“It’s Larry the Cat’s Seventeenth Birthday” —YouTube
Downing Street, associated
Usually with poorly-rated
Statesmen blathering or snarling,
Fêtes this week its feline darling:
Larry, prince of impassivity,
Marks his seventeenth nativity.
Since age three (so most consider),
He has served as rodent-ridder;
Civil to our budget-wrecker
Chancellor of the Exchequer;
Stepping past policemen neatly;
Checking up, but most discreetly,
On the resident Prime Minister,
Howsoever dumb or sinister,
Slick or slacker, bland or blust’rous,
Lettuce-like or still less lustrous.
Five of them he’s duly greeted,
Four seen slope away, defeated;
Though they fill his bowl, or flavor it,
Never has he owned a favorite.
Larry, model politician,
Credit to your high position!
By your admirable labors,
You have made, for all your neighbors
And myself, mere out-of-towner,
Downing Street a lesser downer.
“Hertz is selling 20,000 electric vehicles to buy gasoline cars… [EVs] have been hurting Hertz’s financials… Hertz expects to take a loss of about $245 million due to depreciation on the EVs…” —CNN
Fillable, fuelable
gas-powered vehicles
bolster financials, a
spokesman asserts;
EVs are harming their
profitability.
Who can be faulted? The
company hurtz.
Fiscally riskily,
EVs as rental cars
sometimes depreciate,
analysts learn.
Now it appears that the
company’s managers
underappreciate
them in return.
“Brits left baffled by Brexit’s ‘not for EU’ food labels.” —Politico
We’re compelled to dismiss all these labels
As babble in bureaucrats’ Babels
For if “Not for EU”
Translates “Not for me/you”
We’ll be dining at very bare tables.
“Do You Have ‘Bookshelf Wealth’? A TikTok Home Décor Trend Has Irked Some Bibliophiles” —The New York Times
My look is lived-in, always understated: A vase, a painting, placed with utmost care.
The books, of course, have all been hand-curated, With no pulp fiction titles anywhere.
There’s Huck Finn, Moby Dick (about a sailor), The works of Shakespeare, Steinbeck for my friends,
And also Roth and Updike, Irving, Mailer, Plus Zadie Smith to show I’m up on trends.
A paperback looks cheap, in my opinion; Collector sets add class here to my shelf,
Projecting airs of scholarly dominion (Though I flunked out of English Lit myself).
I choose them by the lovely leather binding; I’m keenly conscious of each luscious hue
Which color-matches. I don’t need reminding That books are there to read, you pedant, you!
“Peter Schickele, Composer and Gleeful Sire of P.D.Q. Bach, Dies at 88” —The New York Times
Farewell, dear Peter Schickele,
The “Sire of P.D.Q.,”
That trickster Bach who, prickly,
Was almost good as you,
But, in a way, your nemesis
(Four Grammys to your one)
For philharmonic emphasis
On cockamamie fun.
“A passenger hid bullets in a baby diaper at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. TSA officers caught him.” —AP
“A typical sniper would not use a diaper,
but I am ingenious,” he gloated.
“My thinking is clever; officials will never
check diapers that someone has loaded.”
However, they caught him and pointedly taught him
a lesson regarding his stash:
“When looking for camo to cover your ammo,
your choice of a diaper was rash.”
“Tornadoes, Blizzards, Floods: Severe Storms Hit Vast Sections of U.S.” —The New York Times
I shoveled snow twice yesterday,
And then again this morning.
Amazing how much snowflakes weigh
When locust-like and swarming.
They brought down branches from my trees.
They’ve made my shoulders sore,
And put cricks in my back and knees.
Plus, shoveling’s a bore.
The news, however, says much worse
Befell my fellows coast to coast.
I’ve suffered, then, no private curse.
Do I feel better now? Almost.
“[T]he journalist and royal commentator Omid Scobie makes an enticing promise [to reveal] ‘some of the darker truths at the heart of the institution of the British monarchy…'” —The New York Times Book Review
“Enticing” isn’t what I’d say.
So what if they’ve got feet of clay?
This royal gossip’s so inane
It’s giving me a royal pain.
“US House Republican says pay bump would attract ‘credible people’ to office” —The Guardian
Raise minimum wage? We are not on that page, But a Congressmen’s paycheck won’t feed us.
Our $180K is a pittance today; Can’t you see, friend, how badly you need us?
A clerk or a waiter can wait till much later To gain a small raise or a perk here,
But we in D.C. crave a shot of esprit— Can’t you see, friend, how hard we all work here?
“Last US lighthouse keeper steps down… Sally Snowman… retires this weekend from her post looking after the first lighthouse built in North America, on a tiny island in Boston harbour…” —The Guardian
The Keeper of the First-Built Light
Departed with the Old Year’s flight:
For as the Old Year turned to flee,
The Keeper felt it bodily;
And as the Keeper’s body bent
It craved a calmer Element;
And since the Elements go on
When human builders all are gone,
And what they build must also go
Like houses lit or men of snow,
Just so the Light must pass at last
The point its Final Keeper passed.
“Pigeon found outside Florida hair salon reunites with owner after 15 months” —WSVN
I’ve heard “rats with wings” amid scurrilous things
Describing the lowly rock dove,
But harming a pigeon would cross my religion
For he may be somebody’s love.
That lawn-wrecking hole might be home to a mole
That’s cherished by someone or other.
Assume every spider might have eggs inside her,
And people admire a mother.
So don’t predetermine that pests are mere vermin
For all may be precious to some,
Except I cast vetoes on grace for mosquitos—
To hell with that bloodsucking scum!
