Today's Timericks. (Featuring toy trains and penny stocks)

 

Along with baking and jigsaw puzzles earlier in the pandemic, model trains are among the passions being rediscovered while people are cooped up indoors. Several companies that make trains are reporting jumps in sales. For many people, the chance to create a separate, better world in the living room — with stunning mountains, tiny chugging locomotives and communities of inch-high people where no one needs a mask — is hard to resist. NYT.

A train set in the living room is not for kids today/Adults are laying tracks to keep insanity at bay/Hauling boxcars; signal switching; tiny mountain passes/is sweeter to enthusiasts than the best molasses/If I had my druthers, I would play with trains instead/of trying to go out and earn my daily bread!

Penny stocks — the name given to more than 10,000 tiny companies like SpectraScience — have been around forever, but they’re booming as small investors flood the market. And this time around, social media is fueling the craze. Whether traded to fend off the boredom of pandemic living or to turn a quick profit, these dirt-cheap but risky shares are another frontier in a world where meme stocks like GameStop gained overnight stardom, Dogecoin morphed from a joke cryptocurrency to a hot investment and a digital artwork known as an NFT sold for $69 million.   Penny stocks occupy a low-rent district of Wall Street, a world rife with fraud and chicanery where companies that don’t have a viable product, or are mired in debt, often sell their shares. Traded on the lightly regulated over-the-counter, or O.T.C., markets, penny stocks face fewer rules about publishing information on financial results or independent board members. Wall Street analysts don’t usually follow them. Major investors don’t buy them.  NYT.

Penny stocks are just the ticket/to begin a sticky wicket/Buy them cheap then sell them dear/What is there to really fear?/So think all the suckers who/swallow all the ballyhoo.

If you're tempted to invest/give your foolish greed a rest!

Still Stuck at Home? It Might Be Time to Work on That Novel. Online writing groups have thrived during the pandemic, with membership fueled by more time at home and fewer to no social obligations.  NYT.  

Nowadays I feel the urge/on my novel to so splurge/that its subtle paradigms/show up in the New York Times/Then I'll be that lucky feller/with an opulent best seller/Online writer's group, let's talk/all about my writer's block!

People of Asian descent have been living in the United States for more than 160 years, and have long been the target of bigotry.  WaPo. 

Whether you're from Vietnam, China, or Japan/America still welcomes you -- like an old bedpan/We have opportunities for our Asian friends/paying them with violence, and other dividends.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwanese officials urged people to consider the implications before changing their name to "Salmon," after dozens flooded government offices to register a name change so they could qualify for a restaurant promotion.

The frenzy took hold this week after Japanese chain Sushiro promised a free sushi meal to customers whose names included the traditional Chinese characters “guiyu,” meaning salmon. Customers with names that sounded similar to “salmon” could enjoy a half-price feed.  WaPo.

I'd change my name to 'hamburger' or 'french fries' in a trice/or 'chopsticks' if it meant free servings of some ham fried rice/I'd draw the line, however, at reneging patrimony/if it came to changing mine to something like 'baloney.' 

People have said for years that the bus could be the next big thing in transportation. Now we can make that a reality. With the proper investment, city buses might be transformed into the sort of next-generation transportation service that technology companies and car companies have spent billions over the last decade trying to build — a cheap, accessible, comfortable, sustainable, reliable way to get around town.  WaPo. 

I would take the bus to work/were I CEO or clerk/I would take it out to eat/and sit back to post a tweet/I would take it out to dance/I would take the bus to France/I would take it anywhere/if I could afford the fare.

If you want a problem to recede into the distance/do not bother with the facts or a loud insistence/Just spread a lot of cash around to people near and far/and it will be like children with a brand new candy bar/They will skip away in glee, so glad to stuff their face/and that is how you win a narrow presidential race!