Well, like many of you, I’m stuck at home while TAM is going on. And as such, I feel like we need a bit of entertainment to keep our minds off the fact that we’re missing out. So, it’s time to exercise the poet within.
Can you use the Comments to create a piece of poetry related to a skeptical topic?
(Feel free to post in limerick/sonnet/haiku/etc./etc. form.)
AÂ quick limerick to get the ball rolling:
A rap on a spiritualist’s table
Kept the Medium in jewelery and sable
‘Til Houdini went meddlin’
And showed she was peddlin’
The stuff that you clean from a stableÂ
+++
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear daily at 3pm ET.
the universe
and everything in it
will open itself
if you only know how to ask
but if you are lazy
and prefer comforting lies
the all of reality will remain
beyond the reach of your eyes
@Gabrielbrawley:
That was beautiful.
@ Sam: Since you, Gabriel and I are in Texas and not attending TAM, how about a sleep over at your house instead?
I suddenly have TX envy
@Kaylia_Marie:
You should come too!
Also, I might have a degree in English, but that doesn’t mean I can rhyme. Sorry, Sam.
@Gabrielbrawley:
The lazy preacher
whose bible taught him all that
he thinks he needs know –
he is, alas, nonetheless
content in hubris;
what he doesn’t know fills tomes.
@tmarie: I would go except my wife would freak out. She would just freak. And she has to work this weekend so she wouldn’t be able to come. Thank you for the complement.
@mahlersoboes: Nice, I like it.
Part of a song I wrote a while back. Hope it translates well without my, frankly, stellar piano playing and heroic singing. You heard me. Heroic.
Ain’t no mystic got a thing on me
I ain’t gonna pay a dime for homeopathy.
You’ll never see me patron a psychic.
Reality is what it is and why it is is why I like it.
‘Cause I’m a Skeptic-Man and I think too much for my own good.
But really, what I mean is I think too much for your own good.
My Carl Sagan and my James Randi beats your Deepak Chopra and your Jenny McCarthy,
I don’t want you to just trust in me,
I just want scientific methodology.
A bit of a stretch in rhyme-
No matter how many times you tell ’em,
To abstain from the woo-miester’s pablum,
The believers will scoff,
And soon take off,
To buy all that frauds will sell ’em.
@tmarie:
Bring it. But I may be out all weekend drowning my sorrows.
@Some Canadian Skeptic:
You should record this and have someone follow you around all day playing it on a giant boom box (that’s right, I said boom box.)
Also, I think I might love you, Mr. Canadian Skeptic. Stellar piano playing and heroic singing automatically makes me start stripping.
@Some Canadian Skeptic:
Very nice!!
@Gabrielbrawley:
:sigh: Maybe another time.
@Sam Ogden:
All the better to take advantage of you dear… oh wait.. um.. I mean… I gotta go.
@tmarie:
You know you don’t need to get me drunk to take advantage of me. I’m easy.
@Some Canadian Skeptic:
I’m holding up my Bunsen burner during the chorus!
@tmarie: Where are you in Texas, I think Sam is down Austin way but I might have that wrong.
@Some Canadian Skeptic: I want to hear Ben Folds play that. That’d be hawt.
@Gabrielbrawley:
I think Sam’s in Houston. I live in Plainview, about 45 miles north of Lubbock. It’s about 4 hours, if I remember correctly, away from Witchita Falls. … And now I sound like a stalker. But I swear it’s because I just recently (by recently meaning March) was in Witchita Falls.
@tmarie:
Yes, Houston. And staying on topic:
While scanning the skies with my ‘scope
I was overcome with a feeling of hope
That we’d end all the wars
And erase all the horrors
Caused by king, by country, and by Pope
Texas and Kansas both say
“The Earth is young”
Don’t tell us otherwise
because we have guns
The world points and giggles and starts to laugh
don’t disrespect our faith the states scream
don’t show us science
if it ain’t in our bible we don’t but it
monkeys don’t give birth to humans
and Darwin was Hitler’s best friend
gravity is only god holding us down
and math is just the angles making it so
“The earth is young”
Maybe just a few days
Now put up your books
lets go play
where are our nuclear weapons
give me my internet
I want my cable
my car
my plane
just keep that nasty science away
@tmarie: Are you Tosha Powell on facebook?
@Gabrielbrawley:
That’d be me.
This might not have a direct skeptical undertone, but the lyrics are amazing. It’s a song by Kevin Devine called “Another Bag of Bones.”
“It’s a brushfire spreading, feeding as it moves
It’s a disappeared glacier; it’s the airborne flu
It’s your disbelieving eyes logging concrete miles
It’s your yawning conscience and your lawyer’s smile
It’s an occupied country foaming at the mouth
No smoking gun, no mushroom cloud
It’s a military mother with a boy in hell
And it’s a flag-draped casket down an oil well
It’s an Argentine school-girl gagged and bound
It’s a torture camp; it’s a long way down
It’s the constant bracing shock of now
And it’s the whole damn world turned inside out, alright
It’s a march to extinction with your god in step
It’s his name in your mouth; it’s his cross on your neck
It’s a farm boy sprinting over desert dirt
And he’s panting the ‘Our Father’ in staccato spurts
Now that’s his automatic rifle and it tells no lies
It’s his truth in your stomach, it’s no alibi
But the trouble lies on the other side
With an equal truth prepping for his holy night
He sees the crescent and the star blink in the virgin sky
And hears the call of milk and honey from the afterlife
And as he eases to the checkpoint, he is calm and sure
It’s collateral damage; it’s the cost of war
It’s another bag of bones for the Gods to sort
It’s just another bag of bones for the Gods to sort
Well it’s a species disappearing, all the birds fly south
In a January heatwave, in a pulsing crowd
It’s an African Militia, kids with sub-machines
It’s a conflict diamond on your bride-to-be
It’s the dispossessed lining up at every gate
It’s the facts worth facing, faced way too late
It’s the mission of modernity, go get what’s yours
Til there’s nothing leftover to go get no more
And it’s not what we’re owed, but it’s what we’ve earned
And it’s closer than we realise, and it’s time now to burn
And oh it’s time now to burn
And oh it’s time now to burn
And oh it’s time now to burn, to burn”
There was a magician named Randi.
Whos leger demain was quite handy.
When he bent a spoon,
all the Skepchicks would swoon.
But its because they drank too much brandy.
@tmarie: Okay, now I know you.
@tmarie: What brought you up here back in March?
Not exactly Skeptical related, but thinking about the Skepchicks at TAM7 evoked a picture. (Due credit to my wife who came up with the title which became the theme.)
The television’s rot
Oprah book club? So not.
Way too stressed to be online
Gonna gripe with bitches and wine
Don’t offer us a drink
Just pour it in the sink
Mind the keep out signs
Around the bitches and wines
I’ve had enough being nice
All day long sugar and spice
Gonna drop the Sweet Adeline
And get down with the bitches and wine
Coffee, tea or me
Gets you nowhere, see?
Night is for the less refined
Watch while some bitches get wined
Tired of old boy tricks
Office full of suits with pricks
Here’s something to remove your itches
Hoist some wine with the bitches
Nothing could be fina
If you’ve got a vagina
Find a way to make the time
And spend it with bitches and wine
once there was a sick man
who put all of his faith in CAM
he spent, spent and spent
and though his ills would not relent
he could not admit it was a sham
Placebo effect
Having nothing but water
Homeopathy
@infinitemonkey: Haiku? Well played, honorable Monkey-san!
Rednecks stand in awe
Of Ufo’s, high and tall
A probe enters their rectum
For that is their custom
But 1 in 10 don’t mind at all.
@MiddleMan: Monkey fights with honor
Skepchick and her kind;
Lies they quickly untwined.
They take out the bunk
and throw it in a trunk
Until truth is left behind.
Once upon a midnight dreary
A story of a ghost I was weary
I demanded some proof
but she was quite aloof
and could not answer my query
How about a skeptic-themed parody of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”?
You were so dumb when I first saw you
I rolled my eyes
As the nonsense starts
You’re standing there
Bringing all of your woo-woo to bear
Pseudoscience
Think you’re smart, you talk so loud
As you debate feng shui with the crowd
You say hello, you wanted me to know
That you were a Leo, you guessed I was a Libra
And my brain screamed, get away from idiot
And you were looking at my aura
Begging to read my Tarot, and I said
Homeopathy, horoscopes and UFOs
Anti-vax, crop circles, and Chakra flows
You are a dunce with a cranial abscess
It’s a woo story, maybe you’re a dumbass
So I sneak out to the garden to leave you
You follow me, you want me to believe too
Here flows your lies
Psychics, astrology, and ley lines…
‘Cause you were mumbo jumbo, you were spouting nonsense
Your opinions unsupported by evidence
When I asked you how you knew that,
You told me that you “just know†— and I said
Homeopathy, something you believe is so
Just a drop of stupid in everything you think you know
I’ll be the skeptic, you be the dimwit
It’s a woo story, maybe you’re a dumbshit
Homeopathy, quackery has strange appeal
Science is difficult, but it’s real
Your quote mining takes it out of context
It’s a woo story, just a bunch of nonsense
Woo woo
I tired of debating
Wondering if you were ever coming around
Your faith in woo is grating
So I get to write this parody smackdown — and I said
Homeopathy, and all this crap you think is so
I keep wondering, where did all your brain cells go
Is this in your head? Or just wishful group-think?
You picked a bugger and twiddled your nose ring
And said, I’m not an idiot
My IQ is not so low
I love woo, and that’s all I really know
There’s lots of mad stuff I really think and hope is true
It’s a woo story, you should believe too
Woo woo, woo woo
‘Cause you were so dumb, when I first saw you…
I asked a single question
Out to the world around me
It answered with little hesitation
Letting its secrets surround me.
I asked a single question
To the people I know so dear
They stuttered and blundered and muttered
But no answer did I hear.
So, now when I ask a question,
I ask to the world around.
For just blind faith and trust are not answers
And, outside, the truth abounds.
@infinitemonkey: Hai!
“Balderdash!” He said.
“Man does not come from monkey!”
Holding banana.
@MiddleMan: MiddleMan writes honorable haiku. I bow to your evolved skills.
@tmarie: I would love to come but I live in CA and well, it’s a bit of a drive….
@Some Canadian Skeptic: That is awesome… I think you are destined for youtube… yes? yes?
@infinitemonkey: you are my poem hero. WE need to bring the haiku back in full force!
@tmarie: yay for FB!
@JOHNEA13: Bah, I was hoping to be the first with a James Randi theme.
There once was a man named James Randi,
Who said “I’ll give a thousand grandy!
Just take this wood stick;
Go, find water, quick!
Alas, no modus operandi.”
@tmarie: People stripping in front of me makes me strip. Incidentally, I can never go to a strip club.
@Sam Ogden: @MiddleMan: @marilove: @Kaylia_Marie:
Thanks for the kindness. Much obliged (That’s a southern phrase, right? “Much obliged”?). There is an audio recording of the full song during a rehearsal, I can be cripplingly lazy in getting these things together just to show off. And yet, I have no trouble being on stage playing this stuff essentially acting like “look at me! look at me! Am I accepted by you all yet? Do you love me yet?”.
Ironies. I haz it.
@infinitemonkey: Syntax and syllables fight like samurai when trying to create haiku in correct form. Most displeasing.
@Some Canadian Skeptic: Does it work the other way around too? I mean… if you start taking your clothes off will those around suddenly find themselves needing to do the same?
There was this psychic from Nantucket
Who stored her crystal ball in a bucket
For one grand she’d tell you
That your aura was blue
But claim Randi’s mil? She’ll say “Fuck it!”
@ThickMcRunfast: LOL
Ryhme? Nah man, it’s all about the rhythm!
Randi weeds the woo
The crackpots heed the calling
No prize awarded
@Kaylia_Marie: If anything, it inspires ‘the ladies’ to put on more clothes.
It’s common place to call a woman “hot”, but around me, that means something entirely different.
A Skepchick, during her paces
Was burgled, losing her vases
No flinching waif
Her home is now safe
She’s got bears to murder their faces
Amazing Meeting
Skepchicks with buzzed aldrins
More liver damage
A venerable Goddess of woo
wanted to manufacture a gnu.
She mumbled some mumbo
and jumbled some jumbo,
while a wildebeest munched on her shoe.
I’m cheating, I wrote this a while ago.
Ancient Wisdom
I’m a skeptical lad as everyone knows
I wonder a lot and I wonder aloud
and I’m not shy about my scorn for all those
who put all their faith in old story’s so proud
of the wisdom that comes from far in the past
so much better than all of our learning
today we’re quite stupid, with our studies so vast
so to the old days we’re constantly yearning
back before we knew what caused our bowels to move
we knew all that we needed to move ’em
and so what if we routinely died from the flu
we knew the right herbs for feverish green sputum
So screw the future, and hark to the age
when death was preceded by burning green sage
And one more for my local skepchick:
Skepchicks 3: Maria
a spicy hot warrior, a dark lady sworn
to be woo’s enemy, a champion born
to battle the stupid, while stating their right
to be stupid, indeed, while drinking all night
in the tavern I met you, a vision in jeans
with your glass of merlot, and your wit razor keen
we spoke of volcanos, and skeptics desire
to be able to piss, if placed next to fire
Or magma in truth, thought either would hold
No fear for a skepchick, nor water we’re told
your skeptical powers have made you badass
and underwater you’ve gone, to breathe strange mixed gas
though we’re locked in a battle that we may not win
the fights the thing, with friendship and grins
Reading and writing,
Researching genes and much else.
Praying not at all.
And:
While questioning, we learn.
While faithful, we accept.
Answers we must earn,
or never be free of false precepts.
Our roads require thought and will.
Others smoothed by many feet-
Less traveled, ours is rough and oft uphill.
And though they claim theirs alone is meet,
We will travel on.
There was this guy named Sam.
Who’s AI got me in a jam.
For I can’t think of a rhyme to skeptic.
Except perhaps septic?
I probably won’t win COTW. Damn.
@Andrew Nixon:
That’s too good!
There was a guy from Darwin, Australia
With daft anecdotes to regale ya
‘The Flagellum’s a sod
so there must be a God!
And this evolution is a failure’
There stood a young man on his lawn
Overlooking his field full of corn
When a shape did he see
‘Tis Aliens!’ cried he!
And another poor sucker was born
I am a young man from- No!
That’s the reason I came to your show!
For the money I pay
I should not have to say –
If you’re psychic you’d already know!
Wily old mentalist Randi
Had mad skills that he found quite dandy.
For scaring the kooks
From nonsensical nooks
Nobody was ever so handy.
There was a young girl named Rebecca
who had a nice derriere, yeah one hecka.
With plenty of class
and that cute little ass
Many concepts of woo she did wrecka.
There was a young man from Nantucket
Who chomped supplements by the bucket
Said the skeptic ‘Don’t wallow,
With your tablet – don’t swallow
For it won’t even work if you suck it’
(That one needs a little work)
(Borrowing from a previous limerick of mine):
Out comes the ghoul James Van Praagh,
And of course Sylvia Browne, that old hag,
Getting in on the action
Of talking to Jackson
Is it true – spirits’ tongues do still wag?
I listen with horrid fascination
As McCarthy tries to stop vaccination
“They’re dangerous!” we’re told,
“Let’s return to times of old!”
Right – better to be an ignorant third-world nation…
Fine upstanding skeptical fella
Neurololgist Steven Novella
Fights vaccine kooks
With scathing rebukes
On Measels and Mumps and Rubella
‘Warrior Mommy’ McCarthy
Says: “Take all your kids to a party,
Where infectious disease
Is a comedy wheeze
And if some of them die that’s too bad.”
Homeopathy:
There’s nothing in this water!
How can this cure me?
my mom goes off her pill regimens
when she hears about ‘herbal medicines’
every time she does this
i want to insist
she belongs with the folks in the loony bins
There is a psychic on my street
Someone I don’t ever want to meet
The sign says “Will read your card in my tent”
Below it says, “Closed by unforeseen event.”
Newborn baby was baptized.
He cried and he flailed.
He gooed and he gurgled,
But to no avail;
Dunked into cold water,
Prayed over and blessed,
And he thought with disgust,
“And I’m wearing a DRESS!â€
By the pool at Lourdes
Wheelchairs rolling by me
No one walks away
A crew once drew circles in fields.
Said the Media: Spacemen are real.
Said these fine men: We made ’em
But the news never played ’em
for the old men had less sex appeal.
In religion it is certainty that is sought
Don’t change
Stay the same
Always the same because our truth comes from god
But in science tis uncertinty that drives
question change and grow
learn from our failures
success is fine and it sharpens the mind
but the favorite phrase is
“Hmm, that’s odd.”
“In a better place,”
They said when sister died young.
She just rots away.
“Mary’s here! they cry.
Smiles, tears and cameras.
I just see a stump.
I wouldn’t give a penny
And I don’t give a damn
For the thoughts of Jenny
Or the golf game of Sam
@cypressgreen:
The blessed virgin Mary
Was on my morning toast
She wasn’t all that scary
And tasted better than most
@James
My toast was crispy charcol black
Tho’ set on ‘light’ today.
I swear that it was Satan’s fault
That it turned out that way!
And so tomorrow morning
To James Fox’s house I’ll go.
His toaster’s not posessed, it seems,
By one from down below.
HIS toaster has the holy touch.
And I don’t truly care
(As long as it comes out light brown)
If there’s some chick on there.
Unless it’s a SkepChic…that’d be AWESOME!
I once met a girl who seemed cute,
’til she told me of her cursed flute.
I kept my mouth shut
and avoided the nut
But how long can I keep myself mute?
(Srsly, who the fuck haunts a flute??)
@“Other†Amanda: Sounds like some sort of sex with toys.
@Gabrielbrawley: I wish it were something sexy like that. I met her through roller derby, and she seemed really cool. I play in a local orchestra, and we need flute players, so I made an announcement on Facebook. This was her response.
“I play piano, have for 15 years. Tried a flute once, was haunted… returned it to its rightful owner and haven’t tried again yet.”
I’m trying to figure out if she buried the thing with the alleged ghost’s body… but I don’t want to bring it up.
@“Other†Amanda: Of course, who the haunt fucks a flute is also a valid question.
@Sam Ogden: Any thought of actually compiling poetry of note into a website or publication of any sort?
Also: the misery-drowning begins……. NOW. (go)
@Vengeful Harridan (Elexina): Are you planning any new blog posts? I’ve read the Jenny (dummy) McCarthy one a few times. I like it but want new stuff. Just in case you were wondering if anyone read your stuff.
@“Other†Amanda: So the sexual connatations is just because I have a really dirty mind. Darn.
@Gabrielbrawley: Hey, now that’s flattery! Yeah, every so often I add new links to that particular angry rant and re-post, but I am working on a couple of other things. No worries, much tangential anger is in the peanut gallery, just waiting to spew forth.
@Vengeful Harridan (Elexina): cool.
People pray to prove their faith
they say through god all things are possible
they say they have faith in god and not science
but when they jump out of an airplane they use a parachute and the science that made it
@“Other†Amanda:
Your poem inspired me to change it.
I once met a girl who seemed cute
as I let her blow on my flute.
She got right to the point
as she found the head joint
and her fingering was also astute.
@JOHNEA13:
Roses atop the piano are fine
Your charms unlike the Morgan
You even take me to wine and dine
But I’d rather tulips on my organ.
(to keep with the musical theme)
1)Critical thinking is cool
Shame they dont teach it in school
At least, not very well
Unless, forbid hell,
You believe in that spiritual bull
2)Homeopathy isn’t too good
Never does what it says that it should
If it has hidden zinc
You wont get the stink
Of delicious great tasting food
Second one not as good, and Im not sure if the first one works with the American accent, but its fine if you do it in Scottish. Like mine.
Not poems but I have written a few skeptical song lyrics here:
http://derivationprobability.blogspot.com/search/label/Songs