light verse and much, much worse
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
“What?”
“Now you’ve asked me two.”
“What?”
“And now three.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about what you’re talking about, which is questions, and that’s four now.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
In this age of doublespeak, I’ve come up with alternative definitions for the following:
burger: what a tiger says when it’s cold outside
understandable: what a matador hopes to do
dresser: a personal valet’s job
earring: tinnitus
tumour: ordering another round for you and a mate
former: ordering a round of doubles for you and a mate
forests: bracelets
tracking: Usain Bolt
parking: Tiger Woods
blinking: Kanye West
bonking: Hugh Hefner
mismanagement: the yellow Tic Tac
permits: gloves for stroking your cat
whisky: very much like a whisk
fetish: not unlike a fet
sofa: up until now
mastered: everyone taking a dump at the same time
Hebrew: Jewish beer
Catholic: someone with an abnormal dependence upon cats
Muslim: what the law requires of dog owners
ornate: have you considered Nate?
window: what gamblers hope to do
papal: directions for using a slot machine
president: the resulting damage when a gift is dropped
icon: mirage
painting: what you see a doctor for in Jamaica
terrier: more like Terry than Terry
school: fine by me
Romania: the latest rowing craze
Slovak: Vak with a low IQ
Budapest: Siddhartha Gautama’s interminable chanting
miming: in reply to Which of your vases do you treasure most?
presume: before the jet engine
confound: the recapturing of an escaped convict
subdued: underwater mariner
analogue: proctologist’s casebook
duplicity: New York, New York
popsicle: father’s scythe
abundance: twerking
distant: a scorned sister of your father
tantric: skin bronzer
carnation: USA
statutory: a bust of Winston Churchill
psychopath: a trail for the insane
francophone: telecommunication handset for Spanish generals
bisect: niche cult for those who swing both ways
comradeship: the Potemkin
mango: “I believe the gentleman’s leaving”
sarcasm: existential void that existed between Nikolai II and his people
oxymoron: air-head
sensible: have Cybill go
freedom: what Lincoln did
mannequin: pathological relatives
extrovert: former trovert
anti-matter: regarding your uncle’s wife
fireplace: the boss’s office
boomerang: a Hallowe’en dessert
numismatist: the former mismatist’s replacement
hot tub: a sexy overweight person
independent: a locally crafted necklace often sold at music festivals
naughty: what your granny keeps in that flask behind the bread tin
barbecue: the nod for Ken to make his move
Constantinople: the inability to abide one particular gemstone
mystical: adult entertainer who titillates patrons with her feathered boa
collar: Mother’s Day advice
foreknowledge: golfing erudition
mariner: what expectant fathers are often informed they’ll be doing next
mercantile: have Murray finish off your bathroom
pundit: well done, you wordsmith!
buzzard: was that the intercom?
booby-trap: brassiere
mushroom: kennel for sled dogs
pantyhose: lingerie models
“Thank you for calling the Bite Me Dental Clinic. How may I help you?”
“Could I make an appointment to see a dentist tomorrow?”
“Tooth hurty?”
“Hmm… anything earlier?”
Convinced my friend was now a mime
Marcel did not deny it
More so, he has been for some time
I thought: you’ve kept that quiet!
The budding poet soon suspects
The pointlessness of: Solve for x
We sprang from a primordial soup
Of RNA and cosmic goop
We breathed through gills and swam in schools
Among the depths and rocky pools
Bedazzling, streamlined, clad in scales
Propelled by tails with fins for sails.
Until one day, so goes the lore
We cast a fishy eye to shore
And surfed the tide across the sand
To where the water meets the land.
Not ones to walk, we lacked technique
All thanks to our unique physique
But in the end we found our feet
Soon after, gills were obsolete.
Yet, Evolution is perverse
And sometimes throws it in reverse…
For, now we’ve waterparks with slides
We snorkel, sail and scuba dive
We swim with dolphins, live on boats
And teach our small fry how to float.
Tots splash in puddles with delight
While summer’s one long water fight
Still, others love the touch of rain
But when asked Why? they can’t explain.
We left a world now out of reach
The day we clambered up that beach
The price of such a compromise?
This constant need to moisturize.
Batman sports a special cowl
He fashioned from titanium
Spider-Man prefers to prowl
In something called vibranium.
Dad’s a cop whose navy blue
And shield reflect his heart
Granddad fought through World War 2
In boots that fell apart.
Wonder Woman’s golden lasso
Makes folk tell the truth
It’s the way your mother asks you
Which makes her a sleuth.
Superpowers lie within
The clothes don’t make the man
Thor just needs a rolling pin
It’s true
Just ask your gran
Is beer served at Oktoberfest
So different from all the rest?
For, I would like to know what goes in
To make dudes wear lederhosen
“It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”
A mantra of utter stupidity
For, muggy or not
Let’s agree that it’s hot
Before tackling the lacking aridity
“Have you been following events in The Ukraine?”
“John, we no longer call it that.”
“No longer call what what?”
“We no longer call it The Ukraine.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We just say Ukraine now; they’ve dropped the The,” Laverne gave me the lowdown.
“Who did?”
“The Ukrainians.”
“Don’t you mean Ukrainians?”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said The Ukrainians.”
“Oh, for God’s sake…”
“Why is it I’m only hearing about this now?”
“Try spending less time on TikTok.”
“I enjoy watching eco-tourists run for their lives.”
“Fair enough,” Laverne shrugged.
“So, when did they ditch the The?”
“I believe it was around the same time Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranded as KFC.”
“Do you think their KFCs serve Chicken Kiev?”
“We don’t say that either.”
“What? Chicken?”
“No, Kiev.”
“You’re kidding.”
“We now pronounce it Kyiv, like Steve.”
“Steve Rogers?”
“Please tell me you didn’t just say that.”
“Captain America could end this whole thing in one day.”
“Sweetie, I want you to stop talking,” Laverne took my hand. “In the past we had a habit of anglicising names which proved tricky to pronounce and no one really questioned it. Now there’s a bit of a reset happening, that’s all.”
“My stress levels go through the roof every time I have to say anemone.”
“When did you last need to say anemone?”
“Forty minutes ago.”
“I’m talking about foreign names.”
“Brunhilde.”
“Place names.”
“Melbourne.”
“More foreign than that.”
“Machu Picchu.”
“It’s Bombay becoming Mumbai and Calcutta becoming Kolkata, that sort of thing,” Laverne clarified.
“We weren’t that far off on those two,” I felt I ought to give credit where credit was due.
“My issue isn’t with the consonants so much, as the bloody diphthongs.”
“Your Vietnamese neighbours? What have they done now?”
“Stop it,” Laverne giggled. “Hey, did you know that Kanye’s changed his name as well? Apparently he now goes by Ye. My son told me.”
“I fail to see the significance.”
“Well, according to Ye himself, ye is the most common word in The Bible.”
“Blessed be the fruit.”
“Oh, there’s more… Ye then enlightened us further by explaining that ye can sometimes mean thee.”
“Which Ukrainians have dropped like a hot potato,” I reminded my friend.
“They dropped a The, not a thee.”
“Be that as it may, I think Ye will find that the most common word in The Bible is, in fact, the.”
“So we’ve circled back on ourselves,” Laverne groaned. “How do we end this?
“Here’s a crazy idea: let’s add a The.”
The End
Mr Ormsby At Large 