Saturday, 20 January 2024

American wordplay map with versification: E-X -- P-R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T-I-A-L

 







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 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.

Monday, 15 January 2024

The frontier of doggerel: PALINKUs (palindrome-enriched haiku verses) from the year 2023


A continuation of our previous posts summarizing examples of this brief but novel poetic concoction....
Go back to review palinkus from the year 2020 by clicking HERE, and  from the year 2021 by clicking HERE.



prior posted palinkus (2022)
Canadiana
conformity
Dennis's ongoing sin
evil
invective
lust indulged
magic palindromes
Paris (France and ON)
restaurants#1
schoolboy humor #1
sports
timidity
CURRENT CONTENTS (2023)
denial
drinks
ethics
European capitals
family life
meat-eating
pets
reliable transport
reversal
schoolboy humor #2
sweet treats #2


























You can continue this astounding journey, exploring our new poetic form. Click below for the next yearly collection of posted palinkus (one each month)as available on this blog-site.
  
(Alternatively, you could proceed to our related blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", where we have in a more casual manner, published these terse verses one-at-a-time, usually on the 17th day of each month. 

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 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.

Anthropomorphic and Human BAR-FAUNA, first round


CURRENT CONTENTS (#1)
Ark's bar
Fubar / snafu
Gary the gator
Hamlet's ghostly dream
Lack of enlightenment 
Lizards' lair






Authors' Note:  

barista: Italian for bartender at an establishment serving either coffee-based drinks or alcoholic beverages.

The story of the primal flood and Noah's Ark provides some opportunity for speculation, as here. What space for care and facilities for recreation were provided for the animals fortunate enough to be selected to board and avoid the environmental destruction that otherwise awaited them? These passengers were slated to become the basis for repopulation of the planet after the floodwaters receded. (One might also ask about the facilities for the animal husbandry crew, but that's another question.) Previous authors seem to have given little thought to these issues. 

The authors, on occasion, visit a waterside watering-hole, known as "Art's Bar", whose name, transmogrified, gave birth to the current fantasy.  




Author’s Note: Slang expressions derived from the American military in the 1940s, FUBAR (used primarily as an adjective), and SNAFU (used primarily as a noun) were initialisms for F***ed up Beyond All Repair, and Situation Normal, All F***ed Up, respectively. In more polite situations, the F-word is explained as “fouled”. The use of SNAFU has become more commonplace, and is now often written without the capitals. Snafu has come to have a more targeted meaning, implying a specific obstacle or a glitch in a projected plan. The usage of fubar has currently receded, but it seemed worth mentioning in relation to Fulton’s bar.





Author’s Note:See you later, alligator” with a funky stress of the final word, is an idiom used in the southern United States. In the 1950s, it sparked an eponymous hit song by the rock group Bill Haley and His Comets.

The American alligatorAlligator misissippiensis, once endangered, now thrives in an extensive portion of the country. The large reptile is less aggressive towards human than its crocodilian relatives. Nonetheless, over 30 fatal attacks have been recorded in the last five decades. The story described above in verse, dealing with an attack in a food-service location, is apocryphal.
















For more "bar-fauna", please proceed to the second round of drinks by clicking  HERE.




Authors' Note
dietary: (DYE-eh-t'ree, as here, or DYE-uh-tay-ree): a hospital department best known for producing meal trays to be distributed to in-patients.

 This verse is dedicated to the proposition that bars located near hospitals may be viewing-places of partiular interest. And yes! Dr. Korn is likely the medical centre's sole specialist-practitioner in his area of interest.





Authors' Note:  The golem, an entity from Jewish folklore, is likely the least well-known of the supernatural beings participating in this story. Made entirely of inanimate matter, e.g. mud or clay, this sizable being can classically be either a victim or villain, and connote hope or despair. In more recent popular culture, it refers to any crude automaton devised by a sorcerer.

Although she apparently has few close friends, “Nessie” is a nickname for Scotland’s famed Loch Ness monster.





Authors' Note:mule, formerly known as a buck, makes a wonderful mixed drink on a very hot day. Its key ingredients are ginger beer (ideally the opaque soapy extract bottled in the Caribbean), citrus juice (most often freshly squeezed lime), and a variety of liquors. In the concoction’s most common form, the Moscow mule, vodka is used as the source of alcohol.




 
Author's Note: This verse, borrowed from OEDILF, deals with seasonal underage drinking on the Canadian prairies; 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 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.



Wednesday, 10 January 2024

Review of 'brief sagas' from 2023

 

 A NOTE from the EDITORS: 

 As readers may have gathered, these blogs highlight several types of light, wistful and humorous reflections on current life, chief among them being short verses using the limerick format, more or less (see the blogpost "Limerick Variations"). But on occasion, we feel the urge to continue important themes through several stanzas worth of poetic ideas. So in this post, we highlight the previous years' offerings of 'lengthier' poems of at least 15 lines or 3 stanzas. We have been publishing these at the rate of once a month on "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", but as they are found mixed with shorter verses of five lines, i.e. standard limericks, or even three lines, (palinku --palindromic haiku), you might have failed to notice and review them in their entirety. 

  This summary gives you a second chance to explore these lengthier creations that contain as many as 6 stanzas -- hardly lengthy enough to be considered a genuine saga, but we hope that they reflect the authors' sagacity.  

  The compressed mode in which our 'sagas' are displayed may enhance your appreciation of the range of topics covered; if you prefer to enjoy the details in a larger and more readable font, you can quickly access the posts on this blog devoted uniquely to their stanza-by-stanza display (as well as notes, related photos and videos), by entering their title into the search lines provided. And from there, you can, of course, explore further to enjoy the multitude of shorter verses.  


CURRENT CONTENTS (from 2023)

America                       May
Anagram Swarm         Jun
Clinical Trial                Sep
Creepy verbs               Nov 
Dodecanese Islands   Apr
France                         Jul
Herbicides                  Aug
linguISTICALLY          Oct  
Possessives                Mar
Potato famine            Feb
Squid / COVID           Jan
Stinkhorn fungus       Dec



































For the curious reader's convenience, we have sorted our treasury of 'brief sagas' by the year of publication on this blog. Altogether, you will find more almost 50 whimsical poems that cover about 800 lines of verse. 

Click below, and enjoy!
2020
2021
2022
2023.


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 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.

Friday, 5 January 2024

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 120,000 carefully edited limericks.

CURRENT CONTENTS
Aramaic
Greek
Hebrew alphabet
Homo latinophonius
Constantinopolis
Yukky Roman foods
Anglo-Latin  (4 verses, a 'brief  saga')










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.   





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: 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: 

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.



 
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 . 
And as a later development, we put words to music. You can now sing along with the song "DELIGHTS of ANGLO-LATIN" by proceeding to our song-blog "Silly Songs and Satire". 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 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.