by Steven Urquhart Bell
“‘Best way to eat a Big Mac’: McDonald’s menu hacks claims to have discovered ‘elite’ trick”
—Daily Express
It’s best to eat your junk food on the way home from the pub,
’Cos if you really must indulge in such unhealthy grub,
It’s better if you do it on a bellyful of beers,
So nothing does you too much harm before it reappears.
by Alex Steelsmith
“[O]ne diner at a restaurant in southwest China… noticed something unusual imprinted in the stone floor…
dinosaur footprints aging more than 100 million years back. Expert paleontologists visited the restaurant
to analyze the scene…”
—Ripley’s.com
Biggily-wiggily
paleontologists
might have been doubtful at
first, but have since
come to agree that it’s
incontrovertibly
true that a diner saw
dinersaw prints.
by Katherine Barrett Swett
“At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. …
Maitland Jones Jr., a respected professor, defended his standards.
But students started a petition, and the university dismissed him.”
—The New York Times
When premeds in organic chemistry
Did not get grades that top med schools required—
They needed A’s and not these C’s and D’s—
They hit the roof and Admin said, “He’s fired!”
When Mom and Dad had paid a hefty sum
To educate the darling they had sired
And this cruel teacher called their children dumb,
They told the kid, “It’s time that jerk was fired.”
When twenty years from now our doctors are
These kids who always got what they desired,
We may well wish there’d been a higher bar—
That someone, once, had said to them, “You’re fired!”
by Alex Steelsmith
Monday, October 10, marks the 50th anniversary of the Woodward and Bernstein report
that the FBI had made connections between Nixon aides and the Watergate break-in.
Trickery Dickery
Nixon the president
ordered a theft and his
kismet was fixed.
Now on this curious
semicentennial
people remember how
Nixon got nixed.
by Steven Kent
“Better than Bulgaria but not as nice as Cuba: how did the United States
become such an awful place to live?”
—The Guardian
My foreign friend, how dare you cast
Aspersions on this nation?
We top the list from first to last
In every situation,
Especially when we measure stuff
Like poverty and shootings
And child mortality (that’s rough),
Mass murders, riots, lootings,
And pill-fed deaths of deep despair
And crushing healthcare fails—
This train has run (despite the fare)
Completely off the rails.
It’s not that bad, some might retort;
Why so much dark foreboding?
Democracy’s on life support,
Autocracy’s exploding.
Things didn’t have to go this way,
But can they be undone?
Tomorrow let us hope and pray
We slip from Number One.
by Chris O’Carroll
“We have to keep our country gay.”
—Donald Trump
MAGA
Finally has some sass and swaga
Now that we’ve heard the big guy say
Which way
He wants the USA
To sway.
Olé!
by Philip Kitcher
I once had a pound, and I thought I would use it
to pay for a pint or to drink a wee dram.
I once had a pound, and I worried I’d lose it—
it now buys so little, I don’t give a damn.
I once had a pound; though I struggled to earn it,
it took me some way to my purchasing goal.
I now have a pound, but I might as well burn it.
I’m giving up work. I shall go on the dole.
by Ruth S. Baker
“Lidl ordered to destroy its Lindt-like chocolate bunnies by Swiss court
Ruling on trademark case suggests German retailer could melt down and
reuse the offending rabbits”
—The Guardian
Ah, poor Lidl bunnies! How have they offended?
Though sweet as the Swiss, they had never pretended:
Their makers, perhaps, were impetuous riskers,
In painting their aureate wrapping with whiskers,
But this latest ruling is bitter to swallow.
Let Lindt have a melt-down—no bunnies should follow!
by Steve Bremner
“Nanoengineers have developed microscopic robots… that can swim around in the lungs,
deliver medication and be used to clear up life-threatening cases of bacterial pneumonia.
In mice, the microrobots… resulted in 100% survival. By contrast, untreated mice all died
within three days after infection.”
—UC San Diego Today
What’s the kind of medicine
That’s made for you and me?
M-I-C-R-O-S-
C-O-P-I-C.
Feeling weak and wheezy, kids?
Just call UCSD.
M-I-C-R-O-S-
C-O-P-I-C.
Micro-bots! Micro-bots!
Forever let us raise our coughless cry
Cry cry cry!
Come along and sing our song
And join our CDC:
M-I-C-R-O-S-
C-O-P-I-C.
by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
“A pet owner who lost one of her cockatiels is carrying around its mate
in a transparent backpack in an effort to lure the absent avian home.”
—BBC News
“Why didn’t you say au revoir before
Hightailing it and leaving me to pine?
You didn’t even tweet me—though you swore,
Devotedly, you’d be forever mine.
I‘m made to look a proper turkey now,
Displayed inside a cage as Emma walks,
Not able to disguise my furrowed brow
To hide its grief—instead, all Yorkshire gawks.”
“You lovesick feather-brain, you should have flown
Off too. Forget old Emma, who just ties
Us down, and flee—she won’t be on her own,
She’ll buy new cockatiels to patronize.
And think before you chicken out again,
You—faint-heart cock has never won fair hen!”
by Alex Steelsmith
“Thousands of Russians fear President Putin’s new draft orders.”
—NBC
Shivery quivery,
Putin the warmonger,
grimly applying his
terrible craft,
opened the door to the
Cold War. Now Russians are
antipathetically
feeling the draft.
by Julia Griffin
“Cleaners at Amsterdam gallery ordered to let insects run wild in name of art
Spiders and creepy crawlies allowed to colonise Rijksmuseum to show how
perceptions have changed through the ages”
—The Guardian
Their perceptions have changed
In the land of the Dutch;
Though it might seem deranged,
Their perceptions have changed;
Are the cleaners estranged?
No one’s certain how much
Their perceptions have changed
In the land of the Dutch.
Now insects run wild
For the purpose of art;
For ages reviled,
These creators, so styled,
Hold viewers beguiled;
For disgust plays no part
Now insects run wild
For the purpose of art.
Some arachnids display
Around Rembrandt van Rijn;
They’re working away
In their palette of grey,
So beware, or you may
Find you’re on, or else in,
Some arachnid’s display
Around Rembrandt van Rijn.
by Steven Urquhart Bell
“I shout at plants and browbeat the vacuum cleaner.
I tell the dishwasher I hate it. What’s wrong with me?”
—The Guardian
Just because you sometimes blow your stack,
It doesn’t mean your brain is out of whack—
Unless your vacuum cleaner answers back.
by Steven Kent
“Anarchy in the auction house: the Sex Pistols ephemera that’s pogoing, going, gone”
—The Guardian
Ironic nihilism on the street
Can boost a very healthy balance sheet.
Rebellion has been tainted, I’m afraid—
In anarchy there’s money to be made.