The People’s Trees are greenest green – They’re marching forth since Halloween. On chilly days and snowy nights, They proudly bear their fairy lights.
So raise your verdant branches high, And hoist your red star to the sky – Though humbugs scoff and scrooges sneer, We’ll keep the green tree growing here.
When Christmas time is ruinous, With profiteers pursuing us, Their simple charm bring us delight, And help us through the silent night.
So raise our battered spirits high, And help us keep our powder dry. Let bankers curse and workers cheer – We’ll keep the green tree glowing here.
Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum, For needlekind we’re pining. Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum, We’ll keep the green tree shining.
“First name and last name, That’s all I’ll call you, No to initials or multiple-barrels, No truck with nicknames, Or maidens or middles, Or unusual spellings and other apparels. Just pick out a name that you wish to be called by, And that I shall call you – That and no other. So don’t be contrived, or obscure, or untrue, Though it need not be that which is used by your mother. Now no lords or ladies, no highness or sir, Just easy to spell out and easy to read. And none of that senior, junior, third – First name and last name, that’s all that you need. I’ve no time for Bobs or for Bills or for Bazzas, No time for Mollys or Maggies or Shazzas. Our names should be sturdy and stately and great, With every syllable pulling its weight.”
Eeza geezer, Dionysus. Gizza nuzzer to entice us Inniz wurship – God of Gordons. Bollocks to them prudy wardens Sipping on their PG Tipsy, Brewing herbs like any gypsy. Scoring tuts they hope will crack us. Help to keep us drunk, oh Bacchus ! Make us all too sloshed to care, And stink our belches, glaze our stare – Then dull their nagging, blur their saga. Piss me up, oh Lord of Lager ! Spirits call me to your shrine – Visions fill me, Vine Divine ! Awe-full shakes set me a quiver. Take this sacrifice: my liver.
Bad girl Ellie – dangerous to friend, Hanging around with her trouble-brewing sort, They always knew how she’d turn out in the end.
Not an easy woman to defend – Probably at what she really shouldn’t ought. Bad girl Ellie – dangerous to friend.
Build your hopes up – and watch them all descend. Hanging around her will only get you caught. They always knew how she’d turn out in the end.
Seeking action ? How much can you spend ? Probably life for the trouble you just bought. Bad girl Ellie – dangerous to friend.
Sex and menace – hazardous to blend: Hanging around, and you quaff her by the quart. They always knew how she’d turn out in the end.
So they tell me – none would recommend. Probably wise, but I’ll take my chance to sport With bad girl Ellie – dangerous to friend – I can’t wait to see how she turns out in the end.
English has many a-loanword – Absurd a-name, as if to suggest (Despite how much they’ve grown so blurred And settled-in, so you’d never have guessed) The day may come when they must pack And once-and-for-all be all given back.
French, please take the biscuit, And Persian, fetch your cash, Norse, collect your brisket And Arabic, your sash. Chinese, we have to unravel your silk, And German, it’s time please to drink-up your milk.
Greek, fly out your planet, And Spanish, kill your roach, Italian, shift granite, And Hungarian, take coach. Tongan, please, release taboo, (Though we’ll never shift Tahitian tattoo).
So Hebrew, take Israeli, then, And Dutch, stop pushing foist. And Latin – now an alien With all your words unvoiced. We hand them back all bent-up and slurred, And full of…thingy…you know…oh, what’s the word ?
Michael’s ones are round, But Gabriel’s are pointed – With orders, each is crowned, And mouldings, each anointed. With stonework tightly joined And structurally sound, Gabriel’s are pointed, But Michael’s ones are round.
Tusk-tusk, Tuscan, You’re just a stripped-down Doric, Sat squat upon your plinth – You don’t fool me. And don’t posit Composite, You ain’t so long historic – You’re just Corinthian That’s running-free.
If Bassae’s still Ionic, (And it is), And so are Ammonites – Then isn’t it moronic To insist that Serlio is right ? To favour Romans over Greeks, And not allow some playful tweaks, Patrolling boarders of the orders Just to keep them pure from mutant freaks.
The Tuscans and the Composites Were born in the Renaissance, When Italians made counterfeits To stand-up in response. Well fair enough, by why stop there ? Now that we have this president, Let’s have a hundred orders blare To prop-up ev’ry pediment.
Hold off the tinsel and un-ring the bells, Don’t hack the holly, at least for a week, And don’t eat the chocolates or savour the smells – Endurance, my friends, we are far from the peak We’ve barely entered December, remember, We’ve business to busy and bills to be paid. For awe and excitement need patience and pacing – It’s not like we’re likely to miss the parade.
The thing about Phylums and Classes and Orders and all, They don’t really mean very much, from a-one to another – They don’t show a definite border or wall, Except that each member within is a brother. But how shall we simply compare, say, a Fam’ly of fishes With Fam’lies of insects or fungi, or some other race – For nature won’t readily yield to our wishes For systems and schemes with all life in its place.
What’s needed are rankings that indicate something specific, Like maybe the age when such clades were diverging anew – There must be a way to be more scientific That merely to shrug and decide “this’ll do”. Then maybe some Kingdoms or Phylums will prove to be hoarders, While others lack class in their Classes, now under-supplied. So finally, let’s bring an order to Orders, And give ev’ry Genus some Family pride.
It always struck me that the Linnaean ranks would be more useful if either all of their inhabitants shared a minimum percentage of genes, or alternatively that they were diverging at roughly the same time as all the others of that rank.
Note that in the old method, species is the only rank which has some actual science behind it and isn’t just vibes-based. Except…it turns out that the concept of a biological species is far murkier and less discrete than we used to think, so even this is not really true any longer. Hybrids, it seems, just keep popping-up…
But this will cause its own oddities, such as Cheliserates (arachnids & horseshoe crabs) diverging from the other arthropods in the Cambrian before all of the currently-recognised phylums had appeared, meaning these would need to be recognised as their own phylum too. So we are back to (hopefully) common-sense rough collectives showing nested sub-groups within – but this only makes real sense when we examine the specific heirarchy, but not much when we compare the same level from different heirarchies.
But either way, the idea of the phylums being the major body-plan divisions is well-established, at least in the animals. And having four intermediate levels between there and species feels about right – we now know that there have been an order of magnitude more branches (mostly petering-out in extinction), but we don’t need to capture all the complexity of the Shrub of Life, this is intended to be a layman’s tool, not a PHD.
Yet I do wish when talking of, say, the Order of Proboscidea, they would add when the split occurred – in this case, in the early Paleocene. You’re welcome.
Rhyming Couplets 