SONG OF THE FOOL

As an amateur authority on OLD songs, I got to thinking about posting some golden oldies appropriate for showing appreciation for a beleaguered President as he rides (or is carried) off into the sunset on January 20….leaving behind a legacy of lunacy we’ll not soon forget (try as we might).

They say one never gets a second chance to make a first impression, but with America’s Trumpeter Swamie, his last impression will likely be first among his lasting ones. I refer, of course, to his less-than-graceful refusal to concede defeat as he carries on about how the election was stolen from him. Poor baby!

And then there’s the old saying that you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time….but Trump proves you can be all of a fool all of the time:

His Highness may be able to con 74,000,000+ voters, but 80,000,000+ voters said:

And so we leave The Fool with some cool advice, which he never takes (and now it’s too late):

THESE ARE A SLEW OF MY FAVORITE WORDS

A few of my favorite things are words
Such as these (seen following the song):
Some are down to earth; others soar like birds….
But none (to the right eyes) are bound to sound wrong.

In a comment to my last post, what to my wondering eyes should appear….but one of my favorite words (rapscallion) said by a master of the bon mot, Masercot, whose blog is worth following to the ends of the mirth. “Rapscallion” isn’t a word you hear every day, so lo and behold my surprise last night when it came up again in a movie I was watching on TCM (7 FACES OF DR. LAO).

Thus (thanks to Masercot and Dr. Lao) was born the idea for this post of some of my favorite words, complete with daffynitions. Degust!

degust enjoy
rapscallion scamp, rascal
snickersnee a short sword or heavy knife
gorda an obese woman or heavy wife
sockdolager a lollapalooza
lollapalooza a lollipop that’s licked before it starts
hominoid a human with hemohrroids
trumpery the tangled web a debased President doth leave when he doth practice to deceive
tittynope crumbs left on a plate (not to be confused with keep your hands to yourself)

And now, the word you’ve all been waiting for….

….which leaves me at a loss for more.

THE FUN AND MENTAL THINGS APPLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AS RHYME GOES BY

It’s fun to publish a post I take no responsibility for if you dislike poems (even if being a poetry-pooper is all in your head), because one of my most aroused readers, CALMKATE, requested them….as you can see in the Nov. 25 comments on her Nov. 24 blog post titled “human”:

human

It’s even more fun because these are all previously published, thus I didn’t have to strain my brain composing new ones — although the post’s title did require a bit of work wordplay-wise (the song with the lyric on which my title is based, in case you can’t place it, is in CASABLANCA — see/hear clip at post’s end). So….here’s looking at you, Kate.

COME AS YOU ART

What can poor Ms
Light Verse wear to
Queen Poetry’s
Grand Ball?

She has no gown,
No slippers, glass….
A smile, perhaps —
That’s all.

CONCEIVABLY, THE COMPLEAT HISTORY OF HUMAN SEX

Adam and Eve,
I believe,
Were the start of it.

Everyone since,
I’m convinced,
Played a part in it.

INNOCENCE A BROAD

Madame’s cleavage so fair,
He pretends not to see;
Yet, he knows it’s there….
As, he knows, well does she.

She might think, if he stares,
He’s just looking for thrills….
But can he help if there’s
Ogle in them thar hills?

DEVIL-MAY-CARE

“Say, have you been, sir, to Kathmandu?”
“Nay, but I have sinned, sir, in Timbuktu.”
“A tale of sin, sir? What did you do?”
“Sailors would grin, sir, if I told you.”
“They’ll not get wind, sir — let slip a clue.”
“Maidens of sin, sir, were none too few.”
“May God rescind, sir, the sins you knew.”
“I do not pray, sir, those sins to rue!”
“Then may you pay, sir, the devil’s due!”
“Satan may say, sir, c’est entre nous.”

GRANT US GRANT’S WISDOM

“I think that if there ever is another war in this country, it will be one of ignorance and superstition combined against education and intelligence.”
–U.S. Grant, Civil War General and 18th President of the United States

“Life after all is a conflict — in peace as in war. Grant was not only a great General, but an honest man, a somewhat rare combination in the history of war, which should teach us not only how to conquer our enemies, but how to master ourselves.”
–J.F.C. Fuller, military historian and author of THE GENERALSHIP OF ULYSSES S. GRANT

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

How prescient the words of U.S. Grant seem now, in the waning days of the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, when over 70,000,000 Americans voted to re-elect a man they knew deep-down was not only utterly beneath the office, but a man incapable of moral honesty and caring about anything or anyone but himself….or, if they didn’t know, it was because of their ignorance, either willful or ill-informed.

It boggles the mind how we got to a point in this country where tens of millions of our citizens came out of our education system sorely lacking both a grasp of history and critical thinking skills. Why is it beyond us to teach our children how to think, as opposed to what to think?

I don’t know the answer — but I know we would be wise to take to heart the words of Edward R. Murrow at the end of his McCarthy-era broadcast during the height of a relevant period of fear mongering:

KING OF THE COMIC OPERA

Tomorrow (November 18) being the 184th birthday of librettist W.S. GILBERT, it gives me the opportunity to pay full tribute to his half of the foremost comic opera writing team in history, GILBERT & SULLIVAN. What musically literate person doesn’t delight in such glorious operettas as H.M.S PINAFORE and THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE! But I begin with this title-of-post appropriate song from THE GONDOLIERS:

I have long owned a book published in 1941 titled A TREASURY OF GILBERT & SULLIVAN by Deems Taylor. In the introduction, Taylor tells of the first G & S collaboration, “a highly unsuccessful operetta, produced in 1871, for which Gilbert had written the libretto and Sullivan composed the music. The piece was not even published, but it turned out to be the first of a series of fourteen, of which eleven, at least, have served to make the trademark “Gilbert and Sullivan” as nearly immortal as any two names in the history of operetta can hope to be.”

“The “and” in Gilbert and Sullivan is important; for it is what made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Gilbert, as a playwright, without Sullivan, was a prolific writer of farces and pompous Victorian dramas, none of which was particularly successful even in its day. Sullivan, without Gilbert, was the creator of a mass of “serious” music which was, at its best, highly watered Mendelssohn. But the two as a team –ah, that is a different matter. Gilbert was fatally handicapped as a serious dramatist by the heavy veil of Victorian moralism. As a librettist, he need not be concerned with the moralities, since the creatures of the operettas were never real people. He had a chance to give free rein to the mordant wit that was one of his greatest gifts.”

And with that, let us turn to selections from the first two of the above-named operettas, inasmuch as like an evergreen dream, that is what I am pining for (or, punning for — to be aboveboard about it):

And now, me hearties, we wander on to THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE….

I trust you found this posting most enjoyable;
If not, your antipathy is most egregible.
I expect such attitude is the very epitome of ephemeral,
Otherwise you are the very model of a modern Minor Execrable.

THE MEAN-ING OF KINDNESS

Friday, November 13, is WORLD KINDNESS DAY, which happens to fall this year on Friday the 13th. I’m not superstitious, so I don’t consider it bad luck — or even kind of bad luck — to be kind to others on such a day. On the other hand — for the head of the misanthropes, World Kindness Day might as well be what it is every day: World Meanness Day.

But enough about the head of that circle — who hasn’t had enough of Donald Trump-et man and his band of out(right)liars? Let’s not give in to the outliers. With your kind indulgence, I’d like to offer food for thought: let’s talk about the sweet milk of human kindness and (just for the hell of it) the curdled milk of human meanness….

The milk of human kindness is sometimes skimmed, sometimes condensed, but most often evaporated. –Evan Esar

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. –Philo

I have found men more kind than I expected….and less just. –Samuel Johnson

With some people, the means justify the end; with others, the end justifies the meanness. –Evan Esar

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. –Oscar Wilde

How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time. –Morgan Freeman

Keep in mind that the world need not be this MEAN. It was mean before Trump, and it will be mean after Trump — but it needn’t be The New Normal. So I leave you with this WORLD KINDNESS DAY take-away:

FREE AT LAST?

Free at last?
Not so fast.
Just as in 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. uttered those glorious words, true freedom is but a dream so long as false dogma is a reality. Donald Trump’s narcissistic* reign of error may be about to end, but he will not go gentle into that good night….and even if he would, the stench of the divisiveness he has stoked is going to be with us until the problematic day we come to our senses.

Probable continuing GOP control of the U.S. Senate, not to mention a majority of far-right justices on the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future, all but guarantee that Joe Biden will meet resistance at almost every turn in his attempts to make America think straight again.

* https://psychcentral.com/lib/4-types-of-narcissism-share-this-trait/

KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE POEM

Today, one of the bloggers I follow (Pam Lazos, Green Life Blue Water) published a timely post titled “Actually Vote!!” which included this clip….

….to which I commented with the poem which follows. Not having anything else in mind for my next (this) post, I thought I’d double down and save my brain the strain of winging it with something above and beyond what’s below (I filled out and mailed in my ballot days ago, so that’s enough exertion to last me until after the election). Thanks, Pam, for the inspiration.

“Let’s make it trendy” is all well and good —
But why not vote BECAUSE WE SHOULD?
‘Following the crowd’ is no more than Trump voters do;
Doing what’s RIGHT trumps the thoughtless “me too.”
There’s nothing wrong with being birds of a feather —
But let’s join the flock ’cause we’re all in this together.

WTH?

Yesterday I got to thinking about what I might WHAT (Write Humorously About Today), and — in a word — it’s ACRONYMS. Without acronyms, who knows how long LOL (Life On L‘earth — pardon my French) could survive? Of course, Americans could raise similar questions about life in TC, because without TRUMP, how could life in Trump Country go on? Perhaps, by listening to ROT (Rainbow On Tap) and electing to think positive, in eight days we will find out if the inhabitants of TC can survive DOOM (Disaster Of Own Making):

Meanwhile, BATS (Back At The Sesspool), if you can Trump these acronyms, feel free to DIANA (Dive In Anytime, No Admission):

MAGA (Morons Are Governing America)
POLITICS (Purely Outright Lies Intended To Infest Common Sense)
POTUS (President Of The Unsavory Scruples)
TRUMP (Twisted Racist Unqualified Malicious Prick)
WTH? (Where’s The Humanity?)

IS NUT THING SACRED?

As I’m sure you know, tomorrow (Oct. 22) is NATIONAL NUT DAY. I could make acorny joke about it, but the point is that NUTS are not only good, but good for you (with the nutable exception of our Make America Gross Again President). I suppose one could choke to death on a nut, which probably isn’t good for you — but that’s not the nut’s fault (is anything ever his fault?). In any case, with sincerest wishes for the good health of my readers — living or deceased — I’m here to say NUTS TO YOU. By George, just because I Got Plenty Of Nut Thing doesn’t mean I got no nuts, and so should you.  And so to you, I deadicate this post.

It is my honor to bring to you a selection of appropriately nutty songs, starting with a stomp which I’m certain will buoy yo spirits (not to mention yo mama’s). NOTE: Any resemblance between the NUT HOUSE STOMP song which is before us, and the WHITE HOUSE STUMP spin which is beneath us, is purely contemptible.

Next, I offer you a lovely bunch of coconuts. Any resemblance to supporters of Trump is purely considerable:

No National Nut Day celebration would be complete without the most beloved ballet in all of nutland. Let’s take a crack at it, shall we?

Oh, well — nut thing ventured, nut thing gained..