Travel-logy

You tempt me not, o tower Eiffel,
O Louvre, you are the merest trifle.
While some may say that Paris sizzles,
I’d be there on the days its drizzles.

Why lug my camera off to Rome
For ruins? Have you seen my home?

Don’t talk to me of Hong Kong’s charm—
I’d rather see a poultry farm.

Darkest Africa? Not I—
It teems with anthropophagi!

Scandanavia? Too chilly.
Switzerland? The Alps? Too hilly!

Big Ben, Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square—
I find no romance anywhere.

No, London’s not my cup of tea,
And neither is the Baltic, see?

New Zealand fills me with no zeal—
I’d long for home again, I feel.

The Riviera’s just too crass.
On Monte Carlo’s games I’ll pass.

Swilling beer in bawdy Munich?
Not for me, though I’m no eunuch;

No, just the shy, retiring type,
Whose greatest joys are slipper, pipe,

An armchair where, with quilt of flannel,
I can watch the Travel Channel.

The baggage handler deserves a heads-up

“60 severed heads were discovered on a Southwest Airlines flight to Fort Worth, Texas.” — Harper’s Magazine.


Were they all in one trunk?
Don’t you think it would flunk
Pre-boarding inspection?
Did Economy section
Lose their heads when they learned
That these riders had earned
Discounts that were moreso?
(Flying without torso.)

A story played out

Today's ghost phrase:

Ad favreum: adj., Referring specifically to a sports news story -- often brett-takingly trivial to begin with -- reported to the point of absurdity.

Borborygmus the Ignominious

Word of the day: borborygmus (or -mos); n., stomach rumbling or growling.

Borborygmus
Is one of the lesser stigmas,
But when one's stomach is rumbling
It's humbling.
And why it always seems to happen when you're in company is one of life's enigmas.

The aposcalypse is on us

Sign on a church's outdoor bulletin board: "Life isn't like Burger King -- you can't alway's have it your way."

Today's coined word: prepostrophe, n. A ludicrously misused or misplaced apostrophe.

They were positive about him being a crook, however

Today is the 92nd birthday of Spiro Agnew, 39th Vice President of the U. S. (he died in 1996), who served under Richard Nixon and who delivered one of the great (and most alliterative) epithets ever, when he referred to members of the media as "nattering nabobs of negativity."

In October of 1973 Agnew was forced to resign as Vice President after being charged with accepting bribes of more than $100,000 while governor of Maryland and also Vice President.

"Spiro Agnew" is an anagram of "prison wage."

Scrabble in Music City, and that starts with S

Big Scrabble tournament in Musical City last weekend. There were six of us "experts" in the top division. I won the division. In my most interesting game I led off with ANTEFIX for 100 points. My opponent was stunned, of course, but then he went to town adorning the word, first hooking it with an A (ANTEFIXA) and then hooking that with an E (ANTEFIXAE), scoring 40 or so on each play. Meanwhile I was busy elsewhere, following up my opening play with IODOPHOR and then RECURVES, all without the benefit of a blank. I had 247 points after three turns. I added another late bingo, and if it hadn't been for a little lull when I was saddled with a surfeit of vowels I would have scored over 600. I had 542.

Dumb word of the day (mainly because I challenged it and lost): toileted. The Scrabble dictionary says this the past tense of the verb toilet. Merriam-Webster does not count toilet as a verb, but since when has that ever deterred the intrepid adventurers responsible for the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary?

The litmus test for including a word in the OSPD, to my way of thinking, ought to be this: Has anyone in the history of spoken English ever uttered the word?