Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Fe Si Bu Ke: "Too Feeble To Live"

To a Facebook Friend

Sorry, you have been unfriended
Your conduct could not be defended
You flooded my page with Facebook spam
You can be so self-important, man
Hey, I was only a Facebook friend
Not like I had any cash to spend
On your trashy and egregious art
Don't take my critique to heart!
But, of course, one knows you wouldn't
As to your talent, you're so deluded


The Chinese use the phrase, Too Weak To Live, to make fun of Facebook's perceived effete quality. Fe Si Bu Ke is pronounced Fay See Boo Kay.

Also, a group of lexicographers this month named the new verb, to unfriend, word of the year for 2009.


"Facebook Friend" appeared in the Schott's Vocab weblog of NYTIMES.COM on December 26, 2009, as a comment on "Fe Si Bu Ke."

More "Irish Terrors"

These are two pieces written impromptu
for a woman whom a friend and I met at happy hour one evening:
Her name is Rhonda, she drove a Honda, and she had
driven it here from (the benighted Montgomery County
village) Fonda. So we had our rhymes, ready-made.


Was a woman named Rhonda
Drove a Hybrid Honda
It didn't go vroooom
It went click-click-click
This caused her mind to wanda


My friend, Harrison Fischer, didn't like this effort of mine, "You've
totally violated the rhyme scheme!" Says Moi, "I'm okay
about it, I'm fine with destroying the rhyme." So he offered
his idea on how to limn Rhonda:


Was a woman named Rhonda
Drove here in her Honda
She comes from a town
Of lesser renown:
No one's fonda Fonda


I had to hand it to him. That was pretty good.

The Re-Nup

Tiger, Tiger burning bright
In the sex clubs of Orlando
Guess it's time you took a break
And lived with far more candor

Must've been weird, your secret life
Never an unserviced erection
Shouldn't you, though, have taught the wife
Some proper club selection?

No way, in that lie, an expensive driver!
She coulda hacked with a wedge or putter

Now, how to get the wife to, soldier-like, re-up
For another tour? A more remunerative pre-nup?
A healthy chunk of cash up front, ka-ching!
And a great big pink diamond re-nup ring!
You should go big with the forgiveness bling


The re-nup is a renegotiated prenuptial agreement, or pre-nup.
It is hoped this gives the wife much incentive to re-up, i.e., that is
to re-enlist, to soldier on.

"The Re-Nup" was quoted in a March 17, 2010 article in The Bygone Bureau
on writers of light verse who send their writings to NYTIMES.COM weblogs,
"The Comment-Box Poets of the New York Times."

The Bygone Bureau is an online journal of cultural commentary:
http://bygonebureau.com

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