Rhubarb

RHUBARB, n.  Vegetable essence of stomach ache.

2008 Update:  A vegetable stewed by the simple with strawberries and embittered with its own virtue.  Legend holds that the rhubarb grows wherever the pious are elected and achieve high office.

Wellness

With troubles in mind

And aching intestine,

And fear of the kind

Of friend worry lets in,

Saint Maggie McLoud

Took up holy vocation

And, pious and proud,

Gained fame in her location,

For curing some woes

With her hands' gentle touch

And sticking her nose

Into other troubles too much.

So before seeking solace

From fear and disease

Ask yourself, and be honest,

Is it not simpler to sneeze?

HEALER, n.  An infectious affliction not easily passed.

Ranch

RANCH, n. An undressed farm.

2008 Update:  A business dependent on access to federal land and local tax protest.  A bullish long-term investment in the private property of martyrdom.

Rash

RASH, adj. Insensible to the value of our advice.

"Now lay your bet with mine, nor let
These gamblers take your cash."
"Nay, this child makes no bet." "Great snakes!
How can you be so rash?"
—Bootle P. Gish

2008 Update: Sensible to wind and wave, to the exclusion of boulder and battleship.

In the the days of my prime,
Rash, I did wander
With no care for safety or future.
After living some time
I now thoughtfully ponder
The lessons sewn into each suture.

-Manuel Bréch

Shahrazade's Wedding, Part XV

"The Beowulf of Wedding Planning" -Actonbell

To listen, tickle the old man with your mouse.


















If you want to read, ask the old woman for a quiet place.

Lore

LORE, n. Learning — particularly that sort which is not derived from a regular course of instruction but comes of the reading of occult books, or by nature. This latter is commonly designated as folk-lore and embraces popularly myths and superstitions. In Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages the reader will find many of these traced backward, through various peoples on converging lines, toward a common origin in remote antiquity. Among these are the fables of "Teddy the Giant Killer," "The Sleeping John Sharp Williams," "Little Red Riding Hood and the Sugar Trust," "Beauty and the Brisbane," "The Seven Aldermen of Ephesus," "Rip Van Fairbanks," and so forth. The fable with Goethe so affectingly relates under the title of "The Erl-King" was known two thousand years ago in Greece as "The Demos and the Infant Industry." One of the most general and ancient of these myths is that Arabian tale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Rockefellers."

2008 Update: The expanding canon of ancient wisdom and old jokes with 2008 updates.

Laziness

LAZINESS, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

2008 Update: The virtue by which physicians do no harm, judges reduce crime and managers improve output.

Relative temperature

Acetelyne might well burn hotter

Than lava when it meets the water

But if you want to see enamel glisten

Ask for interest from a politician.

But no earthly fire that can be kept

Will move curmudgeons who have overslept.

LATER, adj.  After an indefinite period, such as never.

Law

LAW, n.

Once Law was sitting on the bench,
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
Upon your knees if you appear,
'Tis plain your have no standing here."

Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
"Your status? — devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied —
"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted — "there's the door —
I never saw your face before!"
—G.J.

2008 Update:  The scaffold on which the hypocrite stands in judgement above the coward seeking shelter as the neighbor dangles between.

When hominids first organized

And sought superiority to apes,

They learned to write, ennobling lies,

And made wine from sour grapes.

They began to sculpt and rhyme and draw,

To replace lost hair with religion.

Finally man created law

To keep down competition.

-Malathuselah

Liver

LIVER, n.  A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The sentiments and emotions which every literary anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side of human nature, calls it "our hepaticall parte." It was at one time considered the seat of life; hence its name -- liver, the thing we live with. The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg pate.

2008 Update:   A larval die-er.