(From The Archives) An A L[a Recherche Du Temps Perdu]PHABET

     In the USA, administrations last four, maybe eight, years. 
Their impact, for better or worse, drags on for lifetimes.

Ages ambulate for years. Not Advents: four weeks, tops. 
An Afternoon drags on for days – as Act III's do, when flops.
An Attosecond…? Light takes time to make that pair of hops!*

 
     *An attosecond measures the time light takes to travel the 

widthof two hydrogen atoms, about one quintillionth of a second. 
 
Blips be brief. And as for Beats…? But fractions of a Bar.
Some thirty minutes, Bells at sea. (In class, bells fifty are.*)
Biennia engage two years, then bid us, "Au revoir."

 
     *Back in the day, the length of a typical high-school algebra 

class in minutes (though feeling far longer to some observers). 

 
The time a Candle takes to burn runs several hundred hours.
A Century…? Eight hundred thousand hours – and more -- devours. 
(The first depends on one's comportment counting candlepowers.)   
 
A life spins seven Decades out – in years, drei score und ten
(assuming decades ten years span): so draws the Psalmist's pen. 
(A Day...? In hours, twenty-four: as chimes Old Smoke’s* Big Ben.)

      *A nickname first bestowed on London due to its smog. 

The moniker persisted. 

 
Each Epoch's length's determin’d by a slew of 'ick'y stuff –
like geometr'ick's, astronom'ick's, phys'ick's... (Had enough...?) 
"Yer Era's just yer E.R.A.,"* opines the baseball buff.

     *In baseball, the average number of runs given up by a pitcher – 

his so-called earned run average – is not a measure of time at all. 

 
A Friedman marks six moons have pass'd; a Fortnight, fourteen suns. 
A February…? Eight plus twenty ('cept in leap year) runs.
Each time frame's fluid: Brubeck (Dave) took Five -- and raked in tons.
(A Femtosecond's fa-a-ar too short: the time buff femtos shuns.)
 
How long's a Generation…? Whom you quiz may well prove weighty.
Galactic years…? Since time began, far fewer've flown than eighty.* 
A Gigasecond lasts one second...times one billion, matey!
(Gestations and Gregori'n years…? Nowt…if one hails from Haiti.)

     *About 61 since the Big Bang, as the time it takes the solar system
to orbit the center of the Milky Way (which is the length of a galactic
year) measures about 225 million earth years.
 
A moment lasts a minute and a half. Thus, Half a mo
should, as a rule, last merely five and forty seconds. Go!
(Some sev’ral Heartbeats – seventy plus two – each minute fill.
There may beat more -- or way, way less – if one falls gravely ill.)
A Hectosecond takes a hundred seconds, more or less.
How many in an Hour…? Hey! You do the math. (Or guess.)
 
An Instant takes no time at all. Indictions…? Fifteen years.
An Instant’s just a snapshot of "right now" -- in, say, Algiers.
(A verse which blends ‘em both…? Perhaps a limerick of Lear’s...?)
 
A Jiffy marks the time elaps’d as light migrates one fermi.
(A fermi’s rarely read about in tomes on taxidermy.)
A Jubilee is fifteen years. (Who so explains that term…? Me!)
 
What's 4.32 billion years...? A Kalpa. (Hey! Who knew...?)
What’s 10 + 4 4/10 minutes long…? That answer’s Ke.
A ke’s Chinese. It’s sound approximates a Frenchman’s ‘bleu.’
A Kilosecond’s three halves of a ke… so there: adieu!

  
Lents last forty days. For fasting folks, those prove a strife time.
For Lunar months, slice one half day off thirty! Posed...? A knife time!
A Lustrum lasts five years. When you’re in jail, such seems a lifetime.
(The bachelor (confirm’d) spends, in the long run, zero wife time.)
 
A Month o’ Sundays…? Thirty weeks. (In tetes-a-tetes, much greater.)
A Moment ends at three half-Minutes...nor not one tick later.
('M's teem. But, in the meantime...see ya later, alligator!)

The time 'tween light's turn green and cab horn's honk…? A New York second.
How longs the Night...? Depends on where on earth good souls begin it.
(A billionth of a second…? That’s a Nanosecond, i’n’it…?)

The time 'twixt your snafu and your "Oh, no!"...? One Onosecond.
(The nature of your fuck-up or faux pas can go unreckon'd.) 

Olympiads run four years long: with laurel wreaths they're fecund.

Planck time than Olympiads or moments, runs wa-a-a-ay shorter.

A length of time of three months is the span they call a Quarter.
Res satti has to do with New Year’s Day. It's Latin…sorter.
 

A lamb’s tail’s Shake may fluctuate, as many do each season.   
Semesters, too, may vary: ask your principal the reason.
If Scenes run long, play fans cry, “Wrong!” Such sin's theatric treason.

(A Scaramucci's ten days long, post which he's Drumpf displeasin.')
 
A Tatum* is the time ‘twixt tones in Art’s descending scale.
(A Trice, too, is extremely short: it ain’t no “pace de snail.”)
A "Take Two" starts once "One" departs, once "Take One"’s deem’d “No sale!” 

     *Named for jazz great Art Tatum and that pianist's lightning arpeggios.   
 
The Upper Pal’olithic Age lasts 30,000 years.
A Vamp 'til ready lasts until the buzzing in one’s ears --
plus fear of failure, nosebleed and amnesia -- disappears.

 

A While might last a Watch or two, thought w-a-ay less than a Week. 

An (e)Xasecond’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000* seconds – so to speak.

     *Pronounced "one quintillion.

Yoctoseconds…? Zeptoseconds…? Both to me be Greek.
(Exhausted I'm, so ends my rhyme...in time to take a leak.) 

(From The Archives) Artificciones: Pin The Tail On The Donkey...? Nope: Him To Jail (Don The Honky)

As of today (originally posted in December of '22) it appears likely that Citizen Drumpf will be indicted for one or more of a whole host of crimes. Furthermore, based on the Everests of evidence gathered and presented by the January 6th Select Committee, it's difficult to imagine any scenario in which the former PotUs could be found innocent. Therefore, once the all-but-inevitable guilty verdict is handed down, and in light of the fact that The Donald has so often selected his own judges -- indeed, his own facts -- surely it would be only fair to afford Herr Hair the opportunity to select his own sentence. When sentencing day arrives, then, Don Wan will be presented by the DOJ with a Spinometer similar to the one pictured below. The ex-president will be encouraged to twirl the Mashie-Niblick Spinner and discover his fate. (If he has been determined to have been at all cooperative, perhaps a best two out of three spins will be allowed.) If the Spinometer points to Adolf, Drumpf will be shot in the head and his bodyburned. The ceremonial gun used will be one provided by Marjorie Taylor Greene, drawn from the armory featured in several of her campaign videos. If Benito is selected, Drumpf will be hung upside-down (ideally-- as was Il Duce, with one or several of his mistresses alongside). In place of the traditional noose, one of The Donald's lengthy MAGA-red neckties will serve. If Uncle Joe comes up, Daffy Donald will breathe his last lying in a pool of his own urine. To insure sufficient volumes of fluid are forthcoming, the disgraced ex-POTUS will be force fed from a dozen or so two-liter bottles of Diet Cola prior to his execution. And if the Drumpf spinner lands on Idi, Donald will finish out his days in exile in Saudi Arabia playing a minimum of 36 holes per day -- on a course consisting entirely of sand traps.  

(From The Archives) Artificciones: A B/W Color Wheel For The Letter B

...Red Orange Yellow Blue Green Indigo Violet...Rhett Whore Angel Hope Loo Careen Indy Cove Viol Hat...Butler Babylon Baradiel Barack Bathroom Bounce Brickyard Bay Bass Bonnet...

Artificciones: Rin-Tin-Tintin

By the time original Rin Tin Tin passed away in 1932, the world's most famous German Shepherd had already starred in dozens of Hollywood movies, thereby contributing substantially to the financial success of the Warner Bros film studio that employed him. Meanwhile in Europe, the popularity of Belgian cartoonist Herge's most recent graphic creation, a teen-age newspaper reporter mononymously dubbed Tintin, was rapidly accelerating. With the publication one year before of a book treatment of the youngster's latest escapades, Tintin in America, the adventures of the comic sleuth had attracted the attention of a whole new family of fans in the United States. At that moment, Hollywood child actor Ninnian J. Yule, Jr., a recent transplant from New York who had that same year appeared in his first, though uncredited, film role, was giving thought to a costume he might wear to a Tinseltown Halloween party, finally deciding on a mashup of the Wonder Dog and the Boy Reporter. With the aid of a low-level MGM makeup artist, young Yule attached a pair of pointed ears fashioned from burlap and wolf skin and a prosthetic canine nose to a real-human-hair fabrication resembling Tintin's signature quiff -- the entire ensemble held together with a web of rubber bands. To don his disquise, the young Ninnian first placed the artificial nose over his own Irish pug, adjusting the false nostrils so as to allow optimal breathing. He then positioned the ears at the top of his head, leaving space for the golden tuft between the two. Until 2022 feared lost, this one-of-a-kind memorabilium, though in less-than-pristine condition, sold at auction the following March for just short of 185,000 dollars.       

Artificciones: Grimm/Shaw

Measuring just under 6.2 inches (16 centimeters) in height, this walrus tusk, yellowed by weather and distressed by passage through many hands, is engraved with an array of finely etched images portraying heroines drawn from the literary works of Germany's most famous folklorists as well as those of the equally renowned Anglo-Irish playwright often referred to by his initials GBS. The object has come to be known among maritime museum curators and fans of nautical lore as The Grimm/Shaw Scrimshaw. Carved across its surface, probably with a sharp needle, are an array of fine incisions which have been filled in with an ink made of candle black and tobacco juice, among which are the portrasit heads of Clever Gretel, Eliza Doolittle, Little Red Riding Hood and Major Barbara Undershaft. The identity of the artist or, more likely, of the artists (the graphic style employed to portray Shaw's heroines is definitely distinct in character from that used in picturing the Grimm Brothers' females) are unknown. Probably these men -- and they would most certainly have been men -- doubtless worked as crew members aboard one of the armada of early 20th-century whaling vessels shipping out of the UK to fish off the coasts of Greenland. Carved no earlier than 1912, the year Pygmalion was first brought to the stage, the piece is currently in the hands of a private Japanese collector of nautical paraphernalia residing in Stonington, Connecticut, USA.     

Artificciones: Basasagi

This monolith, the sole survivor extant, was originally one of nine in a peripteral arrangement supporting the entablature and roof of a small shrine built of stone on the now-uninhabited island of Ikez Adasi off the western coast of Turkey. Employed in the rituals of a thus far unidentified local pre-Christian religion, each column of the small building, which was used as a site for meditation, took the form of a unique stylized figure known as a basasagi to indicate its upside-down attitude, the disproportionally large head of which was dominated by an dispropor- tionally large gaping mouth, the teeth of which were fashioned of ivory and positioned within this gigantic grin so as to form a rank of vertical bars, making the inside of each basasagi's mouth into a kind of cage. Each of these nine mouth/cages housed a small flock of one or another species of so-called talking birds. Parrots and mynahs, budgerigars and cockatiels, starlings, ravens and African greys, in fact, any breed of bird capable of mimicking each others' calls, the voicings of other animals, even human speech -- all were collected from around the then-known world to be housed within the folly-like structure. At night the birds largely remained silent. But as the each morning sun's rays reached the columns in turn through the day, the various groupings of birds began sounding their myriad voicings and vocables. The impression created was that the basasagi were speaking, singing and orating. Visitors to the folly, unaware of the presence of the birds, ascribed to the basasagi oracular powers, insisting that questions put to the various personifications were answered, no matter how equivocally or obscurely. 

Just Ask!

   One 

Ask any 'n' all, "What does  

'idiom' mean...?"

Ask Annie N. Hall. (Don't ask 

Idi Amin.)

   Two

If you ask me, 

it tastes like chicken. 

Christmas Day: A Mare Egg...

     "A Mare Egg, Her Wrist, "Miss Two 'U'"

Fourth Week, Day 3, Tuesday: A Weigh-In...

     "A Weigh-In (Amen...? Sure!)" 

Fourth Week, Day 2, Monday: Hyam...

    "Hyam Dreaming of a Wide "'Christmas'" 

Fourth Week, Day 1, Sunday: Esau...

      "Esau Cleaves Ships"