Thursday, 20 February 2020

Political palindromes: E - G

 Authors' Note: What you had all been waiting for: the king of palindromes.








From this point, you can proceed either forwards or backwards.
For FORWARD, proceed to the next set (H to J) of 'POLITICAL     PALINDROMES'. 
For BACKWARD, return to the previous set (A to D), the ORIGINAL POST on this topic.

Author's Note: The palindromes in this series have mostly been concocted recently. Some of them had first been displayed in one of our blogposts in 2017. Note that the author believes that wordplay derivations such as palindromes and anagrams are not 'invented', but merely 'reported' by canny observers, and some of today's offerings have been copied from others' reports as well as from the blog-author's earlier work. 


GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR WEB-EXPLORERS: 
To resume your review of the sequence of 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 at the bottom of the page, and check the daily offerings for any month from the start of 2020 until July 2025. 
As of July 20, 2025, there are 2,000 unique entries available on the daily blog, displaying individual poems (often illustrated) and wordplay, but also with some photo-collages and parody song-lyrics. 
Most of the key elements, such as this one, are also assembled here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections.
The "Daily" format, a formidable mix of genres, also has the advantage of including song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.



Saturday, 15 February 2020

FEB 15 (2020): SAVOIR-FAIRE -- vers francais, part #1 [5]

This blogpost is a representation of 'VERS FRANÇAIS', verses about saying things in French, as initially posted on this blog February 15, 2020. 

CURRENT CONTENTS:  (original posting -- February 15, 2020)
Avant-garde savant
Bilingual labelling
Corniches
Franglais
French enologists



Authors' Note: The present participle (participe présent) is used much less commonly in French than in English; the good news is that this form is regular for all but three verbs (to know, to have, to be). In contrast, infinitives are used more often, so 'knowing and doing' is described by savoir-faire.

Savant, an archaic form derived from savoir, is still in use as a noun for 'someone who knows' (a prodigy).
Avant looks as though it should be the present participle for avoir, but in fact it derives from the Latin preposition abante; but, as a loanword, e.g. avant-garde, it has become associated with the 'forefront' (ayant is in fact the present participle 'having').   




Authors' Note: 
au verso (oh vehr-soh) French for 'on the reverse side'
Bilingual labelling, if you pay attention to it, produces some startling results. In Canada, pomegranates and their juice must be imported. But, in French-speaking parts of the country, we would refer to them as grenades, the modern French term for the fruit. In the circumstance under discussion, the particular juice-box was labelled on its French side as jus de grenade.

An archaic term for the tree and for the fruit, pomegranate derives from the Middle Ages, but seems to have gotten stuck in English as a sort of borrowed anachronism. On the other hand, we have grenadine syrup, a cocktail additive, putatively made from pomegranate juice, but in fact, often concocted from synthetic ingredients.
You can review verses on this topic in a wider context on our full-service blog 'Edifying Nonsense'. Check the post 'Vers Francais: Savoir-Faire' by clicking HERE.












Authors' Note:


en visite (ahn vee-ZEET): ‘while visiting'

les touristes (lay too-REEST):  'the tourists’

non-français (non frahn-SEH): ‘not French (speaking)’

ils causaient (eel koh-ZEH): 'they chatted‘

Québécois (kay-bay-KWAH): ‘resident of Quebec (province)’

franglais (frahn-GLEH): ‘Franglais, a mixed lingo’







Wednesday, 5 February 2020

FEB 5 (2020): Poetic Parody, "AS WE NUKE IT"

                                                                                                                                                                                         
                    
POETIC PARODY (reprinted)
ORIGINAL POEM:  Jaques' Monologue, Act iii, Shakepeare's "As You Like It".
POETIC PARODY: Nucl Med Commun 2002 and Photon 2004; modified with permission of the author (G.A. Hurwitz).
SONGLINK: See also our sister blog "SILLY SONGS AND SATIRE", post #3, where this poem has been considerably modified and set to music ("The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", 1976 by Gordon Lightfoot).

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, 2013.


AS WE NUKE IT (Poetic parody)


All the world's a scan,
And all its ins and outs are Nuclear’s patients.
They have their statics, and their cine-modes,
And each head which rotates views many parts;
The PACS lists their registrations.....At first the milkscan —
Pooling of puking in the basal lungs:
Then, refluxing schoolgirl for her cysto,
With brimming bladder bright, curling her toes
Unwillingly to void: and then the scrotal —
Orchitis like fire, or a wakened Uro
Scrubbed for his torted testis:  then a bleeder,
Full of tinned cells, blood labelled in the lab,
Nil found by scopes, yet suddenly maroon-stooling,
Seeking the blip extravasation
Anywhere from antrum south:  and then, shunt-study —
Tube blocked in belly, with good CT down,
His eyes rolled back, us free-of-latex gloved,
Hakim or Pudenz bulged with fluid clear;
And so we draw it off.....The next is slotted
For the diuretic renogram,
Nephrostomy in place and pouch on flank,
His useful side, well drained by frusemide
(as we Brits say), but his big kidney’s counts
Rising again and portending trouble, no peaks
Or downturns in its curve.....Last scan of all,
That aids nocturnal transplant surgery —
Cerebral countlessness, then world-matched-donoring,   
Bank organs, yank tubes, and thank certainty.