OCT 28, Carolina lowcountry: wildlife revisited#1

black-crowned night heron

 

mud crab

brown pelican

downy woodpecker

great egret

great egret at Shem Creek boardwalk 

OCT 27, domestic hazards: fatbergs

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

links for any date: scroll over to the calendar-based listings of 'Past Posts' in the righthand column on this page, choose your year and then month of interest, and then select (by clicking) the post of your choice.

OCT 26, wordplay maps: Scramble-towns of eastern Canada, #11 and #12

Who would ever have guessed? It turns out that an unparalleled word in generating anagrams, i.e. letter scrambles, is P-A-L-I-N-D-R-O-M-E-S. We have taken advantage of that property to create this unique series of wordplay maps of imaginary American (and Canadian) locales, each one completed by its official two-letter state (or provincial) abbreviation. 

 LINKS to other nonsense in this series: 

Forward to the next Canadian map, eh?

Back to the previous Canadian map, eh?

Default to U.S.A. map #21 (final American version).

OCT 25, Toronto ravines: Todmorden Mills

 

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 24, binomial phrases: "a hug and a kiss"

Authors' Note: "And too many others to mention ..."

 To review the poetic effusion that we have accumulated about binomial phrases, proceed to our blog "Edifying Nonsense", and review the post  'Grandpa Greg's Grammar: Binomial Expressions'. Click HERE ! 

There is also an entire collection of lyrics to patter songs, somewhat older material, dedicated to various kinds of binomials, 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 !

OCT 23, gruesome verses: two horrific quandaries for Hallowe'en

Hallowe'en is creeping up on us!

Check out the whole collection called "Gruesome Verse" on our blog "Edifying Nonsense" HERE.

OCT 22, Toronto oases: City Halls

 

OCT 21, poems of Nuclear Medicine: Shakespeare's 'As We Nuke It'

OCT 20 (2021), 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.

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.

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

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 18, humorists' scurrilous talk: 'the cock'

EDITORS' WARNING: You must be at least 12 years of age to read this post! 

  The collection of informative verses dealing with 'HUMORISTS' SCURRILOUS TALK' can be found by proceeding to our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE!

OCT 17, variant Nantucket limerick: moeurs of Nantucket

 

You can review our entire collection of spoof verses based on the iconic Nantucket limericks on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense' by clicking HERE.

OCT 16, wordplay maps: Scramble-towns of eastern Canada, #9 and #10

Who would ever have guessed? It turns out that an unparalleled word in generating anagrams, i.e. letter scrambles, is P-A-L-I-N-D-R-O-M-E-S. We have taken advantage of that property to create this unique series of wordplay maps of imaginary American (and Canadian) locales, each one completed by its official two-letter state (or provincial) abbreviation.

 LINKS to other nonsense in this series: 

Forward to the next Canadian map, eh?

Back to the previous Canadian map, eh?

Default to U.S.A. map #21 (final American version)

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, oncologic verses: 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 11, garden intruders: gnome excursions

 

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.

OCT 10, culinary verse: caponata (Sicilian eggplant relish)

 

Find the collection of illustrated poems dealing with these issues on the post 'Culinary Verse' on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Click HERE!

OCT 9, bottom line of medical humor: borborygmi

 Authors' Note: Borborygmi (plural of the Latin borborygmus) , a normal phenomenon, are rumbling noises in the abdomen related to movement of fluid and gas through gastrointestinal viscera (hollow organs).

s in a wider context by proceeding to the collection 'The BOTTOM LINE of MEDICAL HUMOR' on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE!

OCT 8, palinku (poetic novelty): identity

   In this post, we continue with a 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 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). 

  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. 

(Ed. note:) Verses of this type have continued to accumulate, and there are now more than 50 of them. You can easily view them all  if you  proceed  to our more encyclopedic blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE.(Or, if your prefer, you can view all this material on Facebook  in Giorgio's photo-albums.)

OCT 7, a brief saga: Dodecanese islands (Aegean)

  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. 

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

To access the next 'brief saga' on this blog, proceed to 'The Domestic Turkey'.

To access the most recent previous 'brief saga', back up to 'Cormorant rookery'.

OCT 6, death and the afterlife: [sic] to death

Authors' Note: We were inspired, in studying the enigmatic final chapter of existence, to find that OEDILF, as of mid-2022, has about 150 submissions that deal with the subject of 'death'. That research shows that the spectre of death underscores many linguistic idioms.

getting off cheap: an idiom, perhaps further towards the slang end of the scale, in comparison with getting off easy

sick to death of: a cliché, only rarely entailing the imminent demise of the subject

to die in your sleep: a cliché, albeit puzzling biologically

survive to a ripe old age: a cliché; here also used as the basis of a pun

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

OCT 5, insects: computer 'bugs'

 You can review Giorgio's other verses about pesty and occasionally beneficial insects, as  collected in 'Buzzwords: Verses about Insects' on the full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". Click HERE.

OCT 4, numbers: quartets, foursomes (4)

You can review our cumulated nonsense about numbers by clicking HERE.

Related photo: 

string quartet,
Dundas Square, Toronto

OCT 3, portraits of couples: emus, 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 2, wordplay maps: Scramble-towns of eastern Canada, #7 and #8

Who would ever have guessed? It turns out that an unparalleled word in generating anagrams, i.e. letter scrambles, is P-A-L-I-N-D-R-O-M-E-S. We have taken advantage of that property to create this unique series of wordplay maps of imaginary American (and Canadian) locales, each one completed by its official two-letter state (or provincial) abbreviation. 

 LINKS to other nonsense in this series: 

Forward to the next Canadian map, eh?

Back to the previous Canadian map, eh?

Default to U.S.A. map #21 (final American version)

OCT 1, STD-poetry: tabes dorsalis (tertiary syphilis)

Authors' Note: 

CNS: central nervous system, i.e. the brain and spinal cord; a commonly used medical initialism

spirochete(n.): a generalization for a bacterium of the type that causes syphilis (Treponema pallidum), based on its microscopic appearance

spirochete(v.): novel use confined to this verse, implying damage by syphilitic spirochetes

  The above verse, dealing with the late or ('tertiary') manifestations of syphilis (a.k.a. lues), emphasizes the common disorders of the CNS, including tabes dorsalis, a disease of the spinal cord producing sensory limitations in the legs, compensated by a characteristic (tabetic) stomping gait. Accompanying brain disorders may include general paresis (weakness), mania, delirium and dementia; and manifestations in other organ systems are not uncommon.

You can review verses on this topic in a wider context in a post on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense" by proceeding to 'Ruination, Rumination and Reminiscence: STD-Poetry'. Click HERE.