Wednesday, 15 March 2023

MAR 15 (2023): Poetry of HEALTHCARE [3]











 







Here's a LIST OF LINKS to collections of intriguing poems (over 200 of these!) on medical/dental topics, updated to December 2024. 

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.

Friday, 10 March 2023

MAR 10 (2023): Grandpa Greg's Advanced Grammar: NEOLOGISMS, classic and personal [7]

CURRENT CONTENTS:
classic neologisms
Fulton's Gnu-bar
Hipster and hippy
gobbledegook
personal neologisms
electile dysfunction
awarassment
POTUSA
dyscoprotaxis






Authors' Note: Readers might also enjoy the authors' verses dealing with the epicurean hippy, the prosthetic hipster, the Congolese hippodrome, hip replacement, and the hippocampus.




Authors' Note: The disparaging term gobbledegook was first used in 1944 by a Texas politician named Maverick (scion of the original staunchly independent thinker). Its meaning — pompous, overinflated language — gave rise a few year later to the equivalent bafflegab. These expressions, employing repetition of sounds, have a musical and amusing quality, as do their venerable synonyms --hogwash, poppycock, balderdash, bunkum and tommyrot. (Only their close cousin claptrap (alternately clap-trap) -- would qualify as a reduplication).




Author's Note: Rudy Giuliani, former federal prosecutor and mayor of New York City, served as a legal advisor to the forty-fifth US leader, coordinating court challenges designed to help overturn the results of the American presidential election of 2020. Dysfunction as a general medical or social state is discussed by SheilaB, a prolific contributor to OEDILF. Among many verses on the topical specific entity, Giorgio’s take on erectile dysfunction can also be reviewed at that website.  
 Electile dysfunction has not been as popular a topic.



 
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.



Authors' Note:  Dyscoprotaxis is a neologism, indicating the failure to get the stuff of one's life in order, composed of the familiar Greek roots dys- (impaired, failed), copro- (excrement), and -taxis (movement). The word is opposite in meaning to getting it together.

A few personal neologisms share the distinction of being targeted as a major element in verses elsewhere on this blog. These include  DOGgraphy (diagnostic imaging), and pelicatessen (waterfowl).




Other personal neologisms have played a supportive role including critiquery, high-nasty, and pelfless.



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.

Sunday, 5 March 2023

MAR 5 (2023): MYTHED OPPORTUNITIES, part #2 [5]











Authors' Note: King T. refers to Sparta's King Tyndareus, husband of Leda. These characters in the story of "Leda and the Swan" were presumably mortal. However, relevant accounts, as depicted in literature and representative art, vary as to the mortal status of the couple's famous offspring (the twins Helen and Clytemnestra, and Castor and Pollux were hatched as human babies from the oversized eggs.)






Authors' Note: Sulmona is a town on the Adriatic coast in Italy's Abruzzo region where the renowned Roman poet Ovid (Ovidio in modern italian), contemporary of Horace and Virgil, started writing his works in Latin. His magnum opus "Metamorphoses" is a monumental epic of 15 books, recounting chronologically the creation of the universe to the reign of Julius Caesar. Although many of its tales are recounted with a personal twist, Ovid's writing is the source of much of our knowledge of Greco-Roman myth.




Authors' Note: The Greek myth of Pandora addresses the question of why there is evil in the world. Zeus had Pandora created as the first human female. She was given a jar (misinterpreted millenia later as a box) that contained all of life's evils, with careful direction to guard them. She opened the jar out of curiosity, releasing most of its regrettable contents, thereby infesting subsequent generations of humanity. But one item — hope — was kept inside.
In various ethnic superstitions, apotropaic (protective) magic is invoked to counter a malevolent spiritual force that takes away human good fortune if it is celebrated too loudly. This influence presumably underlies the popular Yiddish expression keyn ay(i)n horah (corrupted to keneinahora or kinahora, even KH in Anglo-Yiddish) translated directly as "no evil eye"; this expression is often invoked when a praiseworthy person or attribute is mentioned.


Author's Note: Many floriculturists would sell their souls to find a cultivar of the lush perennial hosta, Hosta spp., whose foliage would persist through the winter. Although the plant routinely dies back during icy months, it usually returns in the following spring.

John Milton's epic work Paradise Lost, and the crapshoot are described in other verses.






Monday, 20 February 2023

Wordplay maps: R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N-S in Canada (anagram maps #9-12)

 








For more wordplay maps on this topic, click HERE.

To return to the original post, i.e. maps #1-4, click HERE.



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.

Wednesday, 15 February 2023

FEB 15 (2023): HERPETOLOGIC (reptilian) VERSE#1: first slither [5]

 
SATIRE COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio (registered pseudonym) and Dr. G.H. have prioritized excursions into the world of nature on this blog since its inception in 2016. 
  Today's verses have also been published at OEDILF.com
(Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form), an online humor dictionary website that has accumulated over 120,000 limericks, including over 900 that we have submitted (to date, i.e. December 2024, 820 have been finally published following their customary rigorous editing process). The OEDILFian code number for the completed submission is indicated at the bottom of each of our slides. 

Incidentally, artwork including photos, as well as the poetry are the creation of this blog's author-editors (i.e. Dr.G. and Giorgio) unless otherwise indicated.   

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 (first slither):
Amphisbaenians
Autotomy
Beneficial snakes
Broad-headed skinks
Brown anoles
(for continuation, see link below) 


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.
















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!

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 through the summer of 2026. 
As of March, 2026, 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 these key elements of our work are assembled here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections.
The "Daily" format, a formidable mix of genres has the advantage of including song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.