“Michigan court sides with gun advocates to reverse firearm ban at polls … ‘I feel like I need to have my gun at all times,’ said Jim Makowski, an attorney
representing plaintiffs in the suit against the secretary of state. … Makowski said Michiganders are already protected by state law … With such protections in place, he said there’s “no reason or justification
for [Benson’s] legal order,’ which he labeled ‘political’. —The Guardian
“I feel,” said Jim Makowski,
I need my gun. It’s critical
At all times, like a housekey;
And banning it’s political.”
Assessing this with candor,
I see debate’s no use.
Behold the Michigander:
A macho Michigoose.
“Man arrested after showering commuters with money from 30th-floor window” —The Guardian
Was anybody bruised or stunned or shocked into a seizure
Or, blind with falling paper, crushed by cars to paraplegia?
Well, maybe; but for all we know his record as offender
Is limited to harmless rains of wholly legal tender;
So if conclusions must be drawn, I offer only these:
Humanity’s perverse and quite impossible to please.
“Universities must act to eradicate discrimination against working-class students, including the mockery of regional accents, equality campaigners have said.” —The Guardian
Those whose forbears cried “Yoicks!”
Look down on the oiks
Who pronounce “bikes” as “boikes”?
They deem even a don
As more goose than swan
If a “one” comes out “wan”?
Although not Dick Van Dyke
Let us speak as we like Scouse, Brummie or Tyke.
To let student life be
Language barrier free
Shed the yoke of RP
And from Bucks, Hants and Wilts
To the land of the kilts,
Welcome burrs, brogues and lilts!
“Five distinct types of dog existed by end of last ice age, study finds” —The Guardian
At the end of the Ice Age there were
Five clearly distinct kinds of cur:
The noisy, the bouncy,
The smelly, the pouncy,
And those who shed forests of fur.
We know the pratie’s what the Irish eat. Of eighteen forty-seven they despond: No praties meant a famine so complete, They needed help from way across the Pond. Good-hearted Choctaw in a distant land Eked out their cash to help the Irish feed. Today their gift is valued at five grand … Both Navajo and Hopi now have need.
“You won’t get by alone,” the Irish said.
“And we recall we’re in your people’s debt: Long years ago you sent us cash for bread. One million’s the thanks, today, you get. And though a gift is not a loan, all told, Now we’ve repaid our debt two-hundredfold!”
by Ruth S. Baker “Ecotricity founder to grow diamonds ‘made entirely from the sky'” —The Guardian
They’re mining the sky now in Stroud
Which should make the ecologists proud:
Stuff mined from the earth
Cannot equal in worth
These squeezings of carbon and cloud.
“The word Eigengrau means own grey, or intrinsic grey, or brain grey. It is what you see when you close your eyes.” —Patricia Lockwood, reviewing a collection of essays on Nabokov
in the London Review of Books
O Eigengrau, O Eigengrau:
You are the word I need for now!
I look upon the news, and ouch!
I feel the need to sigh and grouch;
But close my eyelids all the way,
I see instead intrinsic grey,
My own, my brain’s, true status quo:
O Eigengrau, how grau you grow!
There’s no business like Joe Business
Like no business I know.
Everything that he will be repealing
(At least the stuff that Congress will allow)
I can’t help the happy feeling
That Trump is stealing his final bow.
On the vigil of All Hallows, I was sitting, sipping Gallo’s
While awaiting trick-or-treaters’ bold assaults from six to nine,
When I dozed off; started snoring.
Then awoke to find it pouring,
Pouring buckets. What good luck! It’s
gonna make the evening fine.
(All that candy will be mine!)
