Yanky Doodle

My Breakfast is Splattered On My Tie

A Poem by M.W. Thomas

My breakfast is splattered on my tie,

My unwashed driveway smears my shoe.

I’m afraid I’ll miss the train again,

How fast my woes accrue!

There’s pebbles in my sock again,

There’s pollen in my hair;

Why is my office door ajar?

Who’s sitting in my chair?

“Your old computer does not comply

“With the ISP of the CIO.

“It must be brought IAW

“The IA E-I-E-I-O.”

I put his words in a bowl of broth

And microwaved on high;

Now my lunch is on my shirt

And I’ll have no other ‘till July.

My zipper’s stuck, my Hanes show through;

My boss just read my blog.

The questions lurk unanswered yet,

Like pirates hiding in the fog.

At Days’ End I’m well-adorned

With food, debris, and scorn;

But of this tritely true affair

A New Day shall be born.

My breakfast is splattered on my tie.

At least I made my train.

But I should have checked my calendar:

I was supposed to be on a plane!

Yanky Doodle

The Truth Is a Tortoise, The Lie Is a Hare

This weekend, Congress missed another deadline to pass a budget resolution. That is good thing we are told. Budgets are bad.

In a race between the Lie and the Truth, the Lie always gets a big head start. At the starting line, before the pistol was even fired, the Truth was never in question to begin with. For example, it seemed like it was only yesterday when it was a given that, as a democracy, it was if not a necessity, at least desirable, to govern ourselves. Then the Red, White, and Whiter People, who are self-described as far more patriotic and knowledgeable about our founding principles than us normal people, stood up and said, with the aid of a big “micro” phone, “No we don’t! Whatever made you think such nonsense?” 

The Lie is the Hare in the race. The Hare bragged how much faster he could shut the Gubberment down than us Tortoises could ever catch up to. “We have plenty of time to beat those Tortoise citizens,” he said as he sat down to take a crap on federal workers (and the suppliers and vendors, the restaurant owners that make their lunch, the transit workers that get them back and forth to work, the landlords that collect their rent money on their homes and apartments, the insurance companies that collect their premiums, ad nauseum.) You see, you don’t have to know how the economy works to know better than everyone else who does. You just have to be faster than the Tortoise Truth.

Now, with the Tortoise far behind, the Hare still had plenty of time to lie down and insult some Park Rangers, preferably black and, therefore, presumably lazy ones. Hares are story tellers and lies go together, like chapters in the White Nationalist’s book. And what’s with Black people saying the Confederate Flag symbolizes slavery and a racist past?  The meaning of the Confederate Flag is for White People to say!  So sit down and shut up mind your place Black folks.  If you don’t get it, that just proves that African Americans are the real racists here.

The Gubberment Tortoise plodded on, however slowly, what with the furloughs and all.  The Hare had a tea party, and then took a nap.

He had the sweetest, but perhaps most non sequitur, dream about Green Eggs and Ham.

The afternoon came, and the Hare woke up to a sun low in the west. “Well, better get on with it!” he said. He dashed to the finish line, where he was met by the Tortoise and the Bankers, who were patiently waiting his arrival.

“I am afraid we’re going to have to downgrade your credit,” said the bankers.  “It looks like you can’t meet your obligations.”

The Hare met his friends afterward at the Bunny Club. “What’s wrong with these people?” he cried in his drink. “Why does the whole world read the wrong economists, except us?”

Yanky Doodle

Parts of Speech in Five Minutes!

You are free at last of those nasty grammarians. Adverbs, prepositional phrases, dangling participles, ye are cast aside!  I have for you a very simple introduction to English grammar that is all you will ever need.  You can master it five minutes.  Okay, six minutes, because there is one complication that was specifically introduced by medieval logicians to complicate our lives for all eternity.  That thorn in the side is the conjunctive 'and' together with the exclusive or inclusive 'or'.  Unfortunately, the 'or' is usually enunciated without specification as to whether it is inclusive, or, in the case of bad spellers, or bad spell checkers, if it is meant to row your boat.  And 'nor'?  I won't even go there.  Here is the only grammar lesson you will ever need.

The Parts of Speech:

Verbs:  words that make things go

            Example:  Get thee hence, Satan.

Nouns:  words that make things stay

            Example:  There is a house in New Orleans.

Pronouns:  Anonymous nouns

            Example:  We shall overcome.

Adverbs:  words that make verbs go faster

            Example:  Swim speedily across the creek before the alligators eat you!

Adjectives: words that make nouns more colorful

            Example:  Bang, Bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer came down upon his head!

Articles:  superfluous words that start sentences or separate verbs from adjectives or nouns

            Example:  If music be the food of life, play on.

Conjunctions:  words that tell you whether you must consider both, one or the other exclusively, or simply either one.  The most dangerous words in any language.

            Example:  If an object is observed to move, and it is determined that it shall or shall not move; then if it shall move, let it be; or if it shall not move, applieth thou horse glue; or if an object is observed not to move, and it is determined that it shall or shall not move, then if it shall move, applieth thou whale blubber; or if it shall not move, smite it thou with a wooden mallet.

Prepositions:  words that get you from here to there

            Example:  Bang, Bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer came down upon his head!

Interjection:  words that cover all things WTF

            Example:  WTF?!

Yanky Doodle

MIO Exclusive: Trump Says Reporter Could Have Been Wearing Suicide Tampon Bomb

My reporter on the ground in Wisconsin this week barely escaped bruises herself this week, brushing less than criminally past a Trump supporter with a pitch fork and a torch while the theme song from Peter and the Wolf blared from the loud speakers. She heard The Donald declaring OJ guilty as hell from the podium, and calling for death by beheading.

Trump also addressed the misdemeanor charges filed against his Campaign Manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with battery against an ostensibly friendly Breitbart reporter.  "Corey, who is a GREAT GUY, was just protecting me," said Trump. "Who knows, she might have been wearing a suicide tampon bomb."

Unfortunately, my reporter didn't follow-up because she was distracted by the smell of free popcorn. However, before making her way over to the Circus Tent to stuff her face, she noted one last thing on her napkin: the Obama entourage had allegedly contracted a case of green diarrhea on their visit to Cuba. That's what the Castros have to offer, Trump said, is communism and green diarrhea. We're going to make America great again, declared The Donald, and that means brown diarrhea.