Ag-Ah
A burglar in Rome filled his bag
With a surfeit of silvery swag.
“All the aurum’s a bore,
But I simply adore
The argentum (in shorter form, Ag).”
Devotees of the Omnificent Periodic Table of Elements in Limerick Form might prefer to pronounce it ay gee.
Take agammaglobulinemia:
There isn’t a malady dreamier.
One’s blood is without
Antibodies, no doubt,
But it beats getting bloody leukemia.
Old age is no safeguard from folly,
So grandads should never be “jolly”.
Too often, the rule
Is you’ll look like a fool,
And your grandkids will say, “Off his trolley!”
Thanks to PGS for the inspiration. (I don’t actually mind overly jolly grandfathers myself, but at 13 might have thought differently. Kids today, I don’t know...)
In an age-ago age, a girl, Flo,
Met a prince: he would kiss her, but no!
Florence fled from the scene.
’Twould forevermore mean
We’d hear songs of his loss... man, they blow.
♪ Sing of age-ago ages of ages ago,
When princes sincerely wooed angels like Flo:
This miss saw no bliss in his kiss, and although
His low wage was outrageous, wed a page boy, oho! ♪
An age-dated product—this means
That the item’s been stamped by machines
(Or by hand) with a date
After which it ain’t great.
(“Use by 2008”—Grandma’s beans.)
The kids of 2023 say “twenty-oh-eight” for 2008, Grandma.
Archaeologist Indy explains,
“When it comes to age-dating remains,
Scientific techniques
Can take too many weeks;
I prefer working quickly on trains.”
“While the Nazis are hot in pursuit
And our carriage is veering off-route,
I can firmly conclude
That the object I’ve viewed
Is an item of biblical loot.”
“What’s my method for dating old bones
That were used to construct ancient thrones?
Well, I blow off the dust:
If they crumble, they must
Be antique—or my name isn’t Jones.”
Age dating, the process of determining the age of geological deposits or archaeological remains, is a bit more involved than the methods Indiana Jones used to age-date arks, grails, dials and crystal skulls.
May-December romance is explored
In the comedy Harold and Maude:
Though their age gap is vast
(Sixty years!), they at last
Fall in love—not at all untoward.
Hal Ashby’s classic 1971 movie showed the blossoming relationship between the depressed 19-year-old Harold and the carefree 79-year-old Maude; actors Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon were 23 and 75 respectively during filming, so their real age gap was only 52 years.
At the box office, Oscar, to prove he
Was old enough, shouted out, “Groovy!
I’m hip, baby! Cool!”
“Bruv, just go back to school.
The age limit’s twelve for this movie.”
Agene once whitened our flour,
But we use less and less by the hour,
’Cos this chemical stuff
Is just not up to snuff
Now that genes are the germ of our power.
When she learned he had crossed a clear line—
Former East German agent, the swine!—
Ilse cancelled their tryst.
Yet she couldn’t resist
That unspeakable ex-Stasi, nein.
All the protests proclaimed it a crime
To employ Agent Orange—big time.
But we know that’s absurd:
We had Kissinger’s word!
(Bet he never employed it in rhyme.)
You reckon it aggravates? Wait—
What you mean there is “irritate”, mate.
Pay heed, girls and boys:
“Irritation” annoys,
While to “aggravate” worsens that state.
Skinks are found the world over, I think,
But back home, this particular skink
Is endemic: he’s agile,
And his tail’s pretty fragile—
When grabbed, it comes off, which would stink.
Agile cool-skinks, or Tasmanian tree skinks, are endemic to Australia’s island state, and found in a wide variety of habitats. There are seventeen skink species in Tasmania, several of which are endemic. Most are small lizards which can shed (and regrow) their long tails to escape predators, though there are exceptions.
Young Agnes, a martyr and saint,
Thought marriage had too great a taint,
And on heavenly urgin’
Remained as a virgin:
Your patron, if bonking you ain’t.
Agnes, killed in 4th century Rome at age 12, is the patron saint of virgins.
A Christian says, “Go, Jesus, go!”
While an atheist argues, “God, no.”
But rather less caustic
Is someone agnostic,
Who just says, “Oh, I wouldn’t know.”
If you’re after a rodent of beauty,
The best you can get’s an agouti.
It’s an awfully big
Kinda faux guinea pig,
And my goodness, Miss Piggy’s a cutie.
Astronauts, please all take note:
The things into space that you tote,
Which stay safe and sound
Way down here on the ground,
In agravic environments, float.
“How’d it go with that bird you met?” “Mate,
She was agro because I was late.”
“Really mad?” “Wouldn’t mind,
Except once I got blind,
She pissed off.” “Jeez, it was a blind date.”
Like to watch some mad cows do some harm?
Or a cockerel that fights like a charm?
For a full-on domestic,
This tourism’s best—
They’re an agro lot, down on the farm.
For the best in agrotourism, try a British farm, where a domestic (disturbance) always involves a bit of aggro.
“Now I don’t want you fretting, Mama,
But I heard Father crashed our new car.
No, no, no, no, he’s fine!
He just drank too much wine.”
She replied, with such Englishness, “Ah.”
“Aha!” you exclaim in surprise
When you cannot quite credit your eyes.
It’s what you might say
At some curious display,
Or upon being told something wise.
If someone insists categorical
That Hitler consulted an oracle
Who said he’d get stronger
Invading Wodonga,
I tell ’em that sounds ahistorical.
So the story is, Oliver Twist
Was ahungered, and couldn’t subsist;
And was heard to implore,
“Oh please, sir, some more.”
In seventeen words, that’s the gist.