JJ with family,2020, at his summer cottage (photo courtesy BF) |
A blogsite offering entertaining daily oddities since January 2020. There are now over fifteen hundred posts in these four years. Images -- photographic, computer-simulated and poetic -- are drawn from daily life as well as from poems and wordplay grouped by topic on our parent blog "Edifying Nonsense". The poetry displayed is all original (as are the song-lyrics), although portions evolved through rigorous editing on a collaborative website.
JJ with family,2020, at his summer cottage (photo courtesy BF) |
photo-collage in honour of Dr. JJ, whose loves included the outdoor life ...
brown pelican closeup |
egret and shadow |
great egret launching |
two buddies |
waterfowl trio (great egret stalking slowly, snowy egret walking, tricolored (Louisiana) heron fishing) |
hooded mergansers: very cute, but quite skittish little ducks |
great blue heron |
aerial coyote, on guard at a seafood vendor |
green anole, displaying its orangy-pink dewlap |
'Dr. JJ', as many readers would have ascertained, did not seem to be a big fan of 'the 45th'.
"Dr. JJ" enjoyed playing the electric guitar among other instruments. He frequently enlivened major family events by performing parody songs written for the occasion, using base songs from the golden oldies period. His favorite song vehicle was undoubtedly the folk-rock classic "The House of the Rising Sun" (1964) as recorded by the British band The Animals. (A YouTube version is found HERE.)
"Jabberwock", Giorgio's copy, drawing by John Tenniel, illustrator of Carroll's books |
To review the rest of the lyrics and chord-charts, follow this link to our song-blog "Silly Songs and Satire" by clicking HERE.
For historic interest, here is a slide used as part of an open-mike at a ukulele club when the concept of this pastiche was first entertained.
JJ, age 14, dancing with his mother |
This blog-post is in honour of 'Dr. JJ', whose love of life included satire, the music of poetry, and of course, both participatory and spectator sports ...
In this post, we will 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 Japanese 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.
And, just in case you have forgotten what palindromes are about, your blogsite hosts have arranged a serial set of brief lessons on the topic ('Political Palindromes'); click HERE to start.
A version of this poem by Giorgio can also be found on our full-service blog "Edifying Nonsense". There you can find appended some examples of the wonderful limericks that were indisputably written by Ogden Nash. CLICK to proceed to that version if you are interested.
two hippy-haired bros, Dec 1976 |