Saturday, September 09, 2006
ANOTHER TRIUMPH OF BRITISH BIOMETRICS?
THE remains of the personality of one of the scientists who worked on the creation of ("goodcopbadcop")
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
pond beast
27/06/2006
Dear friends,
You have sent me an image
Of a strange, strange beast,
That visited your idyllic
Garden pond
In
As this image, I descry,
I opine that it could be
A caddis fly,
Having flown in, on a seasonal jaunt,
From its probable native haunt
In the marshes of estuarine
But, in opining, I hesitate,
Since one should never
Be overcome with haste
In assigning labels and names
As flora, fauna,
And all phenomena, are each unique in every instance in time.
But I’ll tell you one thing,
It’s not a slime
Mould, old crawling monster, neither meat nor veg.
Neither is it a rush, nor is it a sedge,
For that is what it perches upon.
I doubt that it is a sea-cow, manatee or dugong
Or a skunk that emits a fearful pong,
Or a pig pulling sausages in a wagon,
Or a griffon, a phoenix or a dragon.
Since these last three are creatures of myth,
And thith, is another thing that it is not.
‘snot a polar bear, a snowy owl or an arctic fox,
For it was too hot
When your photographic shot
Was taken,
In fact, by the standards of the time and clime,
It was bleeding baking.
So this might be a tropical beast,
Which has extended its usual range
Due to the exingencies of climate change.
But, it’s not an okapi and it’s not a giraffe,
Nor a humourless kookaburra, that’s lost its laugh.
Not a meerkat, an aardvark, or an orang-utan.
Not an alligator, crocodile or a caiman.
It’s not an elephant, a termite or even an ant;
Nor eater of ants, whether small or giant,
Or armoured like pangolin or armadillo
Nor snake that’s crept in through small door or portillo.
Nor mitten crab transported in bilge of ships,
Nor lamprey hanging on with carnivorous lips.
It isn’t a toad.
It isn’t a frog,
Nor a stag beetle bred in a well-rotted log.
I can tell you that, because it has no antlers,
And it’s not spotted like civets’, leopards’ or panthers’,
No, it is not spotted.
It is not striped.
But, it’s a wonderful specimen of its type.
A beast that comes, uncalled from beyond,
And visits a normal south
It’s strangely symbolic like the Greek letter sigma
And I’ve no idea what it’s called.