Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  Wordplay    An Elementary Major General
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
An Elementary Major General Login/Join
 
Member
posted
An enjoyable adaptation of a song many of us already know
can be found at
http://www.quigmans.com/elements.swf

("worth the bandwidth," says my hypercritical son)
 
Posts: 6267 | Location: Worcester, MA, USReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
Ah, the always enjoyable Tom Lehrer! One of my chemistry teachers tried to get us to learn this when we were at school. I already knew it, since my father is a fan, but the idea went down like a lead balloon with the rest of the 14 year old girls in the class...

Ros
 
Posts: 185 | Location: London, UKReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
...was a Tom Lehrer revival that toured fifteen or twenty years ago. I took my wife and kids to see it in Boston, and we got there early enough to meet some of the cast. Same son-with-the-very-high-standards mentioned above, then twelve or so, floored the players by reeling off the first verse a capella when challenged...it's a family tradition at my end too! :-)

What's frightening about the Tom Lehrer songs is how many of them are still painfully appropriate today, nearly fifty years later.
 
Posts: 6267 | Location: Worcester, MA, USReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
Oh, haberdasher, that was wonderful! I chuckled at his rhyming of "Harvard" and "discovered", thinking of the "tsk tsk's" from CJ! Wink
 
Posts: 24735 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of C J Strolin
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Kalleh:
I chuckled at his rhyming of "Harvard" and "discovered", thinking of the "tsk tsk's" from CJ! Wink

None are forthcoming.

Stretching a rhyme for the purpose of humor is not only permissible in my book but highly desirable, especially when done with the panache (that's "puh-NASH," not "PAN-ake") that Tom Lehrer exhibited.

Besides Lehrer, there was also, of course, Ogden Nash, another personal hero of mine, and if there are others equally capable of twisting the sound of the language like a clown creating a balloon animal, they've yet to be "discarvard." By me, anyway.
 
Posts: 1517 | Location: Illinois, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
It's probably repeating a dead horse, but isn't there a word for breaking words in unexpected places and using their middle syllables at the end of a line to make a rhyme (as Ogden Nash did so often and so beautifully) ?

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Wed May 28th, 2003 at 19:21.]
 
Posts: 6267 | Location: Worcester, MA, USReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of shufitz
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by haberdasher:
... isn't there a word for breaking words in unexpected places and using their middle syllables at the end of a line to make a rhyme ...?
Yes.
(Oh! You also want to know what it is? I can't recall. Confused)
 
Posts: 2666 | Location: Chicago, IL USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of C J Strolin
posted Hide Post
I nominate "ogdennashination" as in:

Among all leaders, the person who
Bush wants dead is Saddam Hu-
Sein.
Though our policy is dumb,
We are told we shouldn't com-
Plain.

To the inspectors we instruct:
"Find those weapons of mass destruc-
Tion.
Don't say they're not there or we
Will be sunk 'fore we are be-
Gun."


Hot damn! I may have just invented a new poem structure!
 
Posts: 1517 | Location: Illinois, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
quote:
Hot damn! I may have just invented a new poem structure!
Oh, Dear Lord! There is no stopping him now! Razz Eek Roll Eyes Big Grin
 
Posts: 1412 | Location: Buffalo, NY, United StatesReply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 

Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  Wordplay    An Elementary Major General

Copyright © 2002-12