by Ruth S. Baker
“Archaeologists hunt for burial site of [Nancy, a] famous 19th-century elephant
in Gloucestershire”
—The Guardian
The elephant buried in Gloucester
Was Nancy: too long we have loucester!
When the experts exhume
The remains from a tomb,
Let us hope it is not some impoucester.
by Marshall Begel
“Someone Threw Their Mother’s Ashes on Stage During Pink’s Performance in London”
—Rolling Stone
For my remains, I tend to think
Of artists more my age than Pink.
So if I’m failed by penicillin,
Share my ashes with Bob Dylan.
Or maybe just arrange my bones
On stage among The Rolling Stones.
If I could join their ranks instead,
Consider me The Grateful Dead.
by Brian Allgar
“An American man brought a live lobster from his local supermarket home in 2021 as an experiment,
to see if he could keep it alive, and to his amazement, his pet, Leon the Lobster, is still thriving—
now… he admits the crustacean must have a special place in his heart.”
—PA Media
Spinily-brinily,
Leon the Lobster’s a
Crustacealogical
Pet in a shell.
Close to his master’s heart,
Let’s hope that Leon will
Not find a place in his
Stomach as well.
by Steven Kent
“Cheaper Than Water? Retailers Try to Unload Bud Light…
Nearly three months after the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video
on her Instagram account to promote a Bud Light contest, setting off online outrage from the right
and a boycott, the beer brand is still struggling to win back loyal, longtime customers.”
—The New York Times
The Champ fell fast from first to second. Why?
“Go woke, go broke,” say those who now don’t buy.
Yet Busch wins big when all is said and done:
They brew beers Number Two and Number One.
But take in this debate what side you will,
Bud Light remains a most godawful swill.
Its place, in fact, is fitting in the queue:
That lager tastes a lot like Number Two!
by Chris O’Carroll
“A majority of the House Freedom Caucus voted to remove GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
of Georgia . . . [One congressman] cited the confrontation between Greene and GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert
of Colorado as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ that led to her ouster.
[CNN reported] that Greene called Boebert ‘a little bitch’…”
—CNN
The MAGA Caucus made a switch,
Decided it was time to ditch
Not Boebert but the other one.
by Stephen Gold
“Meta officially launches Twitter rival Threads.”
—CNN
It seems that Threads (you may have heard)
Has given Elon Musk the bird.
How happy for the human race
That now we have another place
To ululate, harass and spit,
And all the hate that we transmit
Has one more pipe down which to flow.
So thank you Threads, for all you’ll sew.
by Alex Steelsmith
“[T]he most grating and disruptive sound in the entire athletic ecosystem right now might be
the staccato pop-pop-pop emanating from America’s rapidly multiplying pickleball courts.”
—The New York Times
Poppity
pickleball!
Eardrums can’t
hack it.
Newfangled
sport, it is
played with
a racket.
by Julia Griffin
“In Tuna-Obsessed Tunisia, a Favorite Food Becomes a Lot Less Affordable”
—The New York Times
In Tunisia, there is trouble with the tuna.
In Paraguay they’ve problems with the pay;
Holland’s apt to lend a hand;
When in Greenland, take a grand—
But in Norway there’s in general no way;
In Germany it’s positively germy;
In Freiland you can’t really find a friend;
In Denmark there’s the dark,
And in Sark there’s—well, there’s Sark;
But in England!—just be ready for the end.
by Steven Urquhart Bell
“Spilled milk closes the M6 motorway after tanker crash”
—BBC
The Police appeal for patience as commuters grow irascible,
But as of now the motorway is udderly impassable.
by Steven Kent
“The housing community that will require ‘patriots’ to fly the US flag”
—The Guardian
We built a ‘burb where patriots will be
Required by law to demonstrate they’re free.
by Alex Steelsmith
“Police were called about strands of hair hanging out of a woman’s trunk,
assuming it was a body. Turns out, it was her wig…”
—Insider
Worriedly, hurriedly,
dutiful officers
might pull you over for
wigs on display.
Try not to dangle them
unconscientiously;
tucking them in is a
small price toupee.
by Geoffrey Basking
“A tech firm and a university in Tokyo have teamed up to produce an app trained on thousands of cat photos
that they say can tell you when your pet is in pain. … [The firm and university gathered] 6,000 cat photos,
in which they carefully studied the positions of the animals’ ears, noses, whiskers and eyelids. They then used
a scoring system designed by the University of Montreal to measure minute differences between healthy cats
and those suffering pain due to hard-to-spot illnesses. Now the app ‘has an accuracy level of more than 90%’…”
—The Japan Times
When your cat is aching,
When your cat’s just low,
Trust the epoch-making
Minds of Tokyo
And of Montreal.
Their rare expertise
Appertains to all
Feline maladies.
Modestly submit:
Offer up a pic
Of your cherished kit;
Learn how it is sick
From a narrowed pupil
Or a furrowed brow,
Proof, beyond all scruple:
Not some mere MIAOW!!!
by Marshall Begel
“A funeral firm is … offering custom-made coffins, which includes a casket designed like a Greggs sausage roll.”
—Sky News
To be endlessly admired
Even after you’ve expired
There’s a place, you might have heard,
Where they craft the box interred.
Cobblers might select a boot.
Astronauts, their NASA suit.
Backyard grills might please a cook.
Poets may prefer a book.
As for me, I can’t deny
Where I’m heading when I die.
So I’ll choose to make my casket
Woven like a hand-held basket.
by Ruth S. Baker
“South Koreans get younger as traditional age system dropped…
‘It feels good,’ said Lee, a Seoul-based housewife.”
—The Japan Times
This makes them two years younger? How absurd
To give such value to the written word!
(Though shopping somehow gratifies me more
Since what was once Size 10 became Size 4.)
by Julia Griffin
In the Duma, they keep dumb (so would you) but
They mutely hum that best of hits:
Putin on the Fritz.
Like some latter-day Count Fosco,
Bad Prigozhin aims at Moscow: Fortune quits
Putin on the Fritz.
Dressed up like a billionaire contractor,
Trying not to look a real bad actor (malefactor),
Acts like he’s the big defence key,
Till Volodomyr Zelenskiy dreams he’ll blitz
Putin on the Fritz.
If you’re Pu and the days bring nasty news in,
Why don’t you sing a song that fits?
Putin on the Fritz
Putin on the Fritz
Putin on the Fritz …