material, dedicated to various kinds of word-pairs, that provides more didactic material and an extensive series of examples, and allows you to sing these expressions for your own enjoyment, or for that of others around you. Click HERE !

 

AUG 3, toxic vignette: digitalis toxicity

Authors' Note: 

(di-JOK-sin)

Digoxin, a cardiac glycoside derived initially from the garden plant digitalis (foxglove), has been used to treat chronic congestive heart failure and to control the heart rate in atrial fibrillation. During the author's professional lifetime, there has been a major reduction in the death-rate and in the incidence of hospital admissions for digoxin poisoning, also known as digitoxicity. This improvement is due to more judicious assessment of factors, e.g. decreasing kidney function, that may result in increasing blood levels of the drug, but also to limitation of the drug's use as alternatives have become available.     

 Review all our poems of toxicologic interest by clicking HERE.  

AUG 2, reprehensible modern history: Franco-German conflicts

Authors' Note:

nachbarlich (NAKH-bahr-likh): neighborly 

l'après-guerre (la-preh-GAYR): period immediately after the Second World War in France, approximately 1945-1948

Cannes (KAN): French town on the Côte d'Azur, famous for its luxury hotels and villas, and for its international film festival

Worms (VORMZ): German town (sometimes pronounced by anglophones as WUHRMZ) of about the same size as Cannes and Limerick, famed for its production of liebfraumilch 

 View the entire collection of poetic assertions on this topic  at our more encyclopedic blog 'Edifying Nonsense', by clicking HERE.

AUG 1, English classics survey course: Paradise Lost (Milton's epic poem)

Authors' Note: The noun-form of the adjective essential, used almost exclusively in the plural, exempifies pluralia tantum, and indicates what is truly needed (Credentials, similarly, is an example of that grammatical curiosity).

Paradise Lost, the epic poem about the Fall of Man and the Garden of Eden, by 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). is contained in twelve books. Its review by young literature students is aided by student guides such as Cliff's Notes. 

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

JUL 30, singable satire: vaso-vagal syncope, "FLAKING OUT IS WHAT THEY DO"

PARODY-LYRICS
ORIGINAL SONG : "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", Neil Sedaka - recorded in two versions , 1962 (classic doo-wap version), and 1975 (slow-ballad version).
PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, November 2015.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:  

Health-care professionals who have to inject patients know that the fittest looking specimens, often muscular young men, are the most likely to faint with an injection, particularly if they stare at the needle. This phenomenon is well-known in Nuclear Medicine departments, where an intravenous injection is required before most scans. The injections are not technically challenging, as these out-patients have easy veins to access, but the somewhat unexpected result may disrupt the day’s schedule. 

“Sinus brady” is jargon for sinus bradycardia, a slow but regular and innocuous pattern on the electrocardiogram (ECG). CPR is an acronym for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. Atropine, an injectable medicine to increase heart-rate may be used as part of resuscitation procedures. Syncope (pron. sin'-copy) means a faint. Vaso-vagal, a difficult but commonly-used term, refers to vascular effects (low blood pressure etc.) mediated by the vagus nerve.

FLAKING OUT IS WHAT THEY DO

(to the tune of "Breaking up is Hard To Do"

1. Slow ballad version (1975)

Down here in Nuclear Medicine, we have one big complaint

So, here's a little song about "The Faint" .....

"We need inject before we scan
And you have got such very big veins, man
Tell me please before I poke,
“You’ve never been a fainting bloke?”

(Sick patients - we get sent a lot
To assess heart disease and bad lung clots
But stretcher-bound in-patients ain’t
The folks who do injection-faints.)

A prior episode they seldom confirm -

Needles make them squeamishly squirm
 Seemed fit and hardy before,
 But soon as we inject we find them white as sheets slumped on the floor.

If I had known the outcome - that,

I would have lain him down and poked him flat

Guys hush up 'cause they prefer

Cross fingers that it won't recur.

Pulse and heart-rate typically low

Specific feature that you should know

Sinus brady – ECG;

It’s vaso-vagal syncope
It's vaso-vagal syncope.

2. Classic Rock version (1962)

  I beg the staff, don’t get too keen

They don’t need CPR or atropine

Leave their heads down on the floor;

Legs elevate and nothing more.

Blood pressure will come up and they’ll start to come ‘round,

Queeziness means leave left side down.

You can proceed with the test,

But if they ever show again, injecting while they’re supine’s best.

 

I tell my staff, don’t get too stressed

They need blood-volume transferred to their chest;

Leave their heads down on the floor

Legs elevate and nothing more.

Down doobee do down  down,  comma comma

Down doobee do down down,  comma comma

Down doobee do down down

Flaking out is what they-ey-ey do.

 

JUL 29, reptiles: broad-headed skinks, photo-collages

 

(Editor's Note: The photo-shoot took place on May 26, 2020.)

 You can review photos and illustrated herpetologic verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Verses about Reptiles' (don't worry! no snakes)' on the full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. (Or, if you prefer, you can view them on Facebook in Giorgio's photo-albums).

JUL 28, waterfowl: snow geese

 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'. (Or, if you prefer, you can view them on Facebook in Giorgio's photo-albums).

JUL 27, birdlore: California scrub-jays

 

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

JUL 26, planet-saving verse: compostables (green bins)

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

JUL 25, mythed opportunities: Aurora and Tithonus (eternally)

 Authors' Note:   Well, this is about as close as you can get to the bona fide Greek myth. In actuality, Eos became enamored of a series of mortal lovers, but wanted to get on with things, and eventually turned the formerly handsome Prince Tithon/Tithonus into a cicada (which does not match the rhyming scheme). Be careful what you wish for!

   The legend continued into Roman times, during which Aurora personified the role of Eos (Dawn), and Jove or Jupiter the role of Zeus. Much later, the dilemma of the once-mortal hero was fantasized in the poem "Tithonus" by Alfred Tennyson. Also, the involved deities have been immortalized in human names for astrophysical phenomena.

  In any case, this story fits an immutable pattern in which we mortals get clobbered in interactions with Greco-Roman deities.

"Dawn", bronze sculpture, Tuck Langland,
Brookgreen Gardens, SC

 Click HERE for another verse about Eos's astronomical protégé.

You can take advantage of the whole spectrum of illustrated poems dealing with 'Mythed Opportunities' that we have collected on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE!

JUL 24, Italian loanwords: fiasco

Authors' Note:  Fiasco is derived from a mid 19th-century slang expression used in Italian theatre, far fiasco, literally to do the flask, presumably relating to a drinking-game in which the player had to buy the next bottle (fiasco) if he failed.

 You can review our entire poetic outpouring about Italian loanwords by proceeding to a post on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'; click HERE.

JUL 23, toxic vignette: gadolinium contrast agents for MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)

Authors' Note:   Although the element gadolinium (Gd) is itself toxic, its highly bound chelates make excellent adjunctive agents for diagnostic imaging procedures using magnetic resonance (MR), as they change the magnetic properties of structures with high rates of blood flow, yet allow 'negligible' release of the metal into tissue during the interval following a single intravenous injection. Non-toxic chelates of metallic elements are normally rapidly cleared from the body by urinary excretion. 

    In the late 1990s, a  ‘new’ disease,  nephrogenic systemic fibrosis was found in a small minority of patients, mostly with severe kidney disease, who had received these contrast agents. The problem can be avoided by a simple screening of relevant patients for a history of kidney disease or renal impairment. 

     

Review all our poems of toxicologic interest by clicking HERE.  

JUL 22, at heart: the arteriopath

Authors' Note: Arteriopath is common medical jargon for a patient with severe obstructions in the peripheral arteries. The cause of this condition is generally atherosclerosis, and the leading risk factor for its development is smoking.

 

You can view more poems on this topic by proceeding to "Cardiologic Tracings: AT HEART" (parts #1 and #2) on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE!

JUL 21, anagram swarms: bilateral North American scheme (Canada's turn)

Stay tuned, and there will be more 'fun-with-anagram' wordplay-maps  showing further variants on this theme! 

OR, if you really want to get into this form of wordplay, you could delve into a series of posts on "Edifying Nonsense", starting HERE.