Topic Til It's Optic

Around the holidays, is it really necessary to do things until they rhyme? 


Maybe not necessary, but in general, it comes highly recommended.  By the way...what the crap are you talking about?  


So, unless you've been living under a rock, you've recently been made aware that we've had a flurry of commerce-related holidays recently.  You have Black Friday (which is totally a misnomer now, since 83% of stores start Black Friday on Thursday now, but that's beside the point), Small Business Saturday (which is totally a misnomer now, since "Small Business Saturday" is actually a registered trademark of the American Express Corporation, a Fortune 500 multi-national corporation with revenues exceeding 30 billion dollars, but that's beside the point), and Cyber Monday (which is probably not totally a misnomer yet, but the fact that it's a formal title causes me to capitalize monday, which I otherwise never do, but that's beside the point).  Along with these entirely commercial holidays comes an all-too-oft repeated expression which we've all heard enough times that we don't even think about it anymore: "Shop til you drop."

Strictly speaking, we're supposed to walk around spending money on goods and services until we no longer contain the physical capacity to remain standing.  This seems a little excessive, but it rhymes, so we just go along with it.

Only this year, I was made aware of a similar rhyming pithy expression for this particular holiday season.  I managed to ignore it once, but I heard it at least 5 times over my Thanksgiving break.  I was instructed to "Gobble till you wobble." 

Strictly speaking, we're supposed to eat until we no longer contain the physical capacity to stand correctly.  Yeah...it's nowhere near as catchy or pithy as the shopping one, but it rhymes and we like pumpkin pie, so we just go along with it.

So, what else are we supposed to do until it rhymes now that the broader holiday season is upon us?  Gift til you're miffed? 
Wrap til your nap? 
Sing til you hear a ding? 


Blag til you make us all gag?  Write til we're filled with spite?  Joke til your readers croak?  


You get the idea.  Rhyming pithiness really does have its limits, and I think we passed it at least one catch phrase ago.  Also, I've never dropped from shopping, so I'm probably not even doing that one right.  

Don't Ask About The Girl From Norway

Happy Limerick Day, everybody!  There’s no way this ends well  

Keep it clean, people.  

So, today is Limerick Day, which has nothing to do with the nuclear (pronounced: NOO cue ler) power plant in southeast Pennsylvania.  It's a day to celebrate poetry!  But not just any poetry...the Dane Cook of poetry forms, the Limerick!  

It's also a terrible excuse to post my favorite poem...the author of which is entirely unknown to me.  I could probably look it up, but I'm not that concerned.


There once was a man from Nantucet
Who got on a train to Boston
This poem doesn't rhyme
And the last line is missing


You'll have to just imagine me snapping my fingers together. 


Thank you.  Thank you. 

Post Cheesey Title Here

Here’s a Fun Fact!  Cottage Cheese was invented in a Greek Villa

And Greek fries were invented in France.  What's your point?

Well, it just amuses me that cottage cheese dates back much farther than their eponymous cottages.  In early America, cheese curds were made by farmers in their small cottages using what milk was left over after making butter.  The resulting food product, also known by the more poetic "curds and whey" was largely what cottage cheese is today.  It was subsequently named Cottage Cheese, despite the fact that it had been invented in Greek villas hundreds of years earlier.  Go American Imperialism!  

Here's your bonus Fun Fact of the day.  it takes over 150 pounds of milk to produce 15 pounds of Cottage Cheese.  

You now know more than you did yesterday about Cottage Cheese.  You are welcome! 

Where's A Coal Mine When You Need One?

My little feathered alarm clock needs to learn what it means to be on vacation

That's what you get for making your friends watch Birdemic 2: The Resurrection.  Plus, your friends all hate you now. 

Once upon last week, dreary.  While I slumbered a little weary, 

After watching a bunch of Netflix'ed forgotten lore. 

While I snoozed, gently napping, suddenly there came a tapping, 

as of someone gently rapping.  Rapping on my windows...or...

Maybe on the air conditioner, what a chore.

Only this...and nothing more.  

Except for the fact that the noise didn't stop.  It just got a little annoying that here we are at 6AM, and something is knocking against the window to my bedroom, and it really needed to stop.  After a little while of this, I got up to see what it was that was making this relatively minor amount of racket, but still loud and repetitive enough to be annoying and keep me awake.  I flew to the window and threw open the blinds (wait...wrong poem...sorry), and just outside the bedroom window, I see this little guy:

He's adorable!  

So there he is, perched happily on top of the screen in the window, paying no attention to the man behind the curtain.  That would be me.  So he sits there for a couple seconds, then fluffs his feathers, jumps up and starts flapping his wings and pecking at the window.  Yes...this little nimrod is fighting with his own reflection in my bedroom window at 6AM in the frickin' morning.  

If this just happened once, it would be a really cute and entertaining story that I would be melting hearts with right now.  As it stands, it's become something a little more sinister.  My new pet here (I named him "Rodney", or "Rod" for short, after the main character in "Birdemic: Shock and Terror," and perhaps coincidentally, the lead actor in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," has become obsessed with his own white whale.  Although, in this case, that white whale has taken the form of a little yellow canary that shows up every time he does on the other side of my bedroom window.  He apparently has a standing appointment at 6AM every morning to do battle with this evil mastermind, and he's pretty relentless about fighting his nemesis.  

The problem arises when I'm on vacation, like I was a little bit last week...you know...4th of July and everything (Incidentally, I'm typing this just fine because I still have all 10 fingers, thanks for asking).  I didn't want to be awake at 6:00 in the morning.  Rod had other ideas.  Stupid canary...vacation means we don't have to get up.  I'm not saying you're not allowed to fight with yourself in the window, just wait until 9AM to do it. 

Yeah...they're getting a beatdown

some play for the money and some for the fame, but he simply plays for the love of the game, putting the puck in the net makes heroes for the fan, but putting guys in the hospital makes him the main man


This sounds like a wholesome Sametime Status to be sharing with your younger loyal readers.


Astute readers will recognize this as a poem about hockey.

More astute readers will recognize this as being appropriate for opening night of the 2009-2010 NHL season.

The most astute readers...and actually the ones who scare me a little, will recognize this as an excerpt from the poem "The Hockey Goon" by Michael Kenneth Panton.

Evil Jeremy will likely ask some silly question feigning ignorance about hockey. Don't let him fool you...he's actually a closet fan.

It's that day!

Happy Anne Bradstreet Day everybody!


Woohoo! I'll get out the streamers and party hats. Everybody likes to celebrate Anne Bradstreet Day!


Uhm...who's Anne Bradstreet?


I guess she's a poet or something.


And she gets her own day?


Why not?

How long can you tread water?

At this rate, July is going to have a ridiculous number of flowers


Why? How many flowers have you planted?


Well, I do have a couple things planted in a giant pot on my deck, but aside from that, nothing that I'm aware of.

I'm more making light of the wonderful Spring weather we've been having here lately. And by Spring, I mean a spring like Poland Spring or some mountain spring that does nothing but pour water all over the place.

Since "April Showers bring May Flowers," it just stands to reason that June showers would bring July Flowers. I for one am looking forward to it...it should be quite pretty.

It's also logical

More songs should take advantage of the rhyming relationship between “Dance” and “Pants”


"Dance in my Pants" isn't enough for you?


I listen to music fairly often...just a thing I do. I also tend to over-analyze things, often more for fun and amusement than anything else, but I also find patterns to be interesting. One pattern I've noticed is among those without a rhyming Beck-tionary, what words are used when a rhyme is necessary. It's remarkably easy as a lyricist to paint yourself into a corner and have a word that you need to rhyme with, but nothing seems to make sense in the counterpart position. It's unfortunate, and is probably what led to "freestyle" poetry replacing iambic pentameter and limerick as the style of choice. Validating my evolution of poetry is left as an exercise for the reader.

As an easy out, many lyricists stick with canned words and phrases when writing songs. For example, "Meet" and "Street" are used as a rhyming in at least 3 songs (See if you can name them), "Sun" and "One" is another common one, "Soul" and "Rock and Roll"...you get the idea.

Since it's musically related, many songs tend to involve the word "Dance". This leads to numerous opportunities to use words that rhyme with "Dance" to create lyrics. Sings like "Do You Wanna Dance," "Romance Dance," and "Romance in a Slow Dance" chose to use "Romance" as the rhyming pair. It fits, both logically and lyrically. It's also overused and cliche. The other overly common pairing is "Chance"...also fitting contextually as well as poetically.

Near as I can tell, and I can't be bothered to look it up, there is only one song in existence that uses the slightly loose rhyme between "Dance" and "Pants" to form a lyrical goldmine. Hats off to Jim Steinman for his genius in writing "Dance In My Pants." I invite other lyricists to follow suit and let "Pants" catch up to the cliched "Romance."

Limerick Day Redux

There once was a man from Nantucket. Who got on a train to Boston. This poem doesn't rhyme. And the last line is missing.


I'd snap my fingers, but that doesn't translate well over Internet.


So today, I thought I'd inject a little culture into the Blag by introducing you all to some poetry.


That's very thoughtful and informative of you. Thank you for this.


So in addition to the above poem, I'd like to present you with an edition of Dot's Poetry Corner:




And let's not forget one of my all-time favourite poems, from an episode of "Police Squad!", here's The Champ: (If you're in a hurry, you can skip ahead to the 6:45 mark...otherwise, the whole episode is pretty funny)