Tag archives: wordplay

One of the most famous pieces of literature in the English language is about a talking bird. No, it’s not a parrot or a mynah – and I don’t mean Edward Lear’s accomplished Owl who eloped with a Pussy-Cat, and could sing and play the guitar while operating a sailboat. The particular bird I am […]

You have to wear clothes, at least enough to cover your private parts. It’s generally the law, in most civilized places. In fact, such laws almost define civilization. “Naked savages” populate the lowest level of the social pyramid. But the garb of those on the upper levels, especially (for some reason) the female of the […]

Why? Why should I do it? Because. Because why? Because They said so. And who are They? They are your Authority Figures, in the shape of your parent, your teacher, employer, minister, officer, judge, ruler – or even your spouse (remember that rash promise to “Love, honor, and obey”?). A powerful bunch, I must say […]

As far as I know, God never bothers about what’s right and what’s wrong. Even so, we’ve always been gifted with self-professed intermediaries, from the days of Moses descending Mount Sinai bearing holy commandments inscribed on tablets of stone, all the way to the “televangelists” of today, telling us in no uncertain terms how God […]

If anybody asked you (for some diabolical reason) to use the word “unpremeditated” in a poem, you might think it a considerable, almost an unfair, challenge. The word isn’t very poetic-sounding, is it? But prepare to be flabbergasted: That word happens to appear in the first stanza of one of the most famous poems in […]

I was eight when planes piloted (in my comic-books) by sinister-looking Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Even before then, “Made in Japan” reputedly meant “cheap and shoddy.” During the war, of course, Japanese were simply our diabolical enemies. And, thanks to war-movies like God Is My Co-Pilot, the image of evil Japanese pilots was strongly planted […]

You may remember an old campfire song containing repeated vows that “I ain’t gonna grieve my Lord no more,” interspersed with a lengthy list of ways in which “you can’t get to Heaven.” One of those ways, which I have always remembered (perhaps because this is one case in which I strongly agree with the […]

I mean “Fools” here in the Shakespearian sense of clowns or jesters – in our day, professional comics, who make a living making us laugh. The most successful of these are highly paid, so much so that they can afford to hire other people to write jokes for them. As for jewels, the best ones […]

No doubt you have heard the wise old saw which pontificates that “There is no accounting for taste.” Yet any number of psychologists and other professional explorers of the human psyche, to say nothing of all the people engaged in advertising, marketing, and other activities involving the purveying of products, are constantly trying to account […]

A crazy old woman of RhydeAte too many green apples, and died.The apples fermentedInside the dementedAnd soon she had cider inside her inside. I learned that poem from my father, who knew many similarly questionable classics. (Another was “It wasn’t the cough that carried him off – But the coffin they carried him off in.”) […]

One of the most common themes of all songs and poetry is the loss of love. Usually, it is the loser who is speaking or singing. And more often than not, the love he or she thought they had, has been transferred to somebody else. Statistics are lacking, but I would venture to guess that […]

We don’t need the Ten Commandments to tell us that stealing is wrong. We know it inherently, because nobody likes to be a victim of theft. One of the first words most babies learn is “mine!” (and I’m not sure how much later they also learn “yours”). The concept of private property has a long […]

Growing up in England – as I did for two-thirds of my early life – I was very familiar with “kidney,” as in “steak and kidney pie,” which in that country is almost a staple, and was certainly among my own favorite entrées. But I took no anatomical interest in either the steak or the […]

There are those who believe that “Life is a test” and that, at the end, we all get a grade of H. Everything then depends on whether it’s an H-Plus, for Heaven, or an H-Minus, for Hellswhere. But there are enough hard tests along the way to make life often seem to be a little […]

It has been said (by me, in one of my Pot-Shots epigrams) that “Sometimes it seems all of life is a waiting room.” One of the “Beat” poets of the 1950s wrote a poem which consisted of nothing but the word “wait,” repeated hundreds of times, covering an entire page – except for the very […]

I have always been in favor of equal rights for women (although I admit that, in my lifetime, it has sometimes been unsettling to see women police, and women doing other work which was hitherto mainly or entirely the preserve of men.) It is sad to think of how many gifted women, in former times, […]

There is no statistical proof, but I would hazard a guess that, in most people’s lives, the pleasant surprises are outnumbered by the disappointments. My own life is a case in point. The big happy surprises can be counted on one hand. The disappointments would require all the fingers, and perhaps most of the toes.  […]

If you ever see a sundial inscribed with a Latin expression, it will probably say: HORAS NON NUMERO NISI SERENAS, which can be translated as “I count only the happy hours.” This is highly appropriate for a sundial, which tells the time only when the sun is shining.  But the idea of always “looking on […]

Embarrassment comes in many shapes and sizes – but what we all find particularly interesting are other people’s “most embarrassing moments.” I’m going to tell you mine – but first, some peripheral observations. Such stories usually seem to involve unexpected revelations of things we normally try to keep “private” – particularly if they have to […]

Until a fairly recently, there was no Mohs in my life. Now there are two of them. The first Mohs was a gift of Google; the second, of a crossword puzzle. Here’s what happened: My dermatologist, whom I’ll call Dr. O, told me that the hard bump which had developed on the back of my […]