by Mark Graham.
A fishlike thing appeared among the annelids one day
It hadn't any terrapods or cetae to display
It hadn't any eyes or jaws or ventral nervous chord
But it had a lot of gillslits and it had a notochord.(chorus)
It's a long way from amphioxus
It's a long way to us.
It's a long way from amphioxus
To the meanest human cuss.
So goodbye to fins and gillslits
Hello lungs and hair,
It's a long, long way from amphioxus
But we all came from there.Well, it wasn't much to look at and it scarce knew how to swim
Asterius was very sure it hadn't come from him.
The mollusks wouldn't own it and the arthropods got sore
So the poor thing had to burrow in the sand along the shore.(chorus)
It burrowed in the sand before it grabbed in with its tail
And said gillslits and myotomes are all to no avail.
I've grown some metapleural folds and sport an oral hood
But all these fine new characters don't do me any good.(chorus)
He soaked a while down in the sand without a bit of pep
Then he stiffened up his notochord and said: "I'll beat 'em yet."
They laugh and show their ignorance, but I don't mind their jeers
Just wait until they see me in a hundred million years.(chorus)
My notochord will stiffen to a chain of vertebrae
As fins, my metapleural folds will agitate the sea
My tiny dorsal nervous chord will be a mighty brain
And vertebrates will dominate the animal domain.(chorus)
Before starting a rock band, you should know that the following names are taken.
Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.Suddenly,
There's not half the files there used to be,
And there's a milestone
hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.Now all my data's gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.
Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard
And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
Finding some code
That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?Guru MacKenzie
Typing the lines of a program that no one will run;
Isn't it fun?
Look at him working,
Munching some chips as he waits for the code to compile;
It takes a while...All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?Eleanor Rigby
Crashes the system and loses 6 hours of work;
Feels like a jerk.
Guru MacKenzie
Wiping the crumbs off the keys as he types in the code;
Nothing will load.All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
He's a real UNIX Man
Sitting in his UNIX LAN
Making all his UNIX plans
For nobody.Knows the blocksize from du(1)
Cares not where /dev/null goes to
Isn't he a bit like you
And me?UNIX Man, please listen(2)
My lpd(8) is missin'
UNIX Man
The wo-o-o-orld is at(1) your command.He's as wise as he can be
Uses lex and yacc and C
UNIX Man, can you help me At all?UNIX Man, don't worry
Test with time(1), don't hurry
UNIX Man
The new kernel boots, just like you had planned.He's a real UNIX Man
Sitting in his UNIX LAN
Making all his UNIX plans For nobody ...
Making all his UNIX plans For nobody.
When I find my code in tons of trouble,
Friends and colleagues come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
Write in C.As the deadline fast approaches,
And bugs are all that I can see,
Somewhere, someone whispers:
Write in C.Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
LOGO's dead and buried,
Write in C.I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
For science it worked flawlessly.
Try using it for graphics!
Write in C.If you've just spent nearly 30 hours,
Debugging some assembly,
Soon you will be glad to
Write in C.Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, yeah, Write in C.
BASIC's not the answer.
Write in C.Write in C, Write in C
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
Pascal won't quite cut it.
Write in C.
Anyone can be a BLUUZMAN with this handy starter kit. Add one gravely voice and a couple shots of Jack Daniels straight up and follow these simple instructions.
| What | Good | Better | Bad |
|---|---|---|---|
| OPENING LINE | Got me a woman ... | Woke up this mornin' ... | Sunshine on my shoulders ... |
| GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION | Chicago | Saint Louis or Kansas City | Martha's Vineyard |
| BUILDING | cheap hotel | shotgun shack | symphony Hall |
| MISFORTUNE | down 'n' out | old lady done me wrong | HMO don't cover hair plugs |
| WOMAN'S NAME | Sadie | Bessie | Sierra |
| CAR | Chevy | Cadillac | Daihatsu |
| OTHER TRANSPORTATION | Greyhound bus | southbound train | vanpool |
| ACTIVITY | jus' walkin' | fixin' to die | readin' the Wall Street Journal |
| FOOD | biscuits & gravy | ribs | PowerBar |
| DRINK | sloe gin | straight whiskey | frappucino |
| CRIME YOU'RE GUILTY OF | fightin' in the streets again | shooting a man in Memphis | Greenpeace demonstration gone wrong |
| KIND OF BLUES YOU GOT: | woman-done-leff-agin | two-ain't-too-many-women-for-me | Levis 501 |
| FINANCIAL STATUS: | broke | flat broke | DINK (double income, no kids) |
| Where you spent your last $5: | Two packs of cigarettes & a cup of joe | on a $2 woman | amortized 401 (k) plan |
| What kind of woman you got: | long-legged | cold-hearted | hairy-chested |
| Kind of man I am: | hard-headed | hard-drinkin' | vaguely effeminate |
| How she done me wrong: | left me 'lone | took the money and run | quit Weight Watchers |
| What I might as well do: | roll over and die | keep playing these blues till I die | try to resuscitate that man in Memphis, 'fore he dies |
| CAUSE OF DEATH | stabbed in the back by jealous lover | electric chair after shooting a man in Memphis | silicone breast implant rupture |
by Lame Mango Washington (attributed to Memphis Earlene Gray with help from Uncle Plunky, revisions by Little Blind Patti D. and Dr. Stevie Franklin).
Bad places:
No, if:
The following are NOT Blues beverages:
For example, Blind Lime Jefferson, or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.")
capitonym (KAP-i-toh-NIM) noun
A word that changes pronunciation and meaning when it is capitalized. As in the following poems:
Job's Job
In August, an august patriarch
Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass.
Long-suffering Job secured a job
To polish piles of polish brass.
Herb's Herbs
An herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to a rainier Mount Rainier.
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier.
It was The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them, by Robert Southey. Two specimen verses follow:
"You are old, Father William," the young man cried;
"The few locks which are left you are gray;
You are hale, Father William - a hearty old man:
Now tell me the reason, I pray.""In the days of my youth," Father William replied,
"I remembered that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigor at first,
That I never might need them at last."
Which was transmogrified by Carroll into:
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, it is right?""In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
Selections from other Carroll-parodied verses, for the amusement of those chaps who might care, follow; beginning with Dr.Isaac Watts' Against Idleness and Mischief:
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!How skillfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labors hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.
Carroll's version:
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
From G.W.Langford's Speak Gently:
Speak gently; it is better far
To rule by love than fear;
Speak gently; let no harsh word mar
The good we may do here.Speak gently to the little child;
Its love be sure to gain;
Teach it in accents soft and mild;
It may not long remain.
Carroll's version:
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes;
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
From Mary Howitt's The Spider and the Fly:
"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly,
"`Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show when you are there."
"Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain;
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."
From Carroll's version:
"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle - will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"
From Dr. Isaac Watts' The Sluggard:
`Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain
"You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again."
As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,
Turns his sides and his shoulders, and his heavy head...
From Carroll's version:
`Tis the voice of the Lobster; I heard him declare,
"You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair."
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes...
From James M. Sayles' Star of the Evening:
Beau--ti--ful star in heav'n so bright,
Soft--ly falls thy sil--v'ry light,
As thou mov--est from earth a--far,
Star of the eve--ning, beauti--ful star,
Star of the eve--ning, beau--ti--ful star.Chorus:
Beau--ti--ful star, ------
Beau--ti--ful star, ------
Star--of the eve--ning,
Beau--ti--ful, beau--ti--ful star...
From Carroll's version:
Beautiful soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening beautiful Soup!Chorus:
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!
From William Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence:
XIII
A gentle answer did the old Man make,
In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew:
And with him further words I thus bespake,
"What occupation do you there pursue?
This is a lonesome place for one like you."
Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet vivid eyes.XV
He told, that to these waters he had come,
To gather leeches, being old and poor:
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure:
From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor;
Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance,
And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.
From Carroll's version (which was set to the tune of a popular song, for those who might be puzzled by the change in meter):
I'll tell thee everything I can:
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.He said "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas:
And that's the way I get my bread -
A trifle, if you please."
From Sir Walter Scott's Bonnie Dundee:
To the Lords of Convention `twas Claver'se who spoke,
"Ere the King's crown shall fall, there are crowns to be broke;
So let each cavalier who loves honor and me
Come follow the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee"Chorus:
"Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle your horses, and call up your men,
Come open the West Port and let me gang free,
And its room for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!"
From Carroll's version:
To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said
"I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head.
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be,
Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!"Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea -
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!
References: Annotated Alice, Martin Gardner, Parodies, Dwight Macdonald (Random House; 1960).
by G.Nolst Trenite, a.k.a. Charivarius (1870-1946).
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worseI will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.Tear in eye your dress you'll tear,
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!Just compare heart, beard and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written).Made has not the sound of bade,
Say said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,But be careful how you speak,
Say break, steak, but bleak and streak.Previous, precious, fuchsia, via,
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles.
Exiles, similes, reviles.Wholly, holly, signal, signing.
Thames, examining, combiningScholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war, and far.From "desire": desirable--admirable from "admire."
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier.Chatham, brougham, renown, but known.
Knowledge, done, but gone and tone,One, anemone. Balmoral.
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel,Gertrude, German, wind, and mind.
Scene, Melpomene, mankind,Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, reading, heathen, heather.This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rime with "darky."Viscous, Viscount, load, and broad.
Toward, to forward, to reward.And your pronunciation's O.K.,
When you say correctly: croquet.Rounded, wounded, grieve, and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive, and live,Liberty, library, heave, and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven,We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover,Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police, and lice.Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label,Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal.Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit,
Rime with "shirk it" and "beyond it."But it is not hard to tell,
Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, and chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor,Ivy, privy, famous, clamour
And enamour rime with hammer.Pussy, hussy, and possess,
Desert, but dessert, address.Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants.
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants.River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.Stranger does not rime with anger.
Neither does devour with clangour.Soul, but foul and gaunt but aunt.
Font, front, won't, want, grand, and grant.Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger.
And then: singer, ginger, linger,Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.Query does not rime with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.Dost, lost, post; and doth, cloth, loth;
Job, Job; blossom, bosom, oath.Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual.Seat, sweat; chaste, caste.; Leigh, eight, height;
Put, nut; granite, and unite.Reefer does not rime with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, Senate, but sedate.Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific,Tour, but our and succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria,Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion.Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay.Say aver, but ever, fever.
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.Never guess--it is not safe:
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralph.Heron, granary, canary,
Crevice and device, and eyrie,Face but preface, but efface,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust, and scour, but scourging,Ear but earn, and wear and bear
Do not rime with here, but ere.Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,Monkey, donkey, clerk, and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.Pronunciation--think of psyche--!
Is a paling, stout and spikey,Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing "groats" and saying "grits"?It's a dark abyss or tunnel,
Strewn with stones, like rowlock, gunwale,Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict, and indict!Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?Finally: which rimes with "enough"
Though, through, plough, cough, hough, or tough?Hiccough has the sound of "cup."
My advice is--give it up!
On the 12th day of the Eurocentrically imposed midwinter festival, my Significant Other in a consenting adult, monogamous relationship gave to me:
TWELVE males reclaiming their inner warrior through ritual drumming,
ELEVEN pipers piping (plus the 18-member pit orchestra made up of members in good standing of the Musicians Equity Union as called for in their union contract even though they will not be asked to play a note),
TEN melanin deprived testosterone-poisoned scions of the patriarchal ruling class system leaping,
NINE persons engaged in rhythmic self-expression,
EIGHT economically disadvantaged female persons stealing milk- products from enslaved Bovine-Americans,
SEVEN endangered swans swimming on federally protected wetlands,
SIX enslaved Fowl-Americans producing stolen non-human animal products,
FIVE golden symbols of culturally sanctioned enforced domestic incarceration,
(NOTE after members of the Animal Liberation Front threatened to throw red paint at my computer, the calling birds, French hens and partridge have been reintroduced to their native habitat. To avoid further Animal-American enslavement, the remaining gift package has been revised.)
FOUR hours of recorded whale songs
THREE deconstructionist poets
TWO Sierra Club calendars printed on recycled processed tree carcasses
AND a Spotted Owl activist chained to an old-growth pear tree.
Poems from Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad: fables for the cybernetic age.
Cast of characters: Trurl, Klapaucius, and Trurl's poetry machine.
Pev't o' tay merlong gumin gots,
Untle yun furly pa'zzen ye,
Confre an' ayzor, ayzor ots,
Bither de furloss bochre blee!
Mockles! Fent on silpen tree,
Blockards three a-feening,
Mockles, what silps came to thee
In thy pantry dreaming?
Oft, in that wickless chalet all begorn,
Where whilom soughed the mossy sappertort
And you were wont to bong---
The Petty and the Small
Are overcome with gall
When Genius, having faltered, fails to fall.Klapaucius too, I ween,
Will turn the deepest green
To hear such flawless verse from Trurl's machine.
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indicies bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?Cancel me not---for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2.cos(2*phi)!
Arms, and machines I sing, that, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Homo's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Terran shore ...
(sung to the tune of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen) and inspired by John Catalano's Website, The World of Richard Dawkins
The World of Richard Dawkins
Is a place where you will find
A scientific plethora
To stimulate your mind.
Expand your intellectual side;
Leave ignorance behind.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth,
Knowledge and truth.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth.He came from out of Africa,
As did we all, it seems.
His work has made the world aware
That we have selfish genes;
And thoughts that we hold sacred
May turn out to be just memes.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth,
Knowledge and truth.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth.A meme by definition
Is a virus of the mind.
The Bible is a favorite source
For stories of this kind,
Which glorify a watchmaker who
Turns out to be blind.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth,
Knowledge and truth.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth.The phenotype extended
Is a novel point of view.
It shows us what our genes affect
Beyond just me and you.
The world at large responds
To what our DNA can do.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth,
Knowledge and truth.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth.The river out of Eden
Flows along the banks of time.
It carries information
Down a long, unbroken line.
It's possible your DNA
May someday mix with mine.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth,
Knowledge and truth.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth.In climbing Mt. Improbable
Your chances may look bleak.
Perhaps around the backside
Is the very thing you seek--
A gradual slope that leads you
Ever onward to the peak.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth,
Knowledge and truth.
O, tidings of knowledge and truth.
Copyright 1997, by Jerry Phillips
From Bert Taylor (Chicago Tribune, 1912).
Behold the might dinosaur
Famous in prehistoric lore,
Not only for his power and strength
But for his intellectual length.You will observe by these remains
The creature had two sets of brains---
One in the head (the usual place),
The other in his spinal base.Thus he could reason "A priori"
As well as "A posteriori".
No problem bothered him a bit
He made both head and tail of it.So wise was he, so wise and solemn,
Each thought filled just a spinal column.
If one brain found the pressure strong
It passed a few ideas along.If something slipped his forward mind
'Twas rescued by the one behind.
And if in error he was caught
He had a saving afterthought.As he thought twice before he spoke
He had no judgement to revoke.
Thus he could think without congestion
Upon both sides of every question.Oh, gaze upon this model beast;
Defunt for ten million years at least.
Tom Lehrer: "It's simply the names of the elements set to a possibly recognizable tune" (Gilbert and Sullivan's A Modern Major General).
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
There's strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and caesium.
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.There's sulphur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered.
or The Guy Who Came in from the Cold, by Garrison Keillor.
In Northeast Minnesota, what they call the Iron Range,
Where men are men and that is that, and some things never change;
Where winter stays, nine months a year, there is no spring or fall,
And sometimes it is so cold the mercury can not be seen a t'all.
Where you and I, we normal folks, would shiver, shake and chatter,
And if we used an outhouse we would grow an extra bladder.But even when it's coldest, when our feet would have no feeling,
Those iron rangers get dressed up and go out snow-mobiling;
Out across the frozen land and make a couple stops,
At Gino's lounge and Rudy's bar for whiskey, beer, and schnapps.
And then they go into a shack that's filled with boiling rocks,
That's hot enough to sterilize even iron ranger's socks.
They sit there until they steam out every sin and every foible,
Then they jump into a frozen lake, and claim that it's "enjoyble".But there was one, a shy young man, and although he was Finnish,
The joys of winter had for him, long started to diminish.
He was a Finn, the only Finn, who would not take a sauna.
"It isn't that I can't," he said, "I simply do not wanna."
And so he staid close by his stove for nine months of the year,
Because he was so sensitive to change in "tempacheer."His friends said, "Come on Toyvle, let's go out to Sunfish lake.
A Finn who don't take saunas? Why, there must be some mistake."
But Toyvle said, "There's no mistake, I know that I would freeze;
In water colder than myself - 98.6 degrees.
To jump into a frozen lake is not my fondest wish,
For just because I am a Finn, don't mean that I'm a fish."One night He went to Eveleth, to attend the miners ball;
If you have not danced in Eveleth you've never danced a t'all.
And he met a Finnish beauty there who turned his head around;
She was broad of beam, and when she danced, she shook the frozen ground.
She grabbed that shy young man in hand and swept him off his feet,
And bounced him up and down until he learned that Polka beat.
She was as strong as any man, she was as fair as she was wide,
And when the dance was over, he asked her to be his bride.
She looked him over carefully; she said, "You're kinda thin,
But you must have some courage, if it's true you are a Finn."
"I ain't particular about men, I am no prima donna,
But I would never marry one who would not take a sauna."They got into her pickup truck and down the road they drove,
And fifteen minutes later they were stoken' up the stove.
She had a flask of whiskey, they had a couple toots,
And went into the shack and got into their birthday suits.
She steamed him and she boiled him until his skin turned red;
She poured it on until his brains were boiling in his head.
To improve his circulation and to soften up his hide,
She got a couple birch boughs and she beat him 'till he cried,
"OH, couldn't you just love me now, oh, don't you think you can?",
She said, "It's time to go outside and show you are a man."Straight way, because he loved her so, and thought his heart would break,
He jumped right up and out the door and ran down to the lake.
And though he paused a moment, when he saw the lake was frozen,
And tried to think just which snow bank his love had put his clothes'en.
When he thought of his true love, he didn't have to think twice,
He just picked up his frozen feet and raced across the ice.
And coming to the hole that they had cut there with an ax,
Putting common sense aside, ignoring all the facts,
He LEAPED, o-h-h, what a leap, and as he dove beneath the surface,
It thrilled him to his very soul and also made him "nerface."
And it wasn't just the tingling cold he felt from limb to limb,
He cried, "My love, I'm finished -- I forgot -- I cannot swim!"She fished him out, and stood him up, and gave him an embrace,
That warmed his very heart and made the blood rush to his face.
"I love you darling, dear," she cried, "I love you with all my might",
and she drove him to Biwabik, and he married her that night.
They live happily to this day, although they sometimes quarrel,
And there, I guess, the story ends, except for this, the moral -Marriage, friends, is not a banquet, Love is no free lunch,
You cannot dabble 'round the edge, but each must take the "plunch."
Though marriage like that frozen lake, may sometimes make us colder,
It has it's pleasures to, as you may find out when you're older.
Now thin fruit flies like thunderstorms
And thin farm boys like farm girls narrow
And tax firm men like fat tax forms
But time flies like an arrowWhen fat tax forms tax firm men's souls
When farm boys stroke their girlfriends' flanks
That's when the murd'rous thunder rolls
And thins the fruit flies's ranksLike tossed bananas in the skies
Thin fruit flies <?> the common yarrow
And then's the time to time the time flies
Like time flies, like an arrow
Many, many years ago
when I was twenty three,
I got married to a widow
who was pretty as could be,This widow had a daughter
Who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her,
And soon the two were wed.This made my dad my son-in-law
And changed my very life.
My daughter was my mother,
For she was my father's wife.To complicate the matters worse,
Although it brought me joy,
I soon became the father
Of a bouncing baby boy.My little baby then became
A brother-in-law to dad.
And so became my uncle,
Though it made me very sad.For if he was my uncle,
Then that also made him brother
To the widow's grown-up daughter
Who, of course was my stepmother.Father's wife then had a son,
Who kept them on the run.
And he became my grandson,
For he was my daughter's son.My wife is now my mother's mom.
And it surely makes me blue.
Because, although she is my wife,
She is my grandma too.If my wife is my grandmother,
Then I am her grandchild.
And every time I think of it,
It simply drives me wild.For now I have become
The strangest case you ever saw.
As the husband of my grandmother,
I am my own grandpa!!!
When hydrogen played oxygen,
And the game had just begun,
Hydrogen racked up two fast points
But oxygen had none.Then oxygen scored a single goal,
And thus it did remain
Hydrogen 2 and oxygen 1
Called off because of rain.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
Jack and Jill Went up the hill,
And planned to do some kissing.
Jack made a pass and grabbed her ass,
And now two of his front teeth are missing.Jack and Jill Went up the hill,
Each one had a quarter.
Jill came down with fifty cents,
Do you think they went for water?Jack and Jill went up the hill
For a bit of hanky panky,
Jill came back with a very sore crack,
Jack must have been a Yankee!Jack and Jill went up the hill,
For just an itty bitty.
Jill is now two months overdue,
And Jack has left the city.Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water.
Jill forgot to take the pill,
So now they've got a daughter.Jack and Jill went up the hill,
With a little keg of brandy.
Jack got stewed, Jill got screwed,
Now it's Jack, and Jill, and Andy.Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To smoke a little leaf.
Jack got high, pulled down his fly,
And Jill said, "Where's the beef!"
[musta been a southerner!]Jack and Jill Went up the hill,
Both carrying a bucket.
When Jill bent down, her ass was round,
And Jack decided to read a good book.
[*definitely* a southerner!!]
(12 + 144 + 20 + 3*sqrt(4))/7 + 5*11 = 9^2 + 0
Reads as:
A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared, and not a bit more.
sung to the tune of Rawhide!
Loading, loading, loading,
Damn this Java coding,
Feeling of foreboding, Reload!The Applet says it's running,
And that big gray block is stunning,
But the screen remains as blank as my mindNetscape crash, Boot 'em up!
Net goes down, Dial back!
Logging on, Still off-line!
Reload!
Try it now, Still not up!
Netscape crashed, What, again?
Boot it up, Log it in,
Reload!Tighten, tweaking', smoothen,
They say the codes improvin',
So how come I'm still usin' "reload"?I'm tired of all this waitin',
Just give me .gif animation,
This code is only good for wasting time,The applet says it's running,
And gray block is quite stunning,
But the screen remains as blank as my mind,(Midi solo)
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
beep, beep,
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,
beep, beep,Netscape crash, Boot 'em up!
Net goes down, Dial back!
Logging on, Still off-line!
Reload!Try it now, Still not up!
Netscape crashed, What, again?
Boot it up, Log it in,
Reload! Reload!
Nothing but Wodehouse: a foreword by Ogden Nash.
To inhabit the same world as Mr. Wodehouse is a high privilege; to inhabit the same volume, even as doorkeeper, is perilous. Not because people may make comparisons, for who is there to compare to him? Every schoolboy knows that no one can hold a candle to P. G. Wodehouse, and not for lack of effort either. The woods are full of ambitious candleholders, but none of them has yet come within scorching distance of the Old master.
No, the peril lies in the certainty of going down in history as the man who left out of the Wodehouse Ombibus this tale of Jeeves, and that tale of Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, such and such a Mulliner feat, and such and such a whopper of the Oldest Member. There are horrid omissions in even this monumental tome, and to you who mourn them, I can only say that this heart breaks with yours, and ask you to consider for a moment the difficulties of the editor who is delegated to select the best from the work of an author who seems always to be at his best.
"Others abide our question. Thou art free."
Thus Arnold summarized the Elizabethan Wodehouse, and so our own Wodehouse summarized London's gilded youth's opinion of Archibald Mulliner's imitation of a hen laying an egg. So, too, we might summarize Mr. Wodehouse himself, if we cared to summarize Mt. Wodehouse. Me, I prefer to read him.
Ogden Nash
The work of P. G. Wodehouse needs no introduction.
O. N.
Perhaps Mr. Bessemer is not a pessimist but, last and first,
He expects the worst.
It could be aptly put
That Mr. Bessemer got out of the cradle on the wrong foot.He suspects that any dish prepared outside the home and many prepared inside the home will break him out in purple spots and red spots,
And that the Federal Communications Commission anticipates where he is going to place his radio and TV and rushes ahead to fill his air with dead spots;
He is certain that the train he must catch will leave early and that, once caught, it will arrive late,
And, as a Michigan alumnus, that the Big Ten title will go to Ohio State.But it is on the subject of the weather
That his forebodings really get together.
Mr. Bessemer is the holidaymakers' bane;
His ears are filled with ancestral voices prophesying rain.
Be the sunset garish as a festival in Spain,
Mr. Bessemer predicts rain;
Be the sunrise cheery as Mr. Wodehouse's fiction,
Rain is his prediction;
While if on the eve of a three-day week end the skies be runny,
He conjures up a northeaster; in fact, some people call him the North Easter bunny.
Yes, Mr. Bessemer has predicted rain under all circumstances except one,
And that was during a drought in Texas, and a big cloud came up, and he predicted sun.
There was a preposition
Who lived underneath a chair,
And I always used to ask him
To come on up out from down under there.But this proper preposition
Will stay there evermore,
Until he finds an object
To come on up out from down under for.
Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in the following poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. If you find it tough going, do not despair, you are not alone: Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language, until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.
Dearest creature in creation, study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy, make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word, sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you with such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.Hear me say, devoid of trickery, daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar, solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral, kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind, scene, Melpomene, mankind.Billet does not rhyme with ballet, bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food, nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad, toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK when you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, friend and fiend, alive and live.Ivy, privy, famous; clamour and enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger, neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does.
Now first say finger, and then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.Query does not rhyme with very, nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little, we say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate; dull, bull, and George ate late.Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven, rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed, people, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover, between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable, principle, disciple, label.Petal, panel, and canal, wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area, psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.Compare alien with Italian, dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye, eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever, neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even, hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits, writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight, housewife, verdict and indict.Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
Sigmund Freud was a paranoid
Who repressed each Oktoberfest
Daughter Anna played second banana
With daiquiris from here to Budapest
BF Skinner had boxed wine for dinner,
Adler had many such meals,
And Carl Rogers outchugged those codgers,
Just ask him how he feelsThere's nothing Frankl couldn't tank til the room's spinning all around
And oh those Perls of wisdom he was picking off the ground...Abraham Maslow never set sights low,
His hierarchy started with whiskey
David Keirsey didn't understand me,
A few boilermakers made him pissy
Joseph Campbell would start to shamble
Til he saw a thousand faces
And Erich Fromm, he did quaff the rum
Down the Hall and other placesAnd if you're wondering why I haven't mentioned that Carl Jung,
A lovely little drinker with his archetypes of dung!
Have you done it on a boat?
Have you done it with a goat?
Have you done it in a bed?
Have you done it with the dead?
Have you done it in the ass?
Have you done it, high on grass?
Have you done it in the car?
Have you simply gone too far?
Have you done it on the beach?
Have you done it with the teach?
Have you done it on your back?
Have you done it strapped to a rack?
Have you done it in a box?
Have you done it with a fox?
Have you done it in a tree?
Have you done it with more than three?
Have you done it in the rain?
Have you done it for the pain?
Have you done it 'tween the tits?
Have you done it wearing mitts?
Have you done it packed in rubber?
Have you done it undercover?
Have you done it on a perch?
Have you done it in a church?
Have you done it with a virgin?
Have you done it with a sturgeon?
Have you done it with ropes and chains?
Have you done it while insane?
Have you done it on the stage?
Have you done it underage?
Have you done it with all your friends?
Have you done it in both ends?
Have you done it with your dog?
Have you done it on a log?
Have you done it under clamps?
Have you done it with the lamps?
Have you done it without style?
Have you done it on the bathroom tile?
Have you done it for all to see?
Have you ever had VD?
Have you done it on Mother's couch?
Have you done it in your mouth?
Have you done it while on tape?
Have you done it out of shape?
Have you done it on live TV?
Have you done it whilst you pee?
Have you done it in the gym?
Have you done it on a whim?
Have you done it on a dare?
Do you really think we care?Answer these and count your "no"s,
Pray this number never grows;
Fifty questions we asked thee,
Score times two's your Purity.
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icons put your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!If the label on your cable on the gable at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary RISC,
Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM,
Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your mom!
(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)
"She's Brilliant!" so the Ivy grove
Did hire the nimble minded maid.
All flimsy were her bookish robes
Her bona fides displayed."Beware the Tenureclock, young one,
Don't pause at night or flaws they'll catch.
Be sure you publish blurbs, and shun
The populous intro class!"She took an undergrad in hand.
Long time the grant of dough she sought.
And tested she her theory.
And swelled a file. And taught.And as she published what she could,
The Tenureclock, with eyes of flame,
Came sniffing round for moldy wood
And prospecting for fame."No clue what's due ? You're never through!"
The maid's keyboard went click and clack.
She felt half dead, but pushed ahead
Around the tenure track.And did she tame the Tenureclock?
Overcome all academic strife?
She's taken her MacArthur grant
And gone to get a life."She's Brilliant!" so the Ivy grove
Did hire the nimble minded maid.
All flimsy were her bookish robes
Her bona fides displayed.
A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk,
but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Did Peter
Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers? If Peter
Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?Betty Botter had some butter,
"But," she said, "this butter's bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter,
it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter--
that would make my batter better."
So she bought a bit of butter,
better than her bitter butter,
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So it was better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.Six thick thistle sticks. Six thick thistles stick.
A big black bug bit a big black bear,
made the big black bear bleed blood.The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.
Pope Sixtus VI's six texts.
She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure she sells seashore shells."Surely Sylvia swims!" shrieked Sammy, surprised.
"Someone should show Sylvia some strokes so she shall not sink."Shy Shelly says she shall sew sheets.
Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.
A flea and a fly flew up in a flue.
Said the flea, "Let us fly!"
Said the fly, "Let us flee!"
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches?
Lesser leather never weathered wetter weather better.
A bitter biting bittern
Bit a better brother bittern,
And the bitter better bittern
Bit the bitter biter back.
And the bitter bittern, bitten,
By the better bitten bittern,
Said "I'm a bitter biter bit, alack!"Mr. See owned a saw.
And Mr. Soar owned a seesaw.
Now See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw
Before Soar saw See,
Which made Soar sore.
Had Soar seen See's saw
Before See sawed Soar's seesaw,
See's saw would not have sawed
Soar's seesaw.
So See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw.
But it was sad to see Soar so sore
Just because See's saw sawed
Soar's seesaw!The boot black bought the black boot back.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood.We surely shall see the sun shine soon.
Which witch wished which wicked wish?
Silly Sally swiftly shooed seven silly sheep.
The seven silly sheep Silly Sally shooed
shilly-shallied south.
These sheep shouldn't sleep in a shack;
sheep should sleep in a shed.If Stu chews shoes, should Stu
choose the shoes he chews?Give papa a cup of proper coffee in a copper coffee cup.
Six sharp smart sharks.
What a shame such a shapely sash
should such shabby stitches show.Sure the ship's shipshape, sir.
Don't pamper damp scamp tramps that camp under ramp lamps.
Do you carrot all for me?
My heart beets for you
With your turnip nose
And your radish face
You are a peach
If we cantaloupe
Lettuce marry
We make a swell pear!
The sun in the heavens was beaming,
The breeze bore an odour of hay,
My flannels were spotless and gleaming,
My heart was unclouded and gay;
The ladies, all gaily apparelled,
Sat round looking on at the match,
In the tree-tops the dicky-birds carolled,
All was peace -- till I bungled that catch.My attention the magic of summer
Had lured from the game -- which was wrong.
The bee (that inveterate hummer)
Was droning its favourite song.
I was tenderly dreaming of Clara
(On her not a girl is a patch),
When, ah, horror! there soared through the air a
Decidedly possible catch.I heard in a stupor the bowler
Emit a self-satisfied 'Ah!'
The small boys who sat on the roller
Set up an expectant 'Hurrah!'
The batsman with grief from the wicket
Himself had begun to detach --
And I uttered a groan and turned sick. It
Was over. I'd buttered the catch.O, ne'er, if I live to a million,
Shall I feel such a terrible pang.
From the seats on the far-off pavilion
A loud yell of ecstasy rang.
By the handful my hair (which is auburn)
I tore with a wrench from my thatch,
And my heart was seared deep with a raw burn
At the thought that I'd foozled that catch.Ah, the bowler's low, querulous mutter
Points loud, unforgettable scoff!
Oh, give me my driver and putter!
Henceforward my game shall be golf.
If I'm asked to play cricket hereafter,
I am wholly determined to scratch.
Life's void of all pleasure and laughter;
I bungled the easiest catch.
[ Assorted Humor | Krishna Kunchithapadam ]
Last updated: Sun Jun 27 17:00:19 PDT 2004
URL: http://www.geocities.com/krishna_kunchith/humor/poetry.html