Saturday 15 June 2019

Immersible Bird-Verse: WATERFOWL #1 (A to C)



PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio (registered pseudonym) and Dr. GH, May 2019. This blogpost is the first in a series of five collections of verses and photos about waterfowl, based primarily on Giorgio's waterside outings in South Carolina and Ontario. 
Today's verses. dealing primarily with the South Carolina lowcountry environment, have been published (a few remain under review) at OEDILF.com. The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form is an online humor dictionary that has accumulated over 100,000 carefully edited poems (Giorgio is proud to have contributed almost 300). 
Readers who enjoy our collections of verses describing the natural world around them with illustrative photos and poetic imagery might also enjoy these offerings...

Verses about Geysers, Sep '18
Verses about Frogs, Jan '19
Verses about Trees, Apr '19
Verses about Reptiles, Jun '19
Verses about Waterfowl, June '19, as posted here,
AND in the future, these collections will become available ...
Verses about Waterfowl (part #2), July '19

Verses about Waterfowl (part #3), Apr '20
Verses about Waterfowl (part #4 - Loons), Aug '20.
Verses about Waterfowl (part #5), Dec '20. 

PHOTOS: I am indebted to colleagues who have contributed a number of the key photographs. Unless otherwise noted, most embedded photographs were taken with and transferred from Giorgio's cellphone, then formatted using Powerpoint software. No photographic subjects were reimbursed for participating in this undertaking. 

CONTENTS:
American white ibises
Anhingas
Awkward great auks
Birder
Black-crowned night herons
Black skimmers
Brown pelicans (Caribbean)
Canada geese
(for continuation, see the link below)















































occasional aggressive stance adopted by a Canada goose,
as suggested here 


Bird-watchers, academic ornithologists, wordplay enthusiasts, wildlife photographers, Giorgio's relatives, and just everyday folks have united in their demand for more verses on this topic!
So, please follow this link!... 


DIRECTION FOR WEB-TRAVELLERS: 
To resume daily titillations on our related blog 'Daily Illustrated Nonsense', click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings in the righthand margin, and check the daily offerings for any month in the years 2020 to the present. (As of September 2023, there are over 1200 unique entries available on the Daily blog, and most of these are also presented here on 'Edifying Nonsense' in topic-based collections.) The 'Daily' format also has the advantage of including some videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.


Monday 10 June 2019

VERSUM TERSUM: Limericks for LOVERS of CLASSIC LANGUAGES


SATIRE COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, September 2018. The involved verses have been published at OEDILF.com, an online humor dictionary that has accumulated over 100,000 carefully edited limericks.





Authors' Note:

mus (MOOS): Latin for ‘mouse’
puer (POO-er): 'boy', a prototype Latin noun, often used in early lessons to introduce the topic of declension
faex: Latin for 'dreg', 'sediment' or 'deposit'
faeces: the more familiar plural form

The author has several decades of experience in attempting to get trainees who had never studied Latin to use Anglo-Latin words appropriately in medical reports. 
Presumably, Linnaeus' associates and protégés in 18th century Swedish academia were all well-versed in Latin.




Authors' Note: 

gigeria: Latin term for the delicacy 'cooked bird entrails'; forerunner of the old French term gisier, from which our use of gizzard is derived

garum: highly popular Roman sauce made from fermented fish intestines, used equivalently to our catsup

Gourmands in ancient Rome were notorious for their consumption of exotic (and in modern terms yukky) foods of all sorts



Authors' Note: Our seer in Byzántion likely made his prediction in the early 4th century A.D.

Byzántion: Greek name for the Greek colonial city-state founded on the Bosporus in pre-Roman times; known in Latin as Byzantium, it lent its name to the subsequent Byzantine Empire

Konstantinoúpolis, and Constantinopolis: Greek and Latin names respectively for the expanded city, planned as his empire's eastern capital (Nova Roma) by Roman emperor Constantine; known in English as Constantinople

Hagia Sophia (ah-yah so-FEE-ah) Greek for Holy Wisdom; famed for its huge dome, the third iconic church built on the site served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral from 537 A.D. until 1453, the year of conquest by the Ottoman Turks

Istanbul: capital of the Ottoman Empire, and subsequently of modern Turkey, the city's current population of 15 million (2017) makes it Europe's most populous city.












Authors' Note: In its earlier versions, the Hebrew alphabet was a pure abjad, or consonantary, with over twenty consonants, but no vowel sounds. The modern script used today has five symbols which may assist in the vocalization of vowels. In certain specific usages (poetry, teaching children, studying ancient texts, books of prayer used in the diaspora), a system of diacritic marks under the letters indicates the standardized vowel sounds. Without them, as in the majority of informal printed texts and in handwriting, you have to know some grammar, and have a moderate vocabulary of root words (often consisting of three consonants) to solve the meaning.   






If you want to resume daily titillations on our other public blog 'Daily Illustrated Nonsense', click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time-frame of interest from the calendar-based listings in the righthand margin, and check the daily offerings for any month in the years 2020 and 2021. (There are now 700+ daily entries on the Daily blog, and most of these are also presented here on 'Edifying Nonsense' in topic-based collections.)





You can also find a singable version of "Anglo-Latin" on our sister blog "SILLY SONGS and SATIREHERE


Wednesday 5 June 2019

HERPETOLOGIC VERSE: REPTILES

    
        
PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio (registered pseudonym) and Dr. GH, April 2019. Today's verses have been approved for web-publication at OEDILF.com, an online humour dictionary that has accumulated over 100,000 carefully edited poems. 

PHOTOS: Unless otherwise noted, embedded photographs were taken with and transferred from Giorgio's cellphone, then formatted using ancient Powerpoint software. No photographic subjects were reimbursed for participating in this undertaking. 

BACKGROUND:  "herpetology" - the branch of zoology dealing with reptiles and amphibians. Readers should note that snakes have been omitted from this poetic idyll owing to the marked aversion by the editor's life-partner. 

And, for those interested here's a list of our whole collection of posts related to Nature ...

Verses about Geysers, Sep '18
Verses about Trees, Apr '19
Verses about Reptiles, Jun '19, as above,
AND, here's the lineup for future posts ... 
Verses about Waterfowl, June '19
Verses about Waterfowl (part #2), July '19
Verses about Trees (part #2), Aug '19
Verses about Waterfowl (part #3), Apr '20
Verses about Reptiles, (part #2), May '20
Verses about Waterfowl (part #4 - Loons), Aug '20.
Verses about Waterfowl (part #5), Dec '20. 


CURRENT CONTENTS:
Amphisbaenians
Autotomy
Beneficial snakes
Broad-headed skinks
Brown anoles
Carolina anoles
Crocodilians



Authors' Note: 

clade: taxonomic term, equivalent to ‘suborder’

   The amphisbaenians are a group of reptiles named for the Greek mythological figure Amphisbaena, a two-headed serpent. Superficially resembling earthworms, but with similar markings about their tails and their small heads, they spend most of their time in a subterranean environment. Although they are  widely found in South America, the Caribbean region and Africa, their current distribution in North America and in Europe is more limited, involving only Florida and Iberia respectively.
    
   The motivation for the alleged fevered search by Slovenian crowds to find these creatures is unclear.
   The suffix -paenia, or -penia, (PEE-nyuh), not infrequently used in medical terms, indicates a lack or deficiency.







Authors' Note: 

‘The Palmetto State’: South Carolina
plenum: from the Latin for ‘full’, a deliberative meeting of a body in which all members are present, contrasted with quorum
plenumous: ad hoc neologism indicating the importance of the issue at hand

Your contributions to the BPSS, tax-free, will help us in our efforts to counter anti-social behavior in South Carolina (the palmetto state) by the following: 
eastern diamondback, timber/canebrake and pygmy rattlesnakes,
copperheads, 
cottonmouths,
coral snakes.



















 










See an earlier post for Giorgio's rehash of Ogden Nash's verse (The Purist) about the important differences between crocodiles and alligators.



Nature-lovers , academic herpetologists, wordplay enthusiasts, wildlife photographers, Giorgio's relatives, and just everyday folks have united in their demand for more verses on this topic!
So, please follow this link!


DIRECTION FOR WEB-TRAVELLERS: 

If you want to resume daily titillations on our blog 'Daily Illustrated Nonsense', click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time-frame of interest from the calendar-based listings in the righthand margin, and check the daily offerings for any week in the years 2020 through 2022, and more. (There are now almost 1000 daily entries on the Daily blog, and most of these are also presented here on 'Edifying Nonsense' in topic-based collections.)