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Dark Light Verse

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Another Discovery of Great Material from the Futility Closet

Another Discovery of Great Material from the Futility Closet

I am always amazed by what I find on the Futility Closet website. The following are light verses with a somber subject by Jocelyn Henry Clive “Harry” Graham (1874-1936)—journalist, military hero, lyricist for light operas, and humorous verses employing the darkest of humor. Here are a few selections  taken from Futility Closet’s posting of June 9, 2011:

Tender-Heartedness

Little Willie, in the best of sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burned to ashes.
By and by the room grew chilly,
But no one liked to poke up Willie.

Aunt Eliza

In the drinking-well
(Which the plumber built her)
Aunt Eliza fell–
We must buy a filter.

Waste

I had written to Aunt Maud,
Who was on a trip abroad,
When I heard she’d died of cramp
Just too late to save the stamp.

Compensation

Weep not for little Léonie,
Abducted by a French Marquis!
Though loss of honour was a wrench,
Just think how it’s improved her French.

Mr. Jones

“There’s been an accident,” they said,
“Your servant’s cut in half; he’s dead!”
“Indeed!” said Mr. Jones, “and please
Send me the half that’s got my keys.”

He wrote in one preface:

Fond parent, you whose children are
Of tender age (from two to eight),
Pray keep this little volume far
From reach of such, and relegate
My verses to an upper shelf,–
Where you may study them yourself.

Quisquilian Diversivolence

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The New Face of American Politics?

The New Face of American Politics?

The term come from a Futility Closet posting entitled “In a Word.” “Quisquilian” means worthless or trivial. “Diversivolence” is the noun form of an adjective meaning desiring strife. Those two words together pretty much summarize the 2016 election—most especially if you add Hillary’s phrase, “Basket of Deplorables.”

Obviously new terms are welcome, if the standard old ones put us in the mess we are in. Since the news media have signally failed to make any sense out of the this grim period, we need new ways to describe the, uh, situation.

I will attempt to search out new terms and bring them to your attention. Perhaps it will entertain you as well as add new shades of meaning.

Short Takes: Trump Now Sez Earth DOES Revolve Around Sun

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A Handful of Short Stuff to End the Week

A Handful of Short Stuff to End the Week

Prezidenchul Candidate Donald J. Trump has announced that the Earth “definitely” revolves around the sun, so it is okay to think and say that without being roughed up by his jackbooted thugs. Next: Does water “definitely” flow downhill and does the Pope “definitely” shit in the woods? Keep tuned to this channel for more breaking admissions from the campaign.

At the same time Hillary Clinton has been blamed for the earth’s new subsidiary role in the Solar System.

Geography textbooks in the State of California are being re-edited to revise all reference to rivers, lakes, and reservoirs as being essentially mythical.

Both the 2020 and 2024 Prezidenchul campaigns have begun in earnest as of September 1. According to GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, “It’s good for American voters to plan ahead and keep thinking about possible futures, all of which appear to be disastrous.”

The National Civil War Commission has voted to declare the Confederate States of America as the winners of the war, and to retroactively pardon Jefferson Davis, John Wilkes Booth, and Henry Wirz, Commandant of Andersonville Prison. Yes, but will there now follow a period of Reconstruction? Yes, according to the carpetbaggers lining up along the southern border of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Angela Merkel has taken to wearing a pink berka after she changed the name of her country to Germanistan. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has considered changing the color of the nation’s flag to green and adding a crescent and Koranic verses.

All cars produced since 1956 have been recalled by their manufacturers for various reasons. Traffic is expected to be light next week.

A cruise ship to the Caribbean has returned to Fort Lauderdale with no cases of Legionnaires’ Disease or food poisoning, no plumbing or sewage malfunctions, and no passengers or crew members fallen overboard.

 

Belgian Cats Against Terrorism

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General Bonkers Will Explain the Situation

General Bonkers Will Explain the Situation

When Brussels was placed under a terrorism alert in November, security officials requested that the public remain silent regarding ongoing counter-terrorism operations lest they alert potential targets of police raids. So how did the Belgians react? With cat pictures … hundreds of them! All relate in one way or another to the terror alert, but with a sense of humor that no one knew the Belgians had.

They Said to Stay Inside!

They Said to Stay Inside!

These are just three images for your enterrainment. For more images, I suggest you click here.

All Clear Yet?

All Clear Yet?


I wish to thank Martine for bringing these pictures to my attention.

Winnie and the Vocative Table

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Sir Winston Brings Up a Good Point!

Sir Winston Brings Up a Good Point!

Because at this point in tax season, I am approaching brain death, I will be posting quoted material of interest from other websites. The following anecdote is from The Futility Closet:

A schoolmaster gave a Latin grammar to the 10-year-old Winston Churchill and directed him to learn a series of words.

Churchill found it an “absolute rigmarole” but memorized the list and reeled it off when asked.

‘But,’ I repeated, ‘what does it mean?’

‘Mensa means a table,’ he answered.

‘Then why does mensa also mean O table,’ I enquired, ‘and what does O table mean?’

‘Mensa, O table, is the vocative case,’ he replied.

‘But why O table?’ I persisted in genuine curiosity.

‘O table,–you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table.’ And then seeing he was not carrying me with him, ‘You would use it in speaking to a table.’

‘But I never do!’ I blurted out in honest amazement.

“Such was my introduction,” he later wrote, “to the classics from which, I have been told, many of our cleverest men have derived so much solace and profit.”

Stubby Fingers Speaks

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Vote for Me or I’ll Sue You

Vote for Me or I’ll Sue You

I want to be President of the United States because I know I can make it as great as I am. And how great am I? I’m not only extremely smart and good-looking, but richer than you can imagine. How many planes and helicopters do you own that have your name all over them? And look at my fingers: They’re not short and stubby; and as for the other thing, once I wrap a couple of hundred dollar bills around it, it’s big enough for any purpose! Even my beautiful daughter would go out on a date with me.

This persecution of my followers has to stop at once! As the Bible says in my favorite book, the Gospel of St. John the Baptist: “If you live by the sword, you’ll die in bad company, where there is the weeping and gnashing of teeth!” That’s Holy Scripture, you know, almost as holy as The Art of the Deal.

One of My Courteous, Alert Followers

One of My Courteous, Alert Followers

So this is what I’m here to tell you today: If you don’t want to make America great again, if you don’t vote for me, I’m going to take you to court. How will I know who you voted for? I’ll know! I know everything because of how smart I am. So watch yourself, or you’ll wind up even more miserable than you already are.

You know that Mexicans and Muslims and dark people are no good for America. I’m beginning to think that Canadians are a bit iffy too, so we’ll have to build a wall across our borders with Canada as well as Mexico. And I’ll make the Canucks pay for it.

In the meantime, come and have some of my special Trump burgers and Trump beer! Don’t crowd, just make sure none of those protesters get their hands on any of it. Huh? … What’s it made of? … You can bet it’s the best meat that the highways of America have to offer.

 

Word

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Now Which of These Can Be Considered as Medioxumous?

Now Which of These Can Be Considered as Medioxumous?

I was always a word freak. Even from my middle school years, I studied vocabulary books to increase my store of words. Imagine my delight when, in 1968, as a graduate student in film at UCLA, I got a job proofreading two computerized transcripts of Merrian-Webster dictionaries.

One interesting wrinkle was that my predecessor in my job, a young lady, was murdered by a graduate student in film at UCLA. (It wasn’t me, honest!)

In the process of proofreading thousands of pages of dictionary entries, I collected a few interesting words that don’t make it into print much these days:

  • Septemfluous: “flowing in seven streams,” describing the blood of the crucified Christ.
  • Medioxumous: “of or relating to the middle rank of deities”
  • Rotl: “any of various units of weight of Mediterranean and Near Eastern countries ranging from slightly less than one pound to more than six pounds”
  • And, coming to us from Welsh, cwm and crwth (not misprints), meaning “valley” and “crowd” respectively, and pronounced “coom” and “crooth.”

I have a few words to add to these from the 1755 edition of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. They don’t seem to have made it into subsequent editions, though the Futility Closet managed to ferret them out:

  • Finger-flinger: “a pretender to astrology and prediction,” not to be confused with an irate motorist
  • Pissburnt: “stained with urine”
  • Centuriator: “a name given to historians, who distinguish times by centuries”
  • Longimanous: “long-handed; having long hands”
  • Overyeared: “too old,” like the writer of this blog

The illustration above is by the talented BurenErdene at DeviantArt.

 

Rat Number 42

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Sometimes, You Just Can’t Win

Sometimes, You Just Can’t Win

The following comes from AboveAverage.Com. I thought you might find it amusing:

Researchers at Harvard are incredibly annoyed with a lab rat they describe as “a real asshole.”

“We’re trying to research how obesity impacts brain function,” explained Dr. Stu Macho. “To do that, we got all these normal rats and started observing them. Then this little fucker, we call him #42, starts eating a ton. He got super fat and starts walking into his cage walls like a moron when we try to observe him. But then, at night, he’s completely normal. It’s totally throwing off our data. He’s being a real shithead.”

shutterstock_365565182

I mean, look at this little shithead.

This isn’t the first time #42 has ruined an experiment. Dr. Macho explains, “I once ran an experiment to test whether the scent of cats was frightening to rats. We gave them a treat every time they pushed a big red button. Then we sprayed it with cat scent. Literally every single rat was too scared to push the red button, except #42. He pushed it, winked, and then held his little paws out for his treat. He’s such an asshole, his data screwed my entire thesis.”

Dr. Macho believes #42’s behavior is intentional and aimed specifically at him. “I caught him laughing at me once while I was trying to sort data he’d fucked up. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Can rats even laugh? And what would it look like?’ Trust me, when a rat laughs at you, you’ll know.”

When asked why he doesn’t simply exchange #42 for a less malicious rat, Dr. Macho explained, “You can’t just use an infinite number of lab rats. They start to think you’re a psycho if you keep asking for more.” Dr. Macho sighed. “I feel like I’m living in an annoying Pixar movie where I’m the bad guy – oh, wait….I’m the bad guy. I’m the evil scientist performing experiments on a sassy, smart rat. And my name is Dr. Stu Macho? Oof, yeah, I’m the wrong one here.”

Just behind Dr. Macho, #42 winked and walked directly into his food bowl.

A Global Threat

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Reprinted from The New Yorker, May 2015

Reprinted from The New Yorker, May 2015

I don’t do this very often, but I am reprinting in its entirety the Borowitz Report from The New Yorker.  When I first saw it, I laughed so hard that I am still looking for some internal organs that I spewed all over my office.

Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports.

The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.

“These humans appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information,” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said. “And yet, somehow, they have developed defenses that, for all intents and purposes, have rendered those faculties totally inactive.”

More worryingly, Logsdon said, “As facts have multiplied, their defenses against those facts have only grown more powerful.”

While scientists have no clear understanding of the mechanisms that prevent the fact-resistant humans from absorbing data, they theorize that the strain may have developed the ability to intercept and discard information en route from the auditory nerve to the brain. “The normal functions of human consciousness have been completely nullified,” Logsdon said.

While reaffirming the gloomy assessments of the study, Logsdon held out hope that the threat of fact-resistant humans could be mitigated in the future. “Our research is very preliminary, but it’s possible that they will become more receptive to facts once they are in an environment without food, water, or oxygen,” he said.

There’s an App for That: A Fantasy

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It Was the App to End All Apps!

It Was the App to End All Apps!

It all started in 2016 with an app called OmegApp, available simultaneously for the Android and iPhones. It was inevitable that a program like this would eventually make an appearance. Smart phone callers were running out of people to call, or even text. What OmegApp provided was a robotic interface that appeared to deeply care for anyone who communicated with it. The name of the interface was Tag. If you called Tag, Tag would reciprocate and call you back later, with occasional text messages stroking your ego in the meantime. (Tag’s ultimate message? “You’re IT!”)

Soon, the majority of all cell phone calls and texts were handled by the OmegApp system, which operated on five continents in over sixty languages. Before long, people would distractedly wander the streets with that sh*t-eating grin demonstrating that they were, in fact, wanted and needed by somebody (or something).

Of course, it had an immediately catastrophic effect on traffic—pedestrian, bicycle, and motorized.

In Cleveland, the Dotes twins, Mairzy and Doezy, were struck head-on by the 56A bus as it barreled down East 177th Street. Both the driver and the victims were on Tag at the time. In Santa Monica, a distracted little Lambsy Divey walked off the bluff overlooking the Coast Highway and ended up being run over half a dozen cars, all of whose drivers were texting on Tag.

One would think that there would be an outcry. Unfortunately, there wasn’t. The phone companies were making more money than ever, and those Tag users who didn’t end up a casualty felt happier than before. In fact, talking to Tag was more satisfying than sex and raising a family. In all probability, this may be curtains for the human race: Only the deaf and blind seem to be immune to OmegApp’s blandishments.