(The Ballad of Quoth was originally an mid 90s OTW creation and was tweaked in 2000 as part of a campaign to get Mark Forsythe to name the Mascot for the CBC Radio I Almanac Show. Mark wanted to name the bird "edgar". Sheesh. Quoth's character was developed on Wondernet's Off the Wall conference area after Marta mentioned that if she had a raven she would name it Quoth)
Well, his beak is kind of seedy
and his feathers somewhat reedy
He's an altogether needy looking case
Quoth just waits until its dark
Then he mopes around the park
He's a bird who used to get into your face
Well, poor Quoth has long been Ruthless
(though we wish his Ruth all... success)
Since she flew the coop without a backward glance.
No one told me 'bout the chicken
(That he was Ruth's new pick), and
I expect our Quoth won't get a second chance..(at least with
Ruth)
He's a spunky kind of Raven
looking for a welcome haven
where he won't pine for Ruth and waste away
Almanac would be so awesome
He's experienced, bright and then some.
His mug on your mug, that would really make his day
His tale has been a sad lark
But you could make it glad, Mark
If you give this bird the chance to strut his wares
To be Almanac's proud mascot
Symbol of what's hot and what's not
On BC's best noontime news show on the airs
(Quoth got the Job and my ink drawing of him is to appear in the BC Almanac Book, due out late 2000)
and for no particular reason - sing to the tune of Good King Wensceslas
He started with the dried fruit mix
Back behind the mustard.
Soon he moved to cereal,
Then to packaged custard
Soon the shelves were looking bare
The Queen came in and blustered:
"Get to work you lazy bum,
Your crown is getting ru-uh-stered" * (*poetic liscence No. 34-a275)
The Prince did not respond that well
To his mother's shouting
Instead he headed right back in
To the Pantry pouting:
"I'm a Prince for Goodness Sake,
My larder is worth touting!"
He ate some of the liverwurst
And used the rest for grou-out-ing
Crackers spread with pickled mints
and Jalapeno jelly
Apples, peaches, pears and plums
and Stilton cheese all smelly.
The prince thought briefly of his mom
Then said: "oh, what the hell." He
scarfed some escargot from tins,
and olives from the de-eh-li.
I'm not sure there is any way to explain this. It was quite typical of the madness in OTW
somebody wrote:Didn't Simon and Garfunkle do a song "50 Ways to Love Your Liver" or something like that?
Just slip out the back, Jack,
Make a new plan Stan,
No need to be coy, Royy
just listen to me.
Ooo hop on the bus ,Gus,
No need to discuss much,
Just drop off the key, Lee
and get yourself free. . .
She said it's really not my habit to intrude,
further more I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued,
but I repeat myself, at the risk of being crude
there must be fifty ways to leave your lover. . .
From the inhead collection of Marta McIntosh.
----------------------------
Doesn't it go:
Just grab a nice snack,Jack,
Try your new pan Stan,
No need to use soy, Roy
just munch up with me.
Just butter the bread, Fred
You too can be well fed
Just slice up the Spam, Sam
Cause lunch here IS free. . .
She said it's really not my habit to eat fries,
further more I hope my ketsup won't be squirted in your eyes
but I must insist the onions be a bit more carmelized
there must be fifty ways to love your liver. . .
-from the (scrambled, fried or poached - pick one) brain of Sandy Keane
------------------------------------------------
Just put out your back, Jack,
Heat up that fryin' pan, Stan,
Don't look for the soy, Roy,
I'm fixin' to eat!
Don't make such a fuss, Gus,
No need for the disgust,
Just cook it for me, Lee
and make some gravy.
He said it's really not my habit to protrude,
further more I hope my meal won't be lost or misconstrued,
but I repeat myself, at the risk of being rude, crude, lewd and stewed,
there must be fifty ways to love your liver.
-- from the out-of-his-head collection of Paul Ohannesian.
----------------------------------------------------------
She said "It grieves me so
to see you in such pain
I wish there was something I could do
to make you fry again."
And then she pushed me,
and I realized she probably was right
There must be fifty ways to fry with your liver.
-Marta MacIntosh
-----------------------
He said, "It sieves me, so
to see you in such pun,
I wash the certain something icon dew
to make you try again.
And then he pushed meat,
and I reified he probably was fried:
There MUST BE swifty sways to dye your gibber.
(WHO WROTE THIS VERSE??????????!!!!!!!!!)
------------------
I said "your seive is holy now,
your pun-ishment is cruel
And I don't want to try again today
(it feels too much like school)
And furthermore gibber's shivered
And where's Quoth, the little fool,
There' might' 50 ways to tie a shoelace
(If Quoth were here he would know)
Sandy Keane
A thought from "ToastyBob" today on OneNet gave me pause.
The subject was the silence of the poets, re: fromage.
A finer muse I've never had, the reason is because
My life just ain't worth living without cheese.
A creamy, runny Camembert, its lovely cousin, Brie
Can send one into ecstacy if served with wine or tea.
A Stilton at the Hilton or a Gouda by the sea
My life just ain't worth living without cheese.
Oh, the Cheese, bring on the cheese!
Be it stinky old Limbourger or Gruyere or Cheddar, please!
Put some Danbo on your tongue, or Bocconcini still quite young,
Or taste the Gorgonzola right down to your knees.
There are those who would forsake fromage - no dairy will they touch
I'm sorry, but the substitutes stretch tastebuds far too much
You can keep your Tofurella! Stash it underneath the hutch.
My life just ain't worth living without cheese.
"Put some bean curd on your pizza" is the next thing that we'll hear
I can't get into soy fondue, fake cheese just makes me sneer
Just give me some fresh Chevre, a baguette, a glass of beer!
My life just ain't worth living without cheese.
Be it Chesire, Swiss, Romano, Colby, Samso, or Port Wine (Salut!)
Ementhal and Parmesan, Chabichou are sublime.
A feta might taste betta with Retsina over time,
My life just ain't worth living without cheese.
Oh, the Cheese, bring on the cheese!
Be it stinky old Limbourger or Gruyere or Cheddar, please!
Put some Danbo on your tongue, or Bocconcini still quite young,
Or taste the Gorgonzola right down to your knees.
to which Bob replied: "I Stand corrected. But they have been remarkably slient on the subject of hallucenogenic mosue feet and little people bearing weedwhackers. If any of you guys send me poems about those, I'm going to have to become a monk"
To which Sandy replied: "Prepare to get thee to a monkery".
(Mosue: a mutant mouse. Origin of mutation attributed to sloppy keyboarding often (but not always) associated with doinky notebook computer keyboards)
The Toast was roasted re the cheese but could not let it go
Of mosue feet he tells us know the poets are to know
Take pen in hand to mosue feet immortalize for all
Hallucinogenic mosue feet?? Sure, Toast, I'll heed the call.
We can't forget the little guys, short people, not too tall
Who arm themselves with weedwhackers (they buy them at the mall)
Presumably, they whack the weeds the mosues to flush out
And chase them into mosue traps and rattle them about
They feed them cheese from other poems (we now know that they're numerous)
This makes them sweat into their socks. The whackers find this humorous
The little folk then suck the socks, their juices to extract
This causes them strange visions, often lacking taste or tact.
This story now is ended. Time to quit. "It's done!" she muttered
Let's face it, Bob, old trout, my friend, the Toast has just been buttered :-)
ToastyBob was never heard from again. Moral: be careful what you ask for. -S
Schrödinger's Cat
by Cecil Adams
Schrödinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!
Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!
(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verse
Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)
Win saw that the theory that Newton'd invented
By Einstein's discov'ries had been badly dented.
What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don't panic,
No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.
Consider electrons. Now these teeny articles
Are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.
If that's not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
No sweat, though - my theory permits us to judge
Where some of 'em is and the rest of 'em was."
Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck
The comforting linkage of cause and effect.
E'en Einstein had doubts, and so Schrödinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at --
Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,
A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes
(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em,
One vial Prussic acid, one decaying ottom
Or atom -- whatever -- but when it emits,
A trigger device blasts the vial into bits
Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime
Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.
The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. Is
Our pussy still purring -- or pushing up daisies?
Now you'd say the cat either lives or it don't
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer 'Tough shit.
We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho':
There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons -- you'll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed --
Which ruins your test. But if there's no testing
To see if a particle's moving or resting
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability -- certainty never.'
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
'Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.
Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,
'We've just flipped a coin and we've learned he's a corpse.'"
So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, "You're nuts.
God doesn't play dice with the universe, putz.
I'll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried --
In vain -- until fin'ly he more or less died.
Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends,
Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.
Though he doubted my theory, I'll say of this saint:
Ten-to-one he's in heaven -- but five bucks says he ain't."
- Cecil Adams
But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on its feet? Or will the butter splat on the ground?
Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduct the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash its furry back. If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.
That's right, you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.
Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several hundred tabbies.
The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of red-hot starship and pissed off aliens crash on top of them.
And now a few words on solving the problem of creating a ship using the aforementioned anti-gravity device.
One could power a ship by means of cats held in suspended animation (say, about -190 degrees Celsius) with buttered bread strapped to their backs, thus avoiding the possibility of collisions due to tempermental felines. More importantly, how do you steer, once the cats are all held in stasis? I offer a modest proposal:
We all know that wearing a white shirt at an Italian restaurant is a guaranteed way to take a trip to the laudromat. Plaster the outside of your ship with white shirts. Place four nozzles symmetrically around the ship, which is, of course, saucer shaped. Fire tomato sauce out in proportion to the directions you want to go. The ship, drawn by the shirts, will automatically follow the sauce. If you use t-shirts, you won't go as fast as you would by using, say, expensive dress shirts. This does not work as well in deep gravity wells, since the tomato sauce (now falling down a black hole, perhaps) will drag the ship with it, despite the counter force of the anti-gravity cat/butter machine. Your only hope at that point is to jettison enormous quantities of Tide. This will create the well-known Gravitational Tidal Force.
Andrea Obana - obana@csd.sgi.com