“One woman, an adult actress and model on OnlyFans, said she was a ‘patriot’ after she was sentenced to 14 days behind bars for a picture showing her buttocks near the Kremlin walls.” —The Guardian
My patriotic fervor truly dazzles;
I go wherever loyalism calls,
To measure up my breasts against St. Basil’s,
Or air my buttocks near the Kremlin walls.
“English town mourning Derek the Goose to raise statue in her honour. … Watchet harbour was the inspiration for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and a striking statue of the sailor and the albatross he shoots is a landmark in the town.” —The Guardian
Not far from that amazing bird
Which leaves the Coleridge-reader stirred,
Derek, the wrongly-gendered goose
Who sadly suffered fox-abuse
Upon the slipway once her dorm,
May live again, in solid form,
Like regal eagles, royal swans,
And cheer up Watchet, cast in bronze.
“Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says she’s ‘shocked’ by the scale of Facebook’s ‘metaverse’ plans. Facebook recently said it would hire 10,000 people to build the metaverse.” —Business Insider
What the FitzGerald? Are they telling me
That social media’s seizing poetry?
That every Netizen shall rhyme and scan?
Half can’t tell ‘its’ from ‘it’s’ or ‘then’ from ‘than.’
All measured, metered metaphor will go
In fav. of curt abbrev’s, IMHO,
As every bore confusing ‘your’ with ‘you’re’
Becomes the next McGonagall or Moore,
And each Diana, Darren, Dee, and Don
Pounds out vast Cantos WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON.
Ye gods, the vision makes the senses reel!
To arms, my bards! (Merci, Rouget de Lisle).
‘Mid such dank swamps, so ‘yuge’ we’ll never drain them,
Let’s raise our standards—or at least maintain them—
And when we meet a colleague in despair
Console them with a kindly, “There, their, they’re.”
“Spanx chief gives all employees first-class plane tickets and $10,000 Shapewear company founder Sara Blakely surprised employees at a party
to mark Spanx’s new $1.2bn valuation” —The Guardian
Sara, queen of shapely vesture,
Made a sweetly fitting gesture,
Giving all her employees
First-class tickets overseas,
Letting everyone escape where
They might shed all thoughts of shapewear,
Briefly free from stringent Spanx.
Spanxers, raise a thong of thanx!
“Seneca Falls Voters Weigh Garbage Odors Against Fear of Tax Hikes; Will Landfill’s Mandated Dec. 2025 Closing Date Stick?” —Water Front Online blog
The landfill? Let’s face it. It reeks!
No wonder the Town Board now seeks A date for its closing. Who wants to be nosing
That mountain of garbage? Its peaks
Tower over and spoil the view.
Who’d want that beside them? Would you? But wait. Higher taxes? Perhaps that relaxes
Your outrage and urge to go Pew!
“The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.” —Tweet from Congressman Jim Banks (R-Indiana) commenting on Rachel Levine’s promotion to four-star admiral
Jim Banks is such a little girl,
Her knickers all a-twist,
Tweeting, “I’ll say what sex you are.
No, sweetie, I insist.”
“[Chancellor of the Exchequer] Rishi Sunak uses windfall to boost Whitehall spending
as UK recovers from pandemic” —The Independent
“Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, branded Sunak’s plans a ‘a classic con game'” —The Independent’s ‘Inside Politics‘ newsletter
Come listen to the news from my red box: Low-income earners, you will soon regain A third of what last month’s reduction docks Since, as your Chancellor, I feel your pain— So what if my wife’s richer than the Queen? If you’re a climate activist … well, I Cut taxes on domestic flights. That’s green— COP26 is cheaper now to fly Off to! … Prosecco drinkers, you will see New tax relief—though if you’re jobless, you Get no more cash. But optimism’s free, And you’ll get lots from me, from Boris too … My boss distracts, your pocket’s what I pick— Exchequers play your classic con-game trick!
“Franz Kafka drawings reveal ‘sunny’ side to bleak Bohemian novelist” —The Guardian
Here’s Joseph K., in pose serenely fetal,
Chillaxing with a cheerful giant beetle;
The Well-Fed Artist’s feasting, with no hassle,
On fries and popcorn in the Bouncy Castle.
Yes, “Kafkaesque”’s a synonym for “sunny”!
(“Bohemian”’s already strangely funny.)
“A federal court order has determined that the offspring of hippos once owned by drug kingpin
Pablo Escabar can be deemed ‘interested persons’ with legal rights in the United States.” —The Hill
Though El Patrón we may decry,
he’s indirectly done some good
allowing for the personhood
of bloats of hippopotami.
“Roman statues have been found under the site of a Norman church in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, in what experts are calling a ‘once in a lifetime’ find. … Two of the figures are adults—a man and a woman, both of which have had their head split from their body—while the third is the head alone of a child. Statues were often vandalised before being torn down, [archaeologists] explained. … The final destination for the Roman finds has yet to be determined…” —UK Today News
Defaced in scorn some thousand years ago,
We lie: man, wife, and child. You find us so.
Though strangers broke us, they did not divide
Our union. You young ones, who have pried
And found us, think: you too may be defiled;
Break not the bond of man and wife and child.