A ninja of the recondite…
Queasy pudding…
Codwalloping colossus…
Like Puritans and Papists…
In Shakespeare’s “King Henry IV, Part 2,” when the King says the rebels are fifty-thousand strong, Warwick gently chides him saying, “Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo, the numbers of the feared.”
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
A Truly Jumbo Shrimp
It’s said a jumbo shrimp’s an oxymoron.
A shrimp’s a little thing you put red sauce on
And gobble by the dozen boiled or fried.
Some of us could eat more if we tried.
Enter the tiger prawn, a new crustacean
Not native to these parts. They say it’s Asian.
The prawn has a voracious appetite
And is inclined to get into a fight
For food with native breeds, the white and brown.
This fact is causing fishermen to frown.
The foot-long Asian packs plenty of muscle.
He’d be the winner in a shrimp-league tussle.
The tiger loves what French calls “fruits de mer.”
We’d say a “seafood platter” over here:
Oysters, crabs, and shrimp. It makes you shudder.
The tiger eats his cousins for his dinner!
From any angle, that sticks in my craw.
For cannibals there ought to be a law.
The tiger’s tasty, though, and a sweet deal
If you consider that one is a meal.
If tiger drives the natives out of town,
He may acquire a dubious renown.
Wouldn’t it be wry, a real reversal,
If we called people shrimps who were colossal?
Reference
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Giant-shrimp-raises-big-concern-as-it-invades-the-
2424242.php
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
had declared himself in pursuit of substantives.
His gastrointestinal tract had lately begun to feel large and accommodating. (commodious, capacious). Thank the stars and the Creator of the stars.
The spasms of sweet cream she had manfully swallowed; all the access he had gained, the lovingly surrendered sphincters; it was no good asking why he had not stuck it; he hadn’t and that was that. It kept on being that in every shade of hindsight.
(snug yet commodious as his dark little room)
The sweet cream he had rammed poured jammed down her throat […]
The Manich Depression is a lowland in SE European RSFSR between the Lower Don and the Caspian Sea. It is drained by the Western and
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Quasi-Scatological Invective Chrestomathy Index Headwords
— Skullduggery
— Tomfoolery
— Shutterbuggery
— Heilraising
— Pettifogging
— Bunkerhunkering
— Duckrupturing
Leonardo da Vinci faces
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Saucy insouciance, sufficient nonchalance…
“I’m kind of sorry that I cause so much grief.” (John Ashbery)
To sup with the Devil you need a long spoon. (Traditional?)
Why not just paint a mustache on everything? (Response to Mount Rushmore)
Hello? (Old postcard). (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Bee Kay Gooch had Kassidee, Krissee and Kooger quick and early. Kooger’s the baby. Bee Kay and Jason married Labor Day and Kooger came Christmas. Spyder Blunt, her stepdad, had a restraining order on Jason that year, but kid’s find a way, don’t they? I haven’t seen much of Jason’s parents since my Monty and Commander had that tiff at The Last Drop. Monty told me he was just joshing when he called Commander “Commie” — he didn’t think it through. I nearly cried when I saw the shiner Monty got. They tusseled for as long as it took both of ’em to fall down. The domino table broke Commander’s toe. He called Monty a sorry son of a so-and-so and drove home. That’s the last words they had. Marvel tried to get Commander to patch things up, but she said Commander just called Monty a horse’s petoot. Monty said Commander couldn’t tell shoe polish from Shinola. These men! Those kids favor their momma, though. Thank goodness! Jason’s no feast for the eyes, unless you like tattoos. But I’m here to tell you, Bee Kay has kept her figure. Her head-turnin’ days are not over yet.
stag country bbq sandwich
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Every June, The Thane of Thoth, a tavern, helps celebrate Chichesterton’s famous Regatta-on-the-Hogg by dropping the price of its brews by 12.5% for the third of a fortnight that couches the merriment.
Question: Speculate as shrewdly as your humble station permits on the following: Will Gerry Rattigan, the proprietor of The Thane, pass the savings on to Sir Alistair Chichester, or will he keep the difference for himself by charging full whack?
Hint: Gerry knows Sir Alistair, a Peer of the Realm, doesn’t give a jenny’s whinny one way or the other. Further hint: Base instincts are inherent in the cloth of which Gerry is knit.
Express your conclusion in boolean form, followed by elucidation whose chiefest virtue shall be a commanding brevity.
“Tagg’s Island,” Sir Alfred Munnings, 1919.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
“My job is to be the best that I can be, and if that changes your mind, then great. But I can’t be consumed with how you feel about me.” (Becky Hammon, 5′-6″-tall basketball champion and contender for top coach position of the Milwaukee Bucks. Quoted by Frank Bruni, NYTimes.)
Even a cursory look at following blogs uncovers so much good image-making and wordsmithing it humbles one. I ply in contrast what seems but a plodding literal depictiveness, a pyrrhic victory of method over invention, craft over creativity, sarcasm over substance, the strutting of personal nonsense on one’s tiny stage. I guess that’s why I often feature in my commentary the zany image created by Texas artist Tom Jones of the galloping rodeo lady balanced forefingeredly athwart the saddle horn. It suggests an implausible act of flaunting. No help for one’s sense of inferiority but to press on, grateful for the attention paid.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
EthicalDative 
The Snout
The snout of a maintainer is a blunt piece of overstatement at the insect level. What’s not to love? No wonder so many movie monsters have been buggish. It’s cold comfort, yet assuaging, to reflect that when we mammals croak the arthropods will inherit Mar-A-Leggo. Hollywood may yet prove prophetic in its nutsy way.
John Deere snout
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)