Aw-Az
Dick Whittington said to his cat,
“We’ll make ourselves absent, puss. That
Will involve us both walking
To London: I’m talking
Of heading awayward. Let’s scat.”
“What, they all mock your accent?” I ask,
As a lowlander takes me to task
For downplaying his woes.
“Och aye, awbody. S’pose
It’s a form o removin’ their mask.”
Folks in Charleston love Awendaw: it’s
Made of cornmeal, eggs, milk, cream, and grits.
It’s a spoonable bread
(Made of corn, like I said),
So a mystery to Aussies and Brits.
...like me. I’ve never eaten it, but it sounds tasty, so I might try to make some, if I can find somewhere to buy grits and American cornmeal (both made from what the British call maize, so kind of like coarse and fine versions of polenta). In South Carolina, spoonbread is named after the town of Awendaw, usually stressed on the first syllable.
Dude! You should do it! You should!
It’s amazingly, awesomely good!
First you jump from the plane,
Then the rush melts your brain!
I would do it myself, if I could.
But I’ve got this back problem, see...
The wonders I find the most striking—
Which awe-strike me—tend to be Viking.
A well-preserved longship?
A cannot-go-wrong ship,
With awe-striking oars to my liking.
Eating jelly, I find that the job’ll
Be difficult when it’s a-wobble.
It shakes on a plate
Side-to-side, which ain’t great,
As it makes it much harder to gobble.
North Americans know this wobbling substance as Jell-O, after the brand name.
Ol’ Grandpa avoided much strife
By steering folks’ praise to his wife,
Disavowing all credit,
With a smile as he said it,
Aw-shucksing his way through his life.
The butchery staff wouldn’t stop
Cutting work, ’cos of beefs with the shop.
They were way too relaxed—
’Til their jobs were all axed.
Now they’re gutted it got ’em the chop.
When Grandpa dispatched Uncle Max
With an axe in exactly six whacks,
He became an axe murderer.
Keep Mum from the word, or ’er
Heart will give out from such facts.
If someone’s exceedingly driven,
This is axiomatically given:
He should certainly stop,
Else the curtain may drop.
What’s the point, if a life’s not worth livin’?
The aye-aye likes night—he’s a ghost
Who retires by dawn, at the most.
He sticks his long finger
Where most wouldn’t linger—
To winkle out grubs for his toast.
A nocturnal lemur from Madagascar with a long, bony middle finger.
This lemur’s a weird looking guy:
Rat-like teeth, bat-like ears, and—oh, my—
A finger so long
That it seems almost wrong.
And as for his gaze... aye-aye eye!
Ayers Rock rises into the blue
From the heart of the Outback, and through
Early evening and morning,
The colours adorning
It captivate: that’s Uluru.
We’re the Blues Brothers. [Viewers applaud.]
I’m Elwood, he’s Jake. There’s the squad!
They’re not gonna catch us;
No driver can match us,
’Cause we’re on a mission from God.
Dan Aykroyd is probably best-known for this role, created with John Belushi for Saturday Night Live, which led to the renowned 1980 movie.
Azazel was evil, my child!
This demon lived out in the wild:
The Hebrews would send
Him a scapegoat, and blend
Of scapecheeses, both Tasty and Mild.
Okay, maybe not the goat’s cheese, but in the Middle East they use it everywhere. The original scapegoats were actual goats sent out into the wilderness on the Jewish Day of Atonement as the symbolic bearers of sins.
If an Aztec should suddenly feel
Like popping downtown for a meal
Of tamales and maize,
Why, the trip could take days—
Aztechnology bypassed the wheel.
The Aztecs knew about the wheel, but used it only in toys, not vehicles—which makes the Pontiac Aztec SUV doubly ironic.