Today's Timericks.

 

Finding laughs is hard today/Things seem more like shadow play/I believe that hope exists/when you cut away the cysts/of despair and stark fatigue/and believe that no blitzkrieg/can prevail for long if we/place our trust in Deity.

She is dealing with parosmia, a distortion of smell such that previously enjoyable aromas — like that of fresh coffee or a romantic partner — may become unpleasant and even intolerable. Along with anosmia, or diminished sense of smell, it is a symptom that has lingered with some people who have recovered from Covid-19.  NYT.

I smell garbage when I eat/roses now are not a treat/And my lover stinks so foul/I would rather kiss an owl/Tell me, Covid, am I doomed/to never sniff a thing perfumed?

Spring is sprung; mild zephyrs blow/But still asparagus I know/as something green and slimy which/makes my taste buds start to twitch/I'd rather celebrate the Spring/with a pan-fried chicken wing.

In a conclusion that even surprised its editors, the 2021 World Happiness Report found that, amid global hardship, self-reported life satisfaction across 95 countries on average remained steady in 2020 from the previous year. The United States saw the same trend — despite societal tumult that yielded a national drop in positive emotions and a rise in negative ones. The country fell one spot, to 19th, in the annual rankings of the report, which was released Saturday.  WaPo. 

Happiness is what you get/when your troubles you forget/All day long you'll learn to croon/mantras that are so jejune/they will turn your brain to mush/telling intellect to hush/Happiness will come to me/only with lobotomy.  

I see lots of UFO's/I report them, heaven knows/Soon the Feds will validate/all my sightings with great weight/Then I won't be called a loon/when I'm kidnapped by Neptune!

Mormonism, like some other faith groups, requires members to tithe 10 percent of their incomes but is more organized and deliberate about collecting it and understanding why members cannot pay.  Washington Post. 

I have never been strong-armed/or told I should be alarmed/if my tithing I don't pay/I'm not forced to so obey/out of fear or as a bribe/in thrall to some pious scribe/I pay tithing as a way/to thank God for each new day/In return, when I'm distressed/I still know I'm being blessed/God is not a financier/All He asks is love sincere.

Today's Timericks. (Now with German quark!)

 

Senators who like to fib/always making with ad-lib/sheltered by immunity/have the scruples of a flea/Voters who will keep them in/must be drinking bathtub gin.

Milk on walls and bread on floors/these are springtime cleaning chores/Antiquaries so expound/how the old folks messed around/with wood ashes and bedpan/to keep homes real spic and span/Me, I'll stick to alcohol/It makes cleaning quite a ball.

Now when shopping I expect/foreign foods to oft detect/ Fonio and German quark/Nori and chinchona bark/locust bugs from Myanmar/But where is my grape jelly jar?  

Preachers come in many sizes/and some really like their prizes/coming from communion plates/and their pious delegates/Could I stay poor as a vicar/would I worship a stock ticker?/Luckily, I feel no call/to go shopping at the mall.

Prose Poem: The Dogs of Rangoon.

 

I left home to become a feral dog at a young age.

I was tired of sitting at the table

and wearing clothes all the time;

I wanted to snarl over a piece of offal

and squat wherever I wished.

So I wandered the world

on all fours,

grew a muzzle and a tail.

Picked up fleas and lice.

Caught the mange in Budapest.

And finally came to Rangoon

one sultry evening,

when the street lights were

sickly yellow

and the flying termites 

dripped from the sky --

I gobbled them up with gusto.

Just my kind of place.

At first I simply chased other dogs,

nipping at their backsides.

Then I attacked the night people --

those brave, foolish people,

who were defying curfew,

marching in protest.

Being Buddhist, they never harmed

animals -- even a mangy creature like me.

It was wonderful.

I ripped apart their longyis

in a foaming frenzy, as they ran

from the police.

I loved chewing up their sandals;

most of 'em only had one pair

to their names. 

In the daytime I slept under the Yangon River

docks, where it was cool and fetid.

One night I attacked an old woman

on her way home with a package 

of soup bones.

She fell and hit her head on the curb.

She didn't get up again.

I feasted on the soup bones until

a crowd gathered around me.

They wouldn't let me leave, no matter

how I snapped and snarled.

They beat me with sticks and clubs.

Just my luck --

a bunch of lousy Christians.

But the laugh is on them,

because I've been reincarnated as 

a general in the Tatmadaw.  

And I remember distinctly each

one of them . . . 

Today's Timericks. (Featuring Waffles!)

 

The world is filled with trouble/the world is filled with grief/and any happy moment/is usually quite brief/Don't read the headlines, brother/and sister, turn off the set/Just play a bit more sweetly/in life's short string quartette.  

The poet of tomorrow/an algorithm uses/to check forbidden nuance/that might come from her muses/With cancel culture rampant/and deepfake on the rise/a poet can't get published/without the right disguise.  

A Sunday morning waffle/eaten in pajamas/is better for your spirit/than all the Dalai Lamas. 

Photo Essay: More Postcards Mailed to President Joe Biden.

 

Photo Essay: Puzzling Postcards Mailed to President Joe Biden today. See if you can figure out their meaning to win a prize!

 

Today's Timericks.

 

China's always in the news/what they do and how they schmooze/other nations to maintain/lots of power, glory, gain/If they want to play tough guy/we their chicken feet won't buy!

The bigger you are, the less you aspire/to understand the worth of satire/Facebook and others, like all stuffed shirts/never approve of what disconcerts/No algorithm can comprehend/Mark Twain, for instance/and what he has penned.  

Rand Paul is a know-it-all/when it comes to virus crawl/He has read a book or two/so he knows just what to do/Listen to his crack advice/and you soon will be on ice.

Photo: Postcard Mailed to President Biden Today.

 

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!

Photo: I mailed this handmade postcard to President Biden today, to send him a graphic message.