) JUL 25 (2026) singable satire: 'CARNIVAL OF CHARLESTON'

 b) Today's Offering (July 25, 2026): SINGABLE SATIRE

ORIGINAL PARODY LYRICS 

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS: "Carnival of Venice", traditional song

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, January 2014.

PHOTOS of the concert "Carnival of Venice", Charleston SC, were provided by Uncommon Solutions.

UKULELE and GUITAR-FRIENDLY LINK: Our series of parody-song lyrics  can be found in a friendly format for ukulele (and guitar)-players on our sister blog "SILLY SONGS and SATIRE" with chord-charts and helpful performing suggestions. To find ukulele chord-charts to help you accompany "CARNIVAL OF CHARLESTON" on your favorite instrument, click HERE.

Coverage of the inciting event by the Charleston "Post and Courier" can be found online.

THE CARNIVAL OF 

CHARLESTON

 (to the tune of "the Carnival of Venice")


Your rickshaw ride in Charleston
Can't explore that magic town;
The driver's only licensed
A: pick-up;  B: set you down.

Official guides in Charleston
Have to pass exams and train; 
Rapt carriage-tour riders and foot-group
Can't block ante-bellum lanes.

Charleston's famous "Rainbow Row"

A pedicab lurks at your lodgings,
Marks you for a heinous crime;

A sleazy eager historian
Who is keen to sell his time. 

To stamp out these nasty infractions,
Wired police devised a sting
Attired for entrapment as tourists
Massive fines recordings bring.

a rickshaw driver cruises for customers

Few hours in scenic Charleston ?
Cruise-lined there by Carnival,
Snubbed by snobby South-of-Broad big-shots?
Don't treat 'Rick Shaw' as a pal.

If cruising past Fort Sumter
And re-boarding is a must,
Steer clear of Rick's tempting discussions - 
It might be a tourist bust.

a colleague of Rick Shaw, at work

Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor,
as proposed in an early painting

Concert of Venetian music; 
a Charleston visitor admires the sets

) JUL 20 (2026) singable satire: 'REPETITIVE (echoic) BINOMIALS -- AGAIN AND AGAIN')

 

UKE-SONG, derived from lyrics of a multi-verse limerick, and arranged to be sung to "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?".




POETIC BACKGROUND: Binomial expressions, fixed-order word pairs. are widely used in English-language idioms, but not often discussed as a grammatical entity. The current story deals with an under-appreciated type of common binomial phrase that strangely represents a sort of "nul set". Rather than two different paired words (homonyms, members of a group, or even opposites), these phrases repeat the same word joined by a relevant joining word (usually a conjunction).  The poem in question can be found HERE.

FURTHER EXPLANATION:  It seems best for the novice to read about the various types of binomials in a topic-based collections on our more encyclopedic blog. Giorgio now has about twenty short poems that explain and exemplify these paired phrases on the OEDILF website, and we have been glad to display those individually, and somewhat randomly, as well on our casual blog "DAILY ILLUSTRATED NONSENSE". But for study of the general issue, we recommend undertaking a more encyclopedic approach, as can be found on our more formal blog "EDIFYING NONSENSE". We hope that you will get the idea little by little. Click HERE.

PARODY-SONG: In this post, the words of the poetic explanation and exemplification of echoic binomials are set to the music of the Carole King song, with some minor changes in the lyrics to accommodate differences in scansion. Also, importantly, a bridge was developed. Thanks are due to Steve McNie of Toronto Ukes, whose songbook provided the chord and lyrics slides for the original song. Note that another parody song on our site, "Walrus and Carpenter, lowcountry version") has also been pinned to the same melody.

Again and again, they're a part, love

Of our musical, lyrical art, love.

Word by word, wall to wall,

Scene by scene, all in all --

Echoic binomials -- a start, love.

These phrases praise each body part, girl. 

Hand in hand, arm in arm, heart to heart, girl.

Cheek to cheek, toe to toe, 

Back to back (dos-a-dos).

Let's try putting the horse before cart, girl. 

(BRIDGE): When these cliches are spoken,

Conflicting pairs like "now and then";

Or "yours and mine" -- mood broken -- 

Set things right (set things right) with "again and again".

Head to head, eye to eye, tete-a-tete;

Bit by bit, our life's better and better, 

Roads get steeper and steeper -- 

Love grows deeper and deeper;

Our song's fine, line by line, letter by letter.

Some idioms, time after time, love,

Prove that being a word-nerd's no crime, love.

Hour by hour, day to day,

More and more, play by play,

ll: Year by year, you can hear what I rhyme, lovel

This song is part of a cycle of 10 parody-songs dealing with word-pairs.

JUL 15, 2026: DEFINING OPINIONS, sextet #7 [4]

    This blogpost represents a continuing collection of poems about 'DEFINING OPINIONS', as posted on this blog on July 15, 2020 (sextet#1), July 15, 2021 (sextet#2), July 15, 2022 (sextet#3), July 15, 2023 (sextet#4), July 15, 2024 (sextet#5), and July 15, 2025 (sextet#6).

previous poetic posts (Note that captions are available for poems displayed on "Daily Illustrated Nonsense" in slide format since January, 2024).

(sextet#1): academically, birdlife, boring, crepuscular, cruddy, decompose. 

(sextet#2): diaphoretic, envision, expertise, fester, hamuli, haunch.

(sextet#3): heinous, hoarding, hod, holdout, hole#1, hole#2

(sextet#4): holler, hollow, homogenized (milk), hone, honey, honorifics.

(sextet#5): hooey, hoot, hopeful, hormones, hors d'oeuvres, hose.

(sextet#6): hostility, hot, hourly, housewife, humorless, inveigle.

CURRENT CONTENTS (sextet#7):
Limerick
Multiple myeloma
Post-mortem exam
Smut

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.

JUL 10, 2026: National and multinational verse, bloc #2 [3]

 

CURRENT CONTENTS: (note that captions are available for poems displayed on "Daily Illustrated Nonsense" after  January 2025).

Canada (3 stanzas, a 'brief saga')

France (3 stanzas, a 'brief saga')

America (USA - 3 stanzas, a 'brief saga') 

(Note that the four stanzas of this "brief saga" can be found in more readily legible format on the blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense"; click HERE.)

Note that the three stanzas of this "brief saga" can be found in a more readily legible format on the blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense"; 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 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.

JUL 5, 2026: Reprehensible MODERN HISTORY, second set of unpleasantries [5]

 

This blogpost is a collection of brief poems tainted with negative view of modern developments.   This post represents material from our first emanation on this topic, "reprehensible modern history",  part #1 (July 5, 2025). 

previous poetic postings (Note that captions are available for poems displayed on "Daily Illustrated Nonsense" from January, 2024 and onward.)

(first set of unpleasantries): cantankerous leaders, clannishness. confederate states, Crimean war, democracy (18th C version), Emperor of Elba.

CURRENT CONTENTS: (#2 -- July 5, 2026)

Franco-German (Cannes of Worms)

Italo-Turkish war

Sheep in Britain

Submarine warfare (Charleston SC)

Broken Arrow (3 stanzas, a 'brief saga')

Authors' Note:

nachbarlich (NAKH-bahr-likh): neighborly 

l'après-guerre (la-preh-GAYR): period immediately after the Second World War in France, approximately 1945-1948

Cannes (KAN): French town on the Côte d'Azur, famous for its luxury hotels and villas, and for its international film festival

Worms (VORMZ): German town (sometimes pronounced by anglophones as WUHRMZ) of about the same size as Cannes and Limerick, famed for its production of liebfraumilch 

Authors' Note: The Italo-Turkish War, also known as the Turco-Italian War, 1911–1912, was among the neo-colonial adventures pushed by the European powers (Britain, France, Italy, etc.) who took advantage of the decline of Ottoman Turkey just before the outbreak of the First World War. The territories conquered by the Italians (most of current-day Libya and also the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea) remained under their control through the Second World War, with Mussolini's National Fascist party in power in the Kingdom of Italy for most of this period (1922–1943).

The treaty to end the conflict was named after the resort facility in Lausanne, Switzerland at which it was signed by the belligerents, becoming known as the Treaty of Ouchy (oo-SHEE).

SHEEP IN BRITAIN

'Til the 17th C, Britons reap

Productivity based in their sheep.

And then factories and mining

Brought about redefining. 

But the cost to change cloth isn't cheap.

Giorgio Coniglio. 

SUBMARINE WARFARE - didactic material

Charleston, South Carolina played a disproportionate role in the development and deployment of submarines in warfare. 

You can read all about this in three informative blogposts on our blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense" (here, here, and here), or you could enjoy a song about nuclear submarines during the Cold War by clicking HERE.  

(Note that the three verses of this "brief saga" can be found in more readily legible larger format on the blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense"; 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 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.