Scientific Archives • My Dog Errol

361 • Pandora’s Boxing Day

26th December 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

‘These microbes must stay in the flask!’
You begged to be given the task.
But it snowed, and you slipped
Down the steps to the crypt.
‘Will superglue mend it?’ you ask …

When tremors were rocking Qatar
My genie got out of the jar
When I bade him return
And repair his cracked urn
His answer was, ‘Ha bloody ha.’

‘Twas the day after Christmas … and we suddenly had time to try a little remembrance of things past. Back when we all assumed the pandemic was a gambit in the column-inches war. Back when we imagined rogue science might be to blame. Back when the spirit world was obviously exacting vengeance on an iniquitous civilization. But now we know better … if we do … will we predict, prepare, react better? Or have the Genies truly left the building, leaving their self-styled ‘masters’ holding the bottle (that’s ‘fiasco’ in Italian, of course) and counting the cracks?

360 • Joy to the world

25th December 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

The truth can no longer be ducked:
This planet’s NOT totally fucked
‘Cos its prime pest, its blight,
Its blind parasite
Is programmed to auto-destruct.

I have to admit I wrote my Christmas Message yesterday — not on the morning of publication as is my wont – and road-tested it on a sandwich board, front and back, walking among last-minute panic-buyers in our Regional Shopping Mall. ‘Why are you wearing a mask?’ a child challenged me. ‘I don’t want to catch the plague,’ said I. ‘Your board says it’s going to disappear of its own accord,’ countered an angry mother. Only then did I realise that ‘pest’, ‘blight’ and so on could perhaps refer to the Covid virus, as well as to the human race. Twice the Christmas Message, then! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

323 • Remote

18th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

This pod is controlled from a distance:
Press button to summon assistance.
Squirt sample in funnel.
Scream ‘Help me!’ down tunnel
Till system confirms your existence.

Obviously it is sensible that machines should validate the identity of their human masters, before coming to our rescue. We should applaud the Authorities who have programmed them so assiduously in their own image.

262 • Idols of clay

18th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Let us live by the anarchists’ credo:
First steal a huge barrel of Playdoh
Then fashion a golem
That looks like Mo Mowlam
To drag through the streets of Laredo.

She’d have been 71 today, Mo Mowlam, had she not died so young. The above bulletin proposes a straightforward method for reviving the plain-talking British MP who, while serving in the Shadow Cabinet, urged the destruction of Buckingham Palace. It’s now the USA that stands in desperate need of such a firebrand radical, and that’s (partly) why today’s lesson in Thaumogenesis is set in a city divided by Trump’s imaginary Mexican wall, a comic symbol of his brainless posturing, and a heartening portent of his imminent demolition.

230 • Cometary Dazes

17th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Astronomer Royal, Edmond Halley
Confided (back when we were pally),
‘On sighting a comet
I gen’rally vomit;
And shooting-stars drive me doolally.’

Not an ideal companion, then, on our seasonal expedition to the heath to view The Perseid Shower, and to join in the midnight incantations whereby witches implore these cosmic projectiles to validate their hitherto-purposeless trajectories by hailing down on the skulls of this planet’s most infamous leaders.

204 • United State

22nd July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Now we’ve pictured the Earth from the Moon,
All Nations shall Sing the Same Tune.
All Rifts shall be Whole
As we Share the One Goal.’
Great words – but I hope we start soon.

This Utopian creed, this Moon-Age Daydream, was overwritten, as the 60s’ influence waned, by warmongers and capitalists – the enemies of humanity – to the point of obliteration. Half a century on, however, our invisible ally, coronavirus, rides in like the cavalry with a blistering counter-attack … and we’re united once more.

203 • Omphaloskepsis

21st July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Astronomers travel to Tulsa
To view the Crab Nebula pulsar.
To spare that expense
It would make far more sense
To stay put, and examine my ulcer.

Yes indeed, with all the sparkling technology at its disposal humanity now tends to look outward, rather than inward, for its enlightenment. But why make expense a guiding principle? Why not emulate the navel-gazers of yore, who lived wisely, if not too well, on cowpats and cobwebs in hovels moulded from their ancestors’ excrements?

201 • Unhappy houri

19th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The great Russian cosmonaut, Yuri,
Was fired into space with a houri.
But when they came down
His face wore a frown
And hers wore a mask of cold fury.

Though the literal truth of this fragment is debatable, it is a parable fit to illustrate any sermon about the moral and ethical implications of sex in space. (The Kremlin evidently didn’t expect the Creator to take pity on the lonely Gagarin, and fashion a companion for him by repurposing a redundant rib).

185 • Ms Phipps recollected

3rd July 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Our Junior teacher, Ms Phipps,
Wore outfits with thousands of zips:
To combat the moth
She would use only cloth
Bought in very thin Möbius strips.

What better way for a teacher of Math to introduce perplexing concepts in Topology, you might say. But we were older now, and teenage hormones made it impossible not to dwell on the imagined contortions, in her boudoir, as she dressed. Or undressed. A Möbius stripper. I blush to think of it, even now.

160 • Meet the team (16)

8th June 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Look out for our caretaker, Ken,
And his heavily-hybridised hen:
With its modified beak
It can actually speak
Though not in the language of men.

In any business the janitor – or similar dogsbody – may prove the most interesting and innovative of thinkers. Unfettered by ambition, untainted by rivalry, he or she is free – like a Shakespearean Fool – to defy norms, and provide a foil to institutional formality through the creative quirks of an idiosyncratic mind.

135 • Droit de Cuissage

14th May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A churlish charwoman from Cheddar
Whose boss seemed reluctant to bed her
Tore up, in frustration,
His Nobel citation
And ran his research through the shredder.

I took a look at Cheddar on my first UK visit, way back. It’s kinda nice and they have a mini-canyon you can run along. Unexpectedly it’s also the setting for this topical revenge scenario, as the boffin-geek denies his cleaner an habitual perk of employment. #MeNeither

130 • Attaboy!

9th May 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

‘Well of course, he’s a National Icon.
Have you sat through his series on lichen?’
David Attenborough’s voice
Makes the whole world rejoice
(Or despair, when he’s not turned the mike on).

Yesterday the great man turned 94. He’s one of the few homegrown celebs the British media haven’t yet found a way of undermining. No doubt their lenses are trained on him night and day, hoping to snap inappropriate touching with a Venus flytrap, or lewd banter with a limpet. #MeNeither

116 • Potus alert (4)

25th April 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

With tough healthcare questions to settle,
‘The Donald’ shows fans his true mettle:
We’ll defeat this disease,
His great wisdom decrees,
If we all begin mainlining Dettol™.

A memorable coronavirus intervention from the well-known TV entertainer. But he’s done himself a disfavor by recanting, and claiming his diagnosis was ‘sarcastic’. Intelligent people might stop taking him seriously.

059 • Out of India

28th February 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

My clock was designed in Madras
By a maker both clumsy and crass.
The bell doesn’t sound
And the hands won’t go round
Yet it belches a foul-smelling gas.

I guess we all know someone who hunts down foreign goods at bargain prices, only to disparage the maker – rather than their own cheapskate stupidity – when the items prove unsatisfactory.

058 • The new tobacco

27th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The roll-out of 5G’s complete!
Humanity’s stupidest feat!
For most of my life I
Have hidden from Wi-Fi
But now it pollutes every street.

Smoking, the cool trend of a previous generation, is now proven lethal. Likewise this shiny communications technology, foisted on us by profiteering corporations, will probably show its true hand in years to come.

038 • Little Ned (3)

7th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

That coroner’s waiting till autumn
To start on your puppy’s post-mortem.
Well the later he gawps
At Ned’s pitiful corpse
The sooner I get to report him.

Maybe I did nothing to make Ned’s brief life agreeable; but I can certainly compensate by a vengeful attack on the slothful bureaucracy that thinks nothing of delaying his funeral. [See also here]

028 • Pandemonium

28th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

First medics deliver my jab
From the Pandemic Antidotes Lab.
And then they forecast a
Full global disaster:
‘The whole world a mortuary slab’.

Our behaviour is entirely contradictory, but you’ve come to us because we’re experts, and we know our paradoxical behaviour will only strengthen the illusion of authority we take pains to foster.

025 • Round the world

25th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

You still think the planet is flat?
Let’s climb up this tree for a chat.
From here, you’ll observe,
One can see round the curve …
Now how do you feel about that?

In this telling cameo, the impudence of empiricism confronts the implacable majesty of received wisdom.

018 • Turing

18th January 2020 RL Comments 6 Comments

Recalling my chum, Alan Turing
Whom people once talked about ‘curing’:
His craving for cabbage,
His crush on Charles Babbage;
Ah! Memories fond and enduring.

Fond and enduring indeed: he had charm and genius in equal measure. Though, so do most people, frankly. Perhaps I mean, ‘in equally high measure’, if that doesn’t sound too awkward.

017 • Gossips

17th January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Quite why it’s occurred is unclear
But my forehead has sprouted an ear.
The gossips may jest,
But it keeps me abreast
Of the quips they don’t want me to hear.

Is it better to know what detractors are saying about you, or to be free of the defects that catalyse their scorn? Unhappily, the more genetic modification we tolerate in our food chain, the more frequently we shall encounter such bodily aberrations.

014 • Cartographers

14th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

No prizes for guessing the plight
Of the boffins who set out to write
A useful snake-atlas
That showed all the rattlers
And where, and what person, they’d bite.

For those of us who live in the regions such an atlas would cover, it could have seemed a useful publication. Yet once again we see mankind confounded by a hubristic attempt to pre-empt the processes of nature.

008 • Adam, Eve etc.

8th January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

How pleasant to meet Piltdown Man
The fount of our whole human clan:
With Lucy his wife
They’re the source of all life
Dating back before records began.

Think, on the other hand, how disgusted our primitive ancestors would be to encounter us, now that we’ve laid waste the world that brought them into being. Although – a pedantic note here – I believe there are now question-marks hanging over Lucy’s identity, in some scholarly circles.