Punxsutawney’s seen his shadow! That means six more weeks of chill—
Stuck inside with Kimmel, Maddow, Pringles, Netflix: what a thrill!
Icy gales and storms beleaguer; Coffee’s guzzled by the vat.
All this cold stuff makes me eager For the flowers of Easter, stat!
Philip, you’re a knavish rascal, You’re a fiendish prankster, you:
Winter-woodchuck-Eddie-Haskell, Bane of February Two!
Vernal-veto, hope-defeater, Groundhog-gremlin, Imbolc-imp:
As I watch the thermo-meter, Through a shivering Lent I limp!
Punxsy, old prognosticator, With you I’ve a bone to pick:
Why must snowflakes linger later? I want blossoms, super-quick!
Soon enough we’ll have soft breezes, Green leaves, bright skies: all that’s great!
But how biting are the freezes In this slow month’s twenty-eight!
Although Tom Brady won nine conference championships for the Patriots, including three in the previous four years, they traded him to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This year Brady’s Bucs won the championship, while the Patriots had their worst season in 20 years. The Patriots’ trade has been called “the worst transaction in Boston sports history.” When the Bucs won, Brady was not only vindicated but also paid a $500,000 incentive.
Tampity champity
Brady the Quarterback,
leaving the Patriots
looking like schmucks,
furthered his legacy
uninterruptedly,
perfectly happy with
all his new Bucs.
“Texas sorry after mistakenly sending emergency alert for cursed Chucky doll …
The message went out over the state’s Amber Alert system, which is blasted to people’s
mobile phones, usually to help find a missing child. It was sent three times.
It described the suspect as being called Chucky and listed him as a 28-year-old with red,
auburn hair, blue eyes who stood at 3ft 1in tall and weighed 16lbs. He was said to be wearing
blue denim overalls with a multi-colored striped long sleeve shirt and carrying a large knife—
matching his appearance in the films. His race was listed as ‘Other: Doll.’ …
The department issued a statement saying: ‘This alert is a result of a test malfunction.
We apologize for the confusion this may have caused and are diligently working
to ensure this does not happen again.’”
—The Guardian
Test malfunction. Do not panic:
No one’s going to be hurt;
That was just a non-satanic
False emergency alert.
We don’t know (which may be lucky)
How our wires got so crossed,
But we’re sure, regarding Chucky:
Some lost kids are better lost.
“Kevin McCarthy Wants You to Believe He Has No Idea What QAnon Is” —Vice News
Let’s seed the Senate and the House
With Laggard, Lunatick, & Louse,
And someone in cross-garter’d Hose,
To keep the Others on their Toes;
Plant boors who love Conspiracy,
Hate, Mayhem, & Contumely—
To prick their Fellows toward Good-Sense
& Virtu! Surely, Ages Hence
Shall take from us Example fit,
Their Congresses, Assemblies split
’Twixt Saint, Knave, Sage, & Tangle-Wit.
“In the search for Covid protection, Cormac the ‘extremely charismatic’ llama may hold a key The llama has provided nanobodies that effectively prevent infection…” —The Guardian
“In a high security laboratory in Sydney …, virologist Stuart Turville found …
‘A beautiful, immunological unicorn …
[with] the most amazing Covid response I’ve ever seen.’ The unicorn is a 50-year-old father of three named Damian…” —The Guardian
Immunological Unicorn
And Charismatic Llama:
Sweet blessings for a world forlorn!
Their nanobodies have been shorn
With no to-do or drama,
For bipeds lacking hoof or horn.
“What luck for them that we were born!”
Sighs Damian, Immunicorn,
To Cormac, Llama-Charma.
At the crack of dawn, my ride, I’m hitching.
My trigger finger’s poised and itching.
I can’t afford another miss.
I do not need the stress of this.
Who could have known; who could have guessed
The vaccine rollout’s Wild, Wild West?
I scroll and click but all for naught—
There is no spot to take a shot.
I sit around and eat.
What else is there to do?
I rarely leave my seat.
I sit around and eat,
an act that I repeat
each time as if it’s new.
I sit around and eat.
What else is there to do?
Sometimes I stand and sigh
and walk around the room.
It helps the time go by.
Sometimes I stand and sigh,
then I remember why:
it’s time for one more Zoom.
Sometimes I stand and sigh,
but I don’t leave my room.
What else is there to do?
I sit around and eat.
I look for something new,
but can’t think what to do.
There’s always Zoom it’s true,
but that feels like defeat!
Yet, what else can I do?
“Leeds ferret survives 100 minutes in washing machine” —BBC
Old clothes make such a cozy place to doss, Next to my humans’ reassuring scents— Especially before a wash and toss: That’s when inviting scents are most intense! … One cycle starts. Door closing stops a draught. Unfazed by wash and spin, I fall asleep, Gyrating in a dream of shipwrecked craft Hurled mightily upon the ocean deep … Bent over me, a doctor shakes his head:
“A lung collapsed,” says he, “so I can give No more than one per cent you’re not soon dead” … Don’t underrate this ferret’s will to live! I‘m one tough Bandit, and I know that I’m The cleanest living ferret of all time!
“The Great Gatsby is out of US copyright and fans of Fitzgerald’s novel have rushed to pay tribute
with new books and fanfiction. What does it mean for the novel’s legacy?” —The Guardian
Yes, Gatsby has turned out all right:
Released from the copyright blight,
More Daisy, more Jay
Are flowing our way;
We rush to this longed-for green light,
And so we beat on, every mast
Submerged by the current at last:
However we mourn,
We’re sure to be borne
Back ceaselessly into the past.
“Discoveries at the edge of the periodic table: First ever measurements of einsteinium” —Phys.org
While politicians haw and hem
And talking heads lace into them
As [bleep] fan ups in rpm,
Some chemists make, far from that scrum,
New measures of einsteinium:
E.g., “bond distance,” which may yield
Yet further breakthroughs in the field.
We ought to celebrate, I’d say,
The scientists who spend their day
Sequestered from the common fray
And hearken to the different drum
Of measuring einsteinium.
“Dante’s descendant to take part in ‘retrial’ of poet’s 1302 corruption case
Seven centuries after guilty verdict in Florence,
Sperello di Serego Alighieri [noted astrophysicist] to help test whether poet’s conviction would stand today” —The Guardian
At slightly more than midway through man’s life
(I’m sixty-nine), I feel it time to clear
My forebear’s honor, smeared through Guelphic strife.
Ah, probably the journalists will sneer,
But Alighieris don’t forget a wrong.
This now has passed its seven hundredth year:
The Empire’s gone (alas, the Pope’s still strong),
And still that vile conviction shames and brands—
And Florence the Ungrateful goes along.
Well, his descendant, as of now, demands
That right be done. It isn’t hard to parse:
Judges, great Dante’s name is in your hands!
Fighters, he wrote, find Paradise on Mars:
At least a heaven-gazer understands
That cosmic stubbornness that moves the stars.
It’s Valentine’s Day, should I buy you more flowers?
Red roses can cost quite a lot.
A poetry book? Stolen kisses in bowers?
Or something that grows in a pot?
If you weren’t on a diet then candy would do.
Yes, candy’s the best, it would be
The perfect expression of my love for you,
Because then you would share it with me.
As Boris Johnson reveals that the new “made in the UK” strain of coronavirus “may be” 30% more deadly, the nation wonders what to do with that information.
Should I tighten my mask by three notches
and scrub til my palms are gone?
Should I cut down my frivolous outings
by a third of precisely none?
Should I distance by eight foot, not six foot
and then firmly resolve to be
more scared in the still before sunrise
by a factor of 1.3?
Should I ramp up the size of my sourdough?
Go from three mugs of wine to four?
As I juggle the schooling and Zooming,
should I shrivel inside some more?
Should I work more at missing my mother
and then firmly resolve to be
more cross with the wankers of Whitehall
by a factor of 1.3?
