JAN 10, a brief saga (Italian loanwords): Italian treats

PARODY-SONGLINK: These verses were originally conceived as poetic lyrics. However, they can, like almost all limericks, be easily sung using  certain well-known tunes; in this case, the classic "Limerick Song?".  

Click HERE to access ukulele and guitar chord-charts to help you accompany the song ("Italian Treats") on your favorite instrument. Otherwise, you can follow along with the poetic lyrics ...

Late-life learning:
Portabella is an accepted variant of portobello,
 a mushroom named after the Italian town of Porto Bello.

You can review our entire poetic outpouring about Italian loanwords by proceeding to a post on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'; click 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 proceed in a collaborative editing process that may take several weeks to over a year. 

   Generally, OEDILF has not been enormously welcoming of multi-verse submissions, but Giorgio Coniglio has persisted, and the OEDILF number for each accepted multi-verse poem is shown here on the slide with its first verse. 

To access the next 'brief saga' on this blog (February 2021), proceed to 'the Word on GERD' (gastro-esophageal junction).

To access the most recent previous 'brief saga' (December 2020), back up to 'Auld Lang's Sine' (Hogmanay). 

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

2020
2021
2022
2023.

JAN 9, anagram swarm: 'E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N F-R-A-U-D' contest winners

Over the last week we have had an anagram contest at the national (U.S.) level. We are sorry if you missed the opportunity to participate.

The challenge was to come up with the best anagram (letter-scramble) of

E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N F-R-A-U-D

Out of an abundance of caution, we avoided announcing the contest initially, and have not required contest participants to agree to publishing their phone numbers, email addresses or charge-card PINs.

But we are now pleased to announce that the winning entry nationally was ...

FAILED RECOUNT

Consideration was also given by the judges to the best entry for each participating state; the winning entries are shown on the accompanying map.

Sincere thanks to all who participated.

JAN 8, old world palindromes #7 and #8

 

  You can view the entire collection of 'Old World Palindromes' on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense";  start by clicking HERE. 

JAN 7, anagram swarm: 'impeachment' (again)

Sixteen states have two-letter postal abbreviations that fit in with this scheme. Other locales may have decided on their stance on this issue, but their preferences are hidden on the 'dark web'.

JAN 6, classic palindrome: 'UFO tofu'

You can review these illustrated verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Reversing Verse: Limericks About Classic Palindromes' on the full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. 

JAN 5, amphibians: anurans - 'frog' vs 'toad'

Be sure to check out the whole collection of 'Amphibians' by proceeding to "Edifying Nonsense." CLICK HERE ! 

JAN 3, waterfowl: John Audubon, birder

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'. You can learn a bit more about the anhinga, the bird featured in the cover illustration of "The Birds of America" by checking the post of January 25.

JAN 2, waterfowl: great egrets, more pics

Great Egret: Shem Creek, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina

Fabric art contributed by RCH

JAN 1, wordplay maps: new world palindromes (#43,#44)

 

You can view the entire collection of these 50 wordplay maps, by accessing the collection 'Tourists Palindromic Guides: The Americas'. Start by clicking HERE! 

DEC 30, a brief saga (holidays and celebrations): Hogmanay (Auld Lang's Sine)

 A HAPPY NEW YEARS TO ALL !!!

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. Your blogging team has been presenting these concoctions at the rate of one per month, mixed in with the shorter poems, wordplay and other stuff that we offer.    

To access the next 'brief saga' on this blog (January 2021), proceed to 'Italian Treats'. 

To access the most recent previous 'brief saga' (October 2020), back up to 'Cyclades' (Greek Islands).  

 

DEC 29, patients and maladies: knee effusion

Authors' Note: This verse resulted from the author’s personal experience (as patient).

  Following trauma, standard X-rays taken in the Emergency Department show most fractures where the bone fragments are displaced. They can not, however, diagnose many undisplaced fractures, particularly in elderly patients with reduced bone density. 

  Nonspecific swelling with evidence of leaking of fluid into the adjacent joint space (joint effusion) is particularly common in injuries about the knee, and is easily discerned on visual inspection and X-rays. Follow up radiographs after another 3 weeks sometimes display an initially missed healing fracture. In cases where instability, ongoing pain, or persistent effusion are prominent, injury to ligaments may be suspected. 

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

DEC 28, diagnostic imaging: DEXA (BMD)

Authors' Note:   DEXA, or Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry, is a simple standardized imaging test to assess bone mass in the context of osteoporosis. It actually measures bone mass in a peculiar form, i.e, mass per unit area (rather than volume) of tissue; differential attenuation (blocking by tissue) for the 2 photons of different energies is assessed for each spatial element in a planar field. The technique is however, excellent for serial tests in the same patient, and is now used  so widely that its results are regarded as synonymous with Bone Mineral Density (BMD).

 You can review all our verses on this intriguing topic by proceeding to a post on 'Edifying Nonsense' entitled 'Selected Topics in Diagnostic Imaging'. Click HERE!

DEC 27, poetic non-sequitur: cumulative song

 Authors' Note:  The cumulative song "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" was created by two Canadian folksong aficionados in 1952, and then recorded by Burl Ives in 1953.  Other well-known cumulative songs which are traditional include "Old MacDonald had a Farm" and "The Green Grass Grew All Around". 

 Our collection of 'Non-Sequiturs' on our parent blog "Edifying Nonsense", contains 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.

DEC 26, old world palindromes #5 and #6

 

DEC 25, holiday verse: every Adventuality

 

DEC 24, holiday verse: "The Night Before Christmas", pandemically

 

DEC 23, classic palindrome: 'Yreka bakery'

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PEH !!!

 

You can review these illustrated verses in a wider context by proceeding to 'Reversing Verse: Limericks About Classic Palindromes' on the full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. 

DEC 22, waterfowl: brown pelicans

TO ENLARGE any slide or stand-alone photo on this blog, just click on it. To reverse the process, and return to this standard view, find the little 'x' in the upper right corner of the black field and click there.

OCT 10, waterfowl: Caribbean brown pelicans

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'. 

DEC 21, anagram swarm: A-VERY-STABLE-GENIUS -- wordplay for the holiday season

Today's collection should definitely wrap up this excessively extended effort. (But I am proud to say that you can now find some 350 anagrams developed as part of the total undertaking -- and some of them do seem to have some important meaning!)  

You can review an amazing number of anagrams based on this book title on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. There are two posts to view: 

 

'A Very Stable Genius': Theme and Variations (97 anagrams),   and 

'A Very Stable Genius': additional funky anagrams.

DEC 20, singable satire: Tom Lehrer sings "REDUPLICATIONS A to K"

 PARODY SONG-LYRICS

ORIGINAL SONG: "The Elements", Tom Lehrer, 1959.

PARODY COMPOSED: Dr. G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio, 2015. This song is the seventh of nine in the series on Word- Pairs. You can find the links to the lyrics of the previous songs at the bottom of the post. 

EXPLANATION:  For a  discussion of reduplications, check an earlier post on this blog-site by clicking here. This post also honours our previous venture of Feb 15, 2017 entitled 'Abracadabra' to 'Zoom-zoom': possibly the world's largest compendium of reduplications'. 

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 SATIRE" with chord-charts and helpful performing suggestions. Click HERE to proceed to this site. 

This post is a follow-up to "The Reduplications: A Lesson"

  This collection of fascinating phrases has been modified somewhat since its original posting on the site AmIRight.com. Thanks are due to Al Silver, Becky Hurwitz and Uncle Paul for suggesting several examples which were incorporated into the current version. 

 WARNING!  Do not attempt to sing this lesson at the pace of a patter-song. The management of this blog will take no responsibility for any injuries sustained.

Many of these words have fascinating stories of their origin and subsequent use; the hotlinks highlight those with instructive or amusing information available on the web.

A mini-lesson found on the Internet

There’s achy-breaky, artsy-fartsy, bigwig, BB, and aye-aye

Abracadabra, bric-a-brac, and boulder holder, and bye-bye

And Bora Bora, beriberi, (good) bees knees, and (bad) boo-boo

And bonbon, buddy-buddy, bunga-bunga, can-can, and choo-choo

There's crackerjack, couscous, and chili, chugalug, chin-chin, cocoa 

And clap-trap, culture vulture,  chit-chat, chock-a-block,  cluck-cluck, dodo 

And dilly-dally, deadhead, dum(b)-dum(b), dingle-dangle, and clip-clop 

And easy-peasy, even Steven, fifty-fifty, and flip-flop.

There's flim-flam, fiddle-faddle, fuddy-duddy, fat cat, funny mon-

-ey; Folderol and fender bender, flower power, honey-bun.

And four-door, ga-ga, goody-goody, golden-oldy, and hotshot

And go-go, gibber-jabber, hurly-burly, honky-tonk, hotspot. 

                       

There’s hocus-pocus, harum-scarum, holus-bolus, hoi-polloi

And holy moly!  hoity-toity, hip-hop, heeby-jeebies, oy!

And hullaballoo and hokey-pokey, hotpot, hoodoo, and hobo

And handy-dandy, hari-kari, Henny-Penny and heigh-ho!

Hell’s bells! there’s hanky-panky, hootchie-kootchie, hobnob and hoo-haw

Hush-hush! knock-knock, NewYork NewYork, (its zip is fixed twixt MA and PA)

Ill will, and itsy-bitsy, heyday, juju, bass-ackward blackjack

And jingle-jangle, jeepers-creepers, kow-tow, kiwi, and knick-knack. 

Ta-Dah !!!

And, for those interested, here's how you find the lyrics-only-version

of the nine songs that make up this cycle. If you would like to  accompany yourself on ukulele or guitar, find relevant chord charts by following the links that will take you to the versions in our blog "Silly Songs and Satire". 

1. PAIRS, to the tune of "Words" in the style of the Beegees

...  the following songs in the style of "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer

2. ALLITERATIVE BINOMIALS, part#1

3. ALLITERATIVE BINOMIALS, part#2

4. RHYMING BINOMIALS, part#1

5. RHYMING BINOMIALS, part#2

6. A LESSON ABOUT REDUPLICATIONS

7. REDUPLICATIONS, part#1

8. REDUPLICATIONS, part#2

9. LEGALISTIC DOUBLETS, in the style of "Supercalifragilistic..." from  the musical "Mary Poppins"

DEC 19, wordplay maps: r-i-c anagrams #11+#12

 

You can view the entire collection of 18 wordplay maps of 'R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N-S in Canada' on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense" by clicking HERE.

DEC 18, American anagram swarm: 'C-O-N-S-T-I-T-U-T-I-O-N-A-L'

A brief explanation of anagram swarms, and some other examples can be found on the blogpost "A Brief Saga: Anagram Swarms"; click HERE.