One type of Ogee is a cutout shape involving both convex and concave curvature. The ogee arches sketched above have apical points.
Gingerbreading is use of a motif for trim to enhance windows or ledges. Some older architecture in downtown Phoenix features gingerbreading.
“Ogee Whiz” is pun-translatable into “Oh, Gee Whiz.” That’s a Bad Pun, but a worse one would be if I tagged a snowblank with the contents of my bladder with the monogram “OG.” It would not stand for “Original Gangsta” nor “Old Guy” but would be simply OG, and since it would be made from urine, colloquially known as Whiz, it would be OG Whiz.
On Everything Road someone stuck a giant spoon in me
I was, honestly, bestirred
Extracting the spoon, I gripped it, weaponized it, stirred things up
Waving the spoon through the body of an approaching prostitute, I gave her the face and demeanor of Meryl Streep
She thanked me and said she always wanted to be a Streepwalker
And at the intersection of Everything and Trapezoid Circle
The light turned purple and the pedestrian sign said both DONT WALK and RUN!!
And the cars hopped on their tires instead of rolling
And I hopped too when I tried to walk and was able to bound over the cars like I was jumping over pieces in checkers
People pointed at me and laughed and I looked down and found that I was dressed as a carhop
The light turned mauve and the cars turned to cages with odd creatures inside wearing buttons saying I AM A ZOID
And I thought, Well, that is one way to trap a Zoid
But then all the cages disappeared
And in the middle of the intersection was a gigantic piece of lemon meringue pie
And it looked gloriously delicious and I still wielded my giant spoon
So with one last mega-hop I bounded right into its fluffy center
But as the spoon touched the meringue the harangued meringue changed in color from snow-white to slurpee blue
And the pale-yellow filling turned to hooker’s green
I licked the pie-clumped spoon edge and it still tasted like pie
But something in either the danged meringue or the unwilling filling transformed me into an enormous bullfrog
Still wearing a carhop’s uniform
Except with a cowboy hat with tassels
And the magic spoon disappeared
And I thought, What could be worse??
Then found out I couldn’t hop anymore
So I bullfrog-trudged down Everything Road in my carhop uniform with the long tassels hitting me annoyingly in the face with every trudge and weird-colored giant pie residue all over me
And tried to hop again and couldn’t
And shrugged as best a bullfrog could and said croakingly Well,
brad pitt, andre the giant, walter cronkite,/walter brennan, walter matthau, walter mondale,/gomez addams and cousin itt,/and famed nasa mathematician katherine johnson/all awaken in an enormous chamber.
“a new war is being waged,” says the voice of hal 9000. “a reality war.
“you have been gathered, the living, dead, and fictional,/to keep your reality from being erased.
“your enemy is a phalanx of four hundred zombies./in an hour you will be moved to a battlefield designated the plain of maguffin.
“it is there that you will engage in single combat with the zombies./battle will continue until all of one side or the other/is wiped out.
“the zombies have one weakness./contact with hair or fur or feathers/over at least a third of a zombie’s flesh/causes that zombie to be vaporized/into pure oxygen./but that is their only weakness./they cannot be burned, nor shot, nor blunt-force-traumatized.
“your ideal foot soldier, therefore, is cousin itt./but one of itt is not nearly enough,/and as of now/you don’t have any.”
with those last words cousin itt disappeared.
hal continued, “there is a way to get an army of itts/sufficient to defeat the enemy./you must find a slight variant/of one of the passages in the king james new testament/and with your present personnel/take a simple action that will generate such an army.
“you have fifty-six minutes. good luck.”
brad and all four walters and gomez and andre looked at each other, stunned. but katherine johnson’s brow was furrowed. she was calculating and collating furiously.
suddenly her brow unknit and she smiled.
“Messieurs Brennan, Mondale, Cronkite and Matthau, please gather together.” Startled, they did so.
“mr. andre the giant, please gently pick up mr. brad pitt.” and instantly pitt was in the giant’s arms, dwarfed by andre’s bulk.
“gently as you can, sir, throw mr. pitt at messieurs matthau and cronkite and brennan and mondale. gentlemen, don’t try to catch him, but do try to ease his landing.”
andre tossed pitt at the four, and they managed to break pitt’s fall without injury to any.
gomez suddenly grinned, his pop-eyes gleaming. his zany fictional brain had deduced what would happen.
suddenly the chamber, huge as it was, was crammed with cousin itts.
“what just happened?!” walter cronkite asked katherine johnson.
“mr. cronkite, possibly the worst pun of all time just happened.
“‘cast your brad upon the walters, and itt shall be returned a thousandfold.'”
yesterday my right hand was whittled in two places
i can feel the sutures tug when i overflex/and every several minutes the constant dull ache gets a brief sharp stab of emphasis
but ibuprofen and the weensiest splash of canadian whisky have been effective pain management
and i welcome the sensation as evidence of healing
on the left wrist until early this morning/ were the enhancements of FALL RISK warning tape/and Adhesive Bandage Sensitivity medical advisory/to go with my visit ID of name°date of birth°date of service°visit code
so the left wrist is a drastically reductive synopsis of my current identity and peculiarities
while the right hand is a reconstruction zone
i am a fall risk in winter springing back from infirmity
and just this instant summer you are perhaps wondering what the lame puns are doing in an otherwise serious poem
there are two answers
one is that the tendency–nay, the URGENCY–of making puns is hardwired into my DNA
and the other reason is that i tasted the first draft of the poem and found it bland
This is an utterly delightful young woman who was born Brittany but has chosen to be Bee. She is a staff member at PIP Coffee & Clay, where I do pottery-making frequently.
True to her name, Bee is always busy, at the pug mill or in the kiln room, helping potters and keeping things flowing. Her philosophy of life is “Relax and be kind.” She would have fit right in at Woodstock, though it occurred long before she was born.
But what truly endears me to Bee is that she proudly displays a visual pun in the form of tattoos just above her knees. And the Bee’s Knees is such an apt description of this delightful lady. Long may she buzz!
Friends, I had another Bad Pun Brain Teaser contest on Facebook.. I will not reveal the answer here, but it is on my Facebook timeline. What I will do is pose the question and then reveal the prize I’ve made for the winner.
Ed was on a special blind date, with special instructions. He had a young, talking rubber tree in a pot that was easy to carry. As he walked toward his Blind Date rendezvous the tree kept saying to passers-by “Nice hat, Sweetheart” or “Have a wonderful day in that great-looking suit, fella” or “Heaven just called. They want you back, Angel.”
Ed’s date was easy to spot. She was at a table at the Alfresco Bistro and the lovely bonsai she had brought had just told the server, “You look dapper indeed, Sir.”
“Marcia?”
The young lady stood and said, “Hello, Edward. Very nice to meet you.” She gestured to the tree. “This is for you.”
Her bonsai said, “Yippee! I know I’m going to like you, Ed. And you can call ME Ed if you want. Two Eds are better than one!”
Ed smiled and said, “Thanks, Other Ed, I will.” He then placed the rubber tree next to Marcia’s chair. “I hope you like him, Marcia.”
In a smooth, Morgan-Freeman-reassuring voice the rubber tree said, “I can tell we’ll get along famously, my dear Marcia.” And Marcia smiled.
Friends, this scene may seem bizarre, but with the help of a Bad Pun it becomes something that happens all the time on blind dates. What were Ed and Marcia doing?
First correct answer will get an original drawing of the blind date scene, including the talking plants.
Congrats again to Scott, and here’s a heads-up, Friends: I intend before the end of the month to conduct a Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest on this blog! 🙂
In Facebook is a poetry group called Poets All Call. My friend Joe posts a weekly challenge for the group. This weekend, he said he was out of ideas and invited us to write about the weather. I responded with “weather tizz no blur,” posted the poem on the group’s page, and then decided to add it to this blog, with notes following.
weather tizz no blur
wither on the vine we do
whithersoever we travel
why the whereas makes it so
waysayers try to unravel
we the thereuponned may ponder
wangle and wheedle and wage
when the river becomes absconder
wuthering highs disengage
but soft
are sheets
and sunshine’s welcomer
zenith and trough notwithstanding
when there’s cessation of storms
we shed sloth
seeking
an
outcome
outlanding.
*****
The title riffs on the “whether ’tis nobler…” phrase in Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet soliloquy. Hamlet is wondering whether or not he should fight against all his problems, or pack it in and end his life. I do have a penchant for punning–so did Shakespeare–but this pun served the additional purpose of relating Whether with Weather. Weather drives our Whethers. If it’s cold and rainy, we act differently than if it is warm and sunny. “weather tizz no blur” is a focused (no blur) look at the bottom vagaries (tizz as in Tizzy) of weather, both externally with atmospherics and internally with mood and decision.
I wanted to make the poem analogous to weather, so I made the first stanza a bit like a steady rain, with the starting sounds of each line bearing a similarity that toward the end of the stanza breaks up a bit. The challenge became the buildup of a meaningful passage, and my intuition led me to some legalese, what with “whithersoever” and “whereas” and “thereupon,” language found in contracts and proclamations, serving the dual purpose of being as droning as steady rain, and enabling specificity.
The second stanza differs from the first in the way that good weather follows bad, and the analogy disappears and becomes content, reviewing what we do when weather clears.
Friends, I hope your own inside-weather is pleasant and gently energetic, right as rain. 🙂
Mr. Herman Melville and I, it would seem, are brothers from other mothers.
In his highly-acclaimed novel Moby Dick, or The White Whale he unleashes one of the worst puns in human history, calling a cow whose two front hooves are stepping on discarded fish ‘slip-shod.’
Melville might claim that the opunions of Ishmael are not necessarily his own–but I know a Pun-Brother when I read one. 🙂
One with Clay, Image and Text 