Although I had ideas for more than the verses shared below, I could only manage my concentration for long enough to complete these two — what with the continued banging around the house that was further compounded by a variety of construction-related delays and snafus. But it’s all good (the renovations, I mean — it’s up to you to judge whether the rhymes are worthwhile).
This week’s theme revolves around outsized characters:
Not to Scale (July 13, 2021)
We’ve all heard the urban legends about people flushing baby alligators down the terlet, leading to full-sized beasts emerging from sewer systems. I think, while relaxing in one’s favorite body of water, coming across a goldfish that started out small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand and has now grown to the size of what’s pictured above would petrify one at least as much as encountering a snapping reptile. It might even be enough to petrify two of you:
Apparently, goldfish owners who tire of having a finny pet occasionally release them into public bodies of water. That's not a good idea. The city of Burnsville, Minnesota, explained Friday why pet owners shouldn't just dump their fish into the nearest lake.
Alongside three photos of enormous, football-size goldfish, the city wrote, "Please don't release your pet goldfish into ponds and lakes! They grow bigger than you think and contribute to poor water quality by mucking up the bottom sediments and uprooting plants. Groups of these large goldfish were recently found in Keller Lake…"
"A few goldfish might seem to some like a harmless addition to the local water body, but they're not," the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said back in January. "Goldfish are in the minnow family and can work their way through city stormwater ponds and into lakes and streams downstream with big impacts, by rapidly reproducing, surviving harsh winters, and feeding in and stirring up the bottom like their close relatives, the common carp."
[Read more here: https://www.cnet.com/news/tiny-goldfish-dumped-in-lakes-are-growing-giant-threatening-habitats/]
Some years ago, for work, I spent a fair amount of time in Peoria. The Illinois River is infested with Flying Asian Carp — you may have seen videos of boaters being inundated, with some wielding tennis racquets to bat away the fish as they leap into the moving craft.
I also just realized I should have named this one, “That’s Not Finny!”
Space for the Two of Us (July 17, 2021)
It’s not enough that Richard Branson owns several private islands, or that Jeff Bezos is the 25th-largest landowner in the United States (only 25th?) — now they’re trying to stake their claims to outer space. However, they aren’t in agreement regarding where the survey pins should be planted:
In the final analysis, yes, Blue Origin did make a point of highlighting a difference between billionaire Branson’s trip to the edge of space on July 11 and billionaire Bezos’ impending flight on July 20. Blue Origin claims most experts wouldn’t count Branson’s trip as “space flight” since it never crossed the Kármán line, the internationally recognized edge of space at 100 km above sea level.
No doubt you heard that a seat on Blue Origin’s July 20 flight sold at auction for $28 million dollars… and also that the anonymous bidder has a “schedule conflict” (i.e., ran out of Dramamine and/or his wife reviewed their bank statement and exclaimed, “WTF?!?!?”). So, the open seat slid over to the next-in-line paying customer, who is an 18-year-old from the Netherlands, taking a “gap year,” whose immensely wealthy daddy purchased the seat for him:
"I am super excited to be going to space," the teenager said in a video posted to Twitter. "I've been dreaming about this all my life."
Kid, I’ve been dreaming about having my “Dukakis in ‘88” tattoo removed since before you were a twinkle in your father’s eye…
The Olympics may (or may not) get underway next week, so that should provide some poetical fodder. Speaking of fodder — that Dutch kid’s fodder is spoiling him rotten, isn’t he?
JB