Tag: Limericks

Tales from the Twitterati…

So, it seems that even Roseanne Barr felt she’d gone too far with an allegedly racist tweet when alluding to former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett as an ape. But, of course, it wasn’t really racism; no, it was a sedative she’d taken wot dun it – a branded pharmaceutical by the name of Ambien.

The brand manufacturer’s response to her claims was blunt and to the point:

“People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication“.

I’d never actually heard of Ambien before, a brand name for Zolpidem (that I’d never heard of either), but by sheer coincidence it arose again the very same day in an entirely different context.

Long story short: In an episode of The Simpsons from 2007, Homer takes sleeping pills and becomes, according to Bart:

“every boy’s dream: a fat, suggestible zombie dad“.

Homer’s sedative of choice is called ‘Nappien‘, but Lisa’s character gives away the writers’ game when she says:

“I’ve read that people do strange things in their sleep when they’ve taken Ambien… I mean Nappien“.

… a none-too-subtle reference to the frenzied defence a number of politicians, celebrities and murderers have used for their highly publicised transgressions.

Perhaps Barr should have researched the drug’s side effects before blaming it for her tweet, as they seem to involve unconscious physical behaviours and not wilful rants about people with whom you disagree politically and about whom you publicly tweet your prejudices.

At best Barr could argue that the drug reduced her inhibitions to saying what she truly believed, but that doesn’t help her case either!

Her bigoted words were a smear
And the backlash was truly severe
But never blame pills
For illiberal ills
If you racistly tweet loud and clear!

Orange is the new brown…

Remember the Tango advert? You know, the one in which someone gets slapped by a bright orange man after taking a sip of the eponymous drink; an assault that was followed by the strapline: “You know when you’ve been Tango’d!”.

The advert managed not only to increase sales of Tango substantially, but also led to an epidemic of playground violence as kids took to hitting each to the refrain of “You’ve been Tango’d!”.

Years later, Lorna Wallace resurrected the concept in her Burns-inspired missive to the American public on their choice of a “tangerine gabshite walloper” as President:

Well, Trump and a different orange libation hit the headlines this week. Apparently the sale of Scotland’s ‘other’ national drink has been banned at his Turnberry golf estate.

It’s true! Irn-Bru, bane of Scottish dentists’ and succour to the hungover, can no longer be purchased there due to its tendency to leave irremovable orange stains when spilled onto expensive carpets.

Hmm! Irremovable orange stains. I wonder, is Irn-Bru is the secret behind Trump’s ‘tan’? Perhaps that’s what did the trick!

I’m the first to admit that “You’ve been Iron-Bru’d!” doesn’t have the same ring as the original, but this is what I think…

Trump was fond of his comb-over hairdo,
But, also, he wanted a new hue.
So he made his old tan go
From brown to an orange glow
By bathing twice daily in Irn-Bru.

Postscript#1: Perceptive readers may think they’ve found an inconsistent spelling of Tango’d in this post. They haven’t, or at least it is not of my doing. The drink manufacturer’s advertising agency spelled it as I have used it in the text. Lorna Wallace’s poem-in-the-style-of-Burns used the spelling as in the illustrated quote, above!

Postscript#2:  My apologies if you have to work to get the meter and phrasing right in this one (it can be done😎). One bit of help: for the uninitiated, it’s pronounced ‘eye-ren brew’.

Rock on …

The small town of Dunbar on Scotland’s east coast is probably best known to outdoorsy folk as the birthplace of John Muir, one of the founding-fathers of America’s National Parks and a co-founder of its Sierra Club. I wonder if he’d be impressed by his hometown’s latest claim to fame?

It arises from an outdoors activity sure enough. Indeed it’s one that’s said to be a contemplative and meditative experience and I’m sure that’s the sort of feeling that Muir would have sought in the peace and tranquility of 19th century Yosemite. But not, I think, by stacking stones on Dunbar’s foreshore (although the results can be rather impressive).

Yes, folks, Dunbar hosts the European stone-stacking championship and this year’s event has just finished.

It was inaugurated in 2016 as The John Muir Stone Stacking Challenge (he’ll be turning in his grave that something so facile has been named after him) and according to the Beeb, Dunbar’s coastline has been declared “rock stacker paradise”.

The Championship’s competitive categories include ‘most stones balanced’, ‘most artistic’ and ‘balance against the clock’ and there are separate classes for both adults and children

The rules are strict. No adhesive substances are allowed and there must be no interference with other competitors’ piles. Neither the throwing nor tossing of stones is permitted, nor is foul language, lewd behaviour or poor sportsmanship. The whole thing rocks!

It also inspires limericks …

In a littoral balancing act
Her pillar of rocks stayed intact.
So she added some more
‘Till you couldn’t ignore
That her structure was truly well-stacked!

Postscript: A few years ago, I came across someone’s stone-stacking effort at Aberdeen harbour and I was really impressed. I took a pic using my phone and thought to return the next day with my proper camera.

Unfortunately, by the next day, it had been kicked over, so here’s my original picture …

… and the Wordsworthian verse that it spawned:

I wandered quietly down the road
That meanders by the River Dee
When all at once I spied a load
Of boulders stacked-up. One! Two! Three …
Astride the bank, above the flow,
I knocked them o’er with one fell blow.

(I didn’t really!)

Liar, liar …

I can’t be the only person to view recent outpourings from the UK’s Home Secretary to amount to more than the mere sophistry and weasel words that we’ve come to expect from politicians. Perhaps the strategy adopted across the pond of openly telling lies to a receptive audience of rednecks has an appeal for her.

I don’t normally quote at length from newspapers, but the following paragraphs from two recent Graun articles certainly point the finger.

First we read that:

“The hostile immigration environment Theresa May set out to create when she was at the Home Office was regarded by some ministers as “almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany” in the way it is working, the former head of the civil service, Lord Kerslake, has said.”

And then that:

“Amber Rudd privately boasted to the prime minister that she would give immigration officials greater “teeth” to hunt down and deport thousands more illegal migrants and accelerate the UK’s deportation programme, a leaked private letter has revealed.”

… and then:

“Rudd set out her “ambitious” plan to increase removals and focus officials on “arresting, detaining and forcibly removing illegal migrants” while “ruthlessly” prioritising Home Office resources to that programme.

The aggressive language and tone of Rudd’s approach to immigration enforcement emerged after the home secretary attempted to blame officials in her own department for the Windrush scandal in which it emerged up to 50,000 mostly Commonwealth migrants were facing possible deportation despite having lived in Britain for decades.”

Illegally deporting legal migrants and then blaming civil servants for carrying out the policies that you have aggressively engineered?

That’s not telling the truth … ‘pants on fire’, methinks!

There was a young man from Jamaica
Left his home in order to make a
Difference to the Brits
But the ungrateful gits
Years later said : “Leave! Or we’ll make ya!”.

Sandpapergate!

Ten or so years ago, a BBC ‘quote of the week’ came from Brent Cockbain, then a Welsh international rugby player, who had said: “You cheat and cheat until you get caught out and then you cheat some more“.

Of course with the advent of in-game ‘big screen’ video replays, sometimes those that cheat are made to look extremely foolish, as when an open-handed slap from an opponent causes one of rugby’s tough guys to hit the ground as if he’d been pole-axed by Muhammad Ali in his prime (yes, that’s you I’m talking about, Donncha O’Callaghan!).

All of which calls into question the wisdom and judgement of the senior leaders of Australia’s national cricket team, some of whom have just been sent home from their current tour of South Africa for a rather too obvious attempt to cheat.

Scuffing one half of a cricket ball whilst ‘polishing’ the other half is a well-known ploy to make a cricket ball ‘swing’ in flight; a means to make life more difficult for the batsman.

And, as with many things, there are ways and means to achieve this, but I’m not sure that taking sandpaper from your pocket to illegally roughen the scuffed side of the ball is the wisest thing to do, particularly in an international match when the TV cameras cover your every move!

That sort of stupidity pales into insignificance when the umpires later ask you to turn out your pockets due to their suspicions of cheating and you pull out a hanky and lie to them, only for the TV footage of you previously stuffing sandpaper down the front of your trousers to be shown on the stadium’s big screens.

So, this is my take on the affair:

Time will show that history recalls
The discredit that surely befalls
Australian cricket
Whose search for a wicket
Made the bowler sandpaper his balls!

Postscript: The proud Welsh rugby ‘cheat’ quoted at the top of this post only qualified as Welsh through his residency status, having moved to Wales as a 25-year-old before serving the requisite three-year residency period. Where did he hail from? Er, that would be Australia. Strewth, mate!