OCT (2021), submitted palindromes #22

 

BEYOND CANALS: More Magical Palindromes

With all this mental energy focusing backwards and forwards on palindromes, it has been hard to avoid the subject of canals. A project close to our hearts was to take the standard palindromes about canals, (e.g. the well-known, A man a plan, a canal, Panama), and extend the adulation to a series of other canal sites. 
 - MAGICAL CANAL VERSES and PALINDROMES: the application of the magical palindrome construct to wordplay of geographic interest, specifically dealing with artificial waterways. Paris, Riga and Toronto (a surrogate for the Trent-Severn waterway) are honored here in both verse and wordplay.

 - UNPLANNED CANALS (More Magical Palindromes): This followup post expanded the involvement to 8 other world sites. For a few of these cities, e.g. Reno (Nevada), the existence of canals is apocryphal, but the relevant municipal administrations were co-opted as partners in the interest of wordplay. 
  The aim of the current blogpost is to extend these concepts beyond the constraint imposed by canal themes to more general world destinations; however the meticulous reader might notice the persistence of some elements of our canal hangup. And if you need help with the concept of magical palindromes, see the slide at the bottom of the post; it shows simple examples of magical palindromes which are unrelated to the geographical theme.

A man, a potato - Paris. Sir, a potato - Panama.


A cakery - Napa. A pan - Yreka CA.

A 'garden folly' at
Chateau de Bagatelle,
Paris, France

A man, a plan, if final - pagoda. A dog, a plan, if final - Panama.





Dr. of tarts - Oxford. Dr. of 'X' - O, Stratford!


A man, a plan, if final, Pat - Paros. So rapt a plan, if final - Panama.


No 'D'; no 'L' - Boston. Not (sob!) - London.


A man, a plan, if final, Pa - Lagos. So, gal! A plan, if final - Panama.


A rep. of Omaha. A ham of opera.


A man, a plan, if final, Pa - Niagara F. Far again, a plan, if final - Panama.


A girl, a panama. A man, a pal - Riga.


Wonders in Italy - Latin is asset. Tessa's in Italy - Latin is red now.


 A pan, a dog, a pal - LA. Pagoda - Napa.


A man, a pâté , feta, Parma ham. Rap! Ate feta - Panama.


 Zeus pees on a Toyota. A Toyota? No seep - Suez.


 A dog, a paw, a pan, a panama. A man, a pan, a paw, a pagoda.


A man, a plan, if final - Pristina. A nit, sir; plan if final - Panama.


 If I mouse - Canada CA. A cad, an ace - Suomi FI.


A girl, a Pa - Mar-a-lago. O gal, a ram, a pal - Riga. 


No 'D'; no 'L' - onion. No 'I'? - No London.

Check out the 'FIRST SET' of examples (#1-5) here. 

Check out the 'SECOND SET' of examples (#6-10) here.

If you still need a fix of more palindromic fun, go to "Gratingly American: THIRTY-ODD POLITICALLY-TAINTED PALINDROMES". 

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SONGLINK: "A man, a plan, a canal - Panama"
Readers who are particularly interested in musical wordplay might also enjoy a fantastical discussion on the development of this famous palindrome by Leigh Mercer, in this blogpost of our lyrics blog (SILLY SONGS and SATIRE)  ...
"Leigh Mercer's Palindrome Workshop" .

Poems for Hallowe'en: GRUESOME VERSE

CURRENT CONTENTS:
By halves (autophagia)

Cimetiere

Concealed carry

Dispatch

Grisly / grizzly

Hidey-hole

Horripilation

Scary upshot

Untimely demise

Zombie uprising

Authors' Note: The term autophagia or autophagy  may refer to a rare psychiatric disorder, but is more commonly used to describe an intracellular process in the realm of cell biology, as described by the author HERE.

Authors' Note: There is also a verse on "concealed weapon" that you can find in a blogpost entitled "The Poetry of Gun Control".

Authors' Note: Goose bumps or goose pimples are a common transient physiological change produced by stimulation of the skin's small and widely distributed arrector pili, tiny muscles at the base of each hair follicle. Their appearance may be provoked by physical conditions (such as a cold environment) or emotional factors, including embarassment, a sexual turn-on, or fear. The latter, accompanied by profound anxiety (the heebie-jeebies), and "hair standing on end" (piloerection or horripilation) is a reaction scaled down from that found in the animal kingdom, e.g. porcupines throwing their quills to put off predators. 

  Heebie-jeebies is gramatically another of those appealing (re) duplications, like helter-skelter and hocus-pocus, and represents a topic appropriate for discussion on Hallowe'en.

Authors' Note: Each year at Hallowe'en, all (living) persons, in addition to honoring tradition, must decide if they are ready to combat the zombie revolution.

OVERLAPPING THEMES:

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.

Breaking News: FUNNY BONES, fragment #1 (upper limb fractures)

CURRENT CONTENTS:
Background reading: "The Orthopedic Surgeon".

Comminuted fracture

Fractured wrist (distal radius)

Scaphoid fracture

Anatomic snuffbox

Hook of the hamate

Olecranon ('funny bone')

Bone alignment

(for continuation, see the link below)

BACKGROUND READING To start, let's reconsider a verse that first appeared on our blogpost "Doctors and their Practices". You can get more information on this topic here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_fixation

Authors' Note: 

orthopod: a casual name for the orthopedic surgeon (surgical bone specialist).  For many sites in the upper and lower limbs where trauma has resulted in fracture with angulation or rotation of the fragments, surgical treatment ('ORIF', or Open Reduction, Internal Fixation) has become the standard of treatment. 

Authors' Note: Modern orthopedic treatment of displaced limb fractures often attains the aims of stability and appropriate alignment through the surgical technique of internal fixation. Injured limbs have then undergone the dual trauma of both the original injury and the surgical correction. But, with all the parts back in place and correctly aligned, the patient can work with a physiotherapist to regain range-of-motion, muscle agility and strength. 

Authors' Note: Injuries to the metacarpal bones, such as knuckle fractures, are most common in injuries occurring with the closed fist, e.g. a punch thrown in a fistfight. In fact, an isolated fracture of the head of the fifth ('pinky'-side) metacarpal is known as a boxer's fracture. 

  On the other hand, fractures of the wrist (including the distal ends of the radial and ulnar bones of the forearm and eight intrinsic small carpal bones) are most commonly caused by a fall on the outstretched hand. Of all of these, fractures of the distal radius, sustained when attempting to break a fall, are by far the most common.

Authors' Note:

AVN: medical initialism for avascular necrosis, lethal damage to bone tissue resulting from traumatic interruption of its blood supply; the scaphoid bone of the wrist is particularly susceptible. The human skeleton has two boat-shaped small bones, one each in the ankle (tarsal) and wrist (carpal) areas. The Latin-derived term navicular ('boat-like'), is applied to either bone, whereas its Greek-derived analogue scaphoid, particularly favored in recent decades, is applied only to the wrist bone. How did Eric know that it was his scaphoid that he had fractured? See the verse anatomical snuffbox.

Authors' Note: The hamate bone, one of eight small bones of the human wrist, has a prominent hook, or hamulus, that provides some protection to the ulnar nerve as it proceeds down the arm to supply the fourth and fifth fingers. A 'hairline fracture' of this bony process (outcropping), not an uncommon injury in golfers, baseball players and hockey slap-shooters, may result in continuing pain. Frequently, the injury is not detected on initial x-rays, but may show up on computed tomography (CT), a bone scan, or on follow-up wrist X-rays.

                                                                   

Authors' Note:

funner: a neologism for 'fun-seeker', as used here; also, a disputed equivalent to the comparative expression 'more fun’

  The olecranon is the boney process (extension) of the forearm's ulna that extends into the elbow joint. Fractures of the olecranon are moderately common, due to direct trauma (fall on the elbow), but even more so due to indirect trauma (transmission of intense force with a fall on the outstretched hand). Owing to the proximity of the ulnar nerve, a broken funny bone may be associated with numbness and tingling extending into the fingers.

  Such injuries have bedevilled joggers and elite athletes, but recently have become more common with the popularity of personal electric transport devices. Surgical treatment is generally required for these fractures that often have displaced bone fragments. 

Authors' Note: Modern orthopedic treatment of displaced limb fractures often attains the aims of stability and appropriate alignment through the surgical technique of internal fixation. Injured limbs have then undergone the dual trauma of both the original injury and the surgical correction. But, with all the parts back in place and correctly aligned, the patient can work with a physiotherapist to regain range-of-motion, muscle agility and strength. 

Part #2 of this collection of illustrated poems will feature fractures of the trunk and lower limb (leg). The editors apologize for the long wait, but the good news in 2022 is that this collection is now available! Click HERE. 

GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR WEB-EXPLORERS: 

To resume 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 December 2024. 

As of December 2024, there are 1800 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 their key elements are also presented here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections, such as this one. The "Daily" format also has the advantage of including some song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.

American Satire: A TERM OF ENDIREMENT #3

This post provides a follow-up to ...

"AMERICAN SATIRE (A Term of Endirement) #1"(Note that this first collection of poems gives helpful suggestions on how to SING these intriguing lyrics.)

prior posted poems (#1)

make-believe 2016 (convention)

Vladimir's hope

anagrams (D-O-N-A-L-D etc.)

Hillary pilloried

impulse control

laying blame

borscht

Humpty-Dumpty (nursery rhyme)

prior posted poems (#2)

bilateral anagrams

disingenuous Don

intelligence

revision of NAFTA

covfefe

pardoning 'Sheriff Joe'

Sharpie-gate

'The Mooch'

CURRENT CONTENTS:

Conspiracy theories

Shutdown

'It is what it is'

Impeachment hearing

Tweetstorm

Twitter-ban

Georgia voters
Fraudulent

for continuation, see the link below

Author's Note:  The verse imagines an advisor or supporter picking up on an assertion by the contentious 45th US president. The latter had remained steadfast in demanding budgeting for a southern border wall with Mexico (putatively to decrease the unregulated influx of refugees), and was prepared to take the credit/blame for the pending global shutdown of government financing should it occur.

A venous cutdown is a maneuver to provide reliable access for fluids and drugs during a medical emergency. 

Authors' Note:  In August, 2020, “It is what it is” became a key U.S. presidential comment on deaths due to the coronavirus that were downplayed in the rush to 'reopen' the country. Subsequently, various explanations for the excess were squirmingly offered by the Executive branch of the U.S. government. It was purported, for example, that some doctors were rewarded by their hospitals for inflating the number of death certificates indicating COVID-19 as the apparent cause of death.

Authors' Note: Readers might want to check out prior posts, including that of Feb 9, entitled "Anagrammatic tribute to a Senator", and many prior posts, dealing with great egrets. The photos of birds were obtained from Giorgio Coniglio's personal collection, whereas those of political leaders were obtained from readily available online sources.

Authors' Note:  The fiefdoms of major American political parties are frequently identified on political posters and maps by color coding, Republicans being depicted as red, and Democrats as blue. The relatively conservative southern state of Georgia had traditionally voted Republican in federal presidential elections for several decades until, in November 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by a relatively small increment of twelve thousand votes statewide, a difference of less than 1%.

  After the 2020 election, the transcript of a phone call between the President and his lawyers and Georgia's Secretary of State (the state official in charge of elections) was obtained by the media. In the phone call, the federal parties derided the state's procedures, suggesting that a significant number of Democrat votes had been cast by dead persons. They asked that this unfair situation be redressed by "finding" just enough previously unrecorded Red votes to alter the outcome.

Authors' Note: The above verse reflects the workings of democracy as perceived by a vocal minority, sometimes labeled 'conspiracy theorists', following the 2020 US presidential election. 

FOLLOW-UP

Owing to intense demand for more verses of this type, we have worked hard to accommodate your wishes; in fact there are now four such collections! So, you can view another collection of these philosophically-charged limericks by clicking this link !

GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR WEB-EXPLORERS: 

To resume 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 December 2024. 

As of December 2024, there are 1800 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 their key elements are also presented here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections, such as this one. The "Daily" format also has the advantage of including some song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.