Ball Park Hot Dog

A hotdog at the ballpark has a taste that is unique;

Its blend of meat and spices is an edible mystique.

You top it off with onions that have sat for days on end

In a bowl uncovered where the hygiene is pretend.

The mustard is so rancid it has turned to turpentine;

The ketchup has fermented into syrupy red wine.

The cost is beyond reason, but there always is a queue

 And when I get up to the front I'm gonna order two.

 

 

---

check out the rest of the Windows Live™. More than mail–Windows Live™ goes way beyond your inbox. More than messages

Cash for Cash

Cash for in-laws would be nice to end a lot of spats.

Cash for tenors would get rid of many screeching flats.

Cash for pimples could bring wealth to many aching teens.

Cash for O. Gaddafi so we don't send the Marines.

Cash for politicians who spend every waking hour

Thinking up new taxes and new ways of grabbing power.

Cash for guns and drugs and thugs and maybe even trash,

And finally we're at the point of paying Cash for Cash.

---

Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. Check it out!

Ebook

 

Ebooks, egad!  What is next;

Holograms instead of text?

Publishing is very digital;

it is making me quite fidgetal.

When I'm reading late at night

It is by the megabyte.

The paperback will soon be seen

As a threat to living green!

---

See all the ways you can stay connected to friends and family

The Patriot Act

America is snooping like she never snooped before;

Hiring eavesdroppers by the pound and by the score.

A patriot is somebody who has the biggest ears

This side of Disney's Dumbo, and who buys their clothes at Sears.

Our information highway is backed up with rubberneckers

And pettifogging Teflon-coated cheeky background-checkers.

Every aspect of your life, from sex to defecation,

Is pulled apart by strangers looking for some aberration.

(They will gladly make notes of the slightest constipation.)

Here's the only secret that those Sherlocks haven't cracked:

Why do we put up with nonsense like the Patriot Act?

---

See all the ways you can stay connected to friends and family

Webster's Dictionary

At my house nobody looks

At too many heavy books.

War and Peace remains unread;

Solzhenitzyn causes dread.

Trollope in his many tomes,

Wordworth with his trailing poems,

Plutarch's Lives and Chaucer's Tales –

All are viewed like garden snails.

And what's sad – and even scary –

Is my Webster's Dictionary.

Ponderous and leather-bound –

Full of wisdom pound for pound –

I haven't seen its pages since

Lighters had to use real flints.

Many winter evenings I

As a child its lullaby

Of fine words would softly chant

'til towards sleep I'd start to slant.

Nowadays to turn a page

Causes grief and downright rage;

Everyone is so dead-set

To gaze upon the Internet.

And so to dust my Webster turns,

Joined by chatty Robert Burns.

---

check out the rest of the Windows Live™. More than mail–Windows Live™ goes way beyond your inbox. More than messages

Ode to TV

Couch potato does not start

Describing my condition;

TV keeps me petrified

And kills all my ambition.

How I wish that Farnsworth boy

Had studied with old Einstein;

Then a time machine I'd have

And not a useless twine spine.

---

Share your memories online with anyone you want anyone you want.

The Troll

In fairy tales the witch is always seen in a bad light

And needs a little beating from a prince or noble knight.

She's ugly and she cackles and vacations on her broom

And doesn't smell of anything resembling perfume.

Her dietary preferences include the eye of newt

And children if they're pudgy and not terribly astute.

Her skin is green, her hands are claws; she always has a wart.

Her nose is rather beaky and decidedly athwart.

But Women's Lib has taken care of witches until they

Are nothing more than wiccans on a New Age holiday.

They cast no spells but offer up a cup of herbal tea

And hang up bits of crystal on the nearest cypress tree.

They're beautiful and gentle and in tune with nature's ways,

Although their armpits have more hair than Rutherford B. Hayes.

I think it's time the men got started on this kinda roll,

Rehabilitating the maligned Norwegian troll.

He's just a shaggy fellow who could use some thoughtful care

And instruction in the use of common underwear.

He loves the little animals of forest, field and stream

And hardly ever eats them when provided with ice cream.

Athletic yet so modest that his silent club he wields

On the heads of travelers, not on the baseball fields.

Underneath a bridge is just a place he would despise;

He prefers a view with mountain air and clear blue skies.

His carbon footprint is so small it cannot be detected.

He likes to keep his human friends completely disconnected.

Trolls are truly noble and a sturdy work of nature –

How I wish we had one in our local legislature!

 

---

check out the rest of the Windows Live™. More than mail–Windows Live™ goes way beyond your inbox. More than messages

Health Care

Obama is to health care as Walt Disney was to mice;

Confusing it with deity, ignoring all the lice.

And congress is to health care as a drunk with 3.2 beer;

Making lots of racket without getting any cheer.

The public is to health care as a pinball in a game;

Batted all around without a touch of sincere shame.

---

What can you do with the new Windows Live? Find out

McSue Me!

Old MacDonald had a farm until the burger franchise

Ran him out of town with torts and plenty of their French fries.

Everyone named Ronald has been served with a subpoena

From New York City right on down to tiny Okabena.

Happy Hour in the bars and taverns of our nation

Infringes on the Happy Meal, no matter the libation.

This octopus of ground beef on a bun with sesame seed

Is nakedly espousing the extreme in corporate greed.

Will Colonels in the Air Force have to bow to KFC?

Will Burger King and Dairy Queen get rid of royalty?

Will Peter Pan lose Wendy to another burger chain?

Will Subway send the Navy's craft down some perturbing drain?

Oh let us hope that sanity returns to fast food quickly

And that they serve us nothing more than stuff that makes us sickly.

 

 

---

With Windows Live, you can organize, edit, and share your photos.

Fonts

In this modern day and age

Sans-serif is all the rage.

Typeface, point, and spacing too

Are as bland as canned beef stew.

Cursive is no longer seen.

Gothic is a mere pipe dream.

Fonts are nothing but homogenous;

I'd as lief we were androgenous!

---

With Windows Live, you can organize, edit, and share your photos.

Bugs

Waiting on the sidelines, as patient as can be,

Are the ant, the cockroach, the fly and hungry flea.

Swarming is their nature, and if we don't look out

The bugs will soon take over, no matter how we shout.

We poison them in millions, they do not seem to care.

They eat up pets and gardens, then try our underwear.

The honey bee is failing, the hornet comes on strong.

The silk worm is depleted, mosquitoes hum along.

The landscape we've created is truly paradise

For bugs of all descriptions, including scratchy lice.

Perhaps if we went naked and lived in the fresh air

The bugs just might diminish, driven by despair.

Or are they meant to conquer as we approach The End?

Isaiah 7:18 we ought to apprehend.

---

What can you do with the new Windows Live? Find out

Prison

Prison walls are porous now, as porous as a sponge;

Cons are spilling out with all their anger and their grunge.

Legislatures everywhere say they cannot afford

To give the convict anything like long-term room and board.

Child molesters, psychopaths, and crooks of every stripe

Are dumped onto the public like some garbage overripe.

If you're charged with littering or backed up child support

You're assigned a jail cell by those idiots in court.

But murderers and others who have served a year or two

Are pushed out of the prison gates with nothing but "adieu".

Budgets cannot handle prison crowding, says the state,

And so the homeless criminal they suddenly create.

If I had my druthers I would fill the prisons full

Of legislators and their staff and all their stinking bull.

---

With Windows Live, you can organize, edit, and share your photos.

from the real tim torkildson

When Adam fell we all were cursed

With jobs that always do come first.

No more the lion and the lamb;

Now we fight the traffic jam.

Beating plowshares into cars,

Skipping lunch for candy bars.

Meeting deadlines, conference calls,

Power Point, strange toilet stalls.

Jet lag, ergonomic stress,

Change your tie and clean your dress.

Polish shoes until they gleam,

Take one for the office team.

Then retire, and find out

Pension plans are in a route.

Adam, you old S O B,

Couldn't you find another tree?

---

check out the rest of the Windows Live™. More than mail–Windows Live™ goes way beyond your inbox. More than messages

Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin wrote a book; he called it MY TRUE STORY.

He maintained his innocence and said he wasn't sorry

For his actions in the tale we headline to this day –

How he tried to trick a girl to give her child away.

First of all, the media was biased as can be;

Old Rump said they would never give him primetime on TV.

The newspapers misquoted him, the talk shows trashed him good.

He claimed that Mr. Rogers did refuse him neighborhood.

The Rump man had a tragic life, he writes in Chapter One.

In school he was the object of the rudest kind of fun.

In Chapter Two his father dies, his mother takes in boarders.

He had to polish all the shoes they left out in the corridors.

In Chapter Three he runs away and joins a band of robbers.

In Chapter Four he falls in love and really gets the slobbers.

In Chapter Five she breaks his heart by giving him the air.

In Chapter Six he cries so much he loses all his hair.

Now he starts to go to town by making claims quite wild;

He says that fickle little gal was going to have his child.

She got an order from the king to keep him far away.

Rumpelstiltskin thought that all his wits would go astray.

The child was born and never told about his father dear.

Until one night by bribery old Rump was in the clear.

He got to see his little boy asleep upon some straw

Before the witchy mother a large blunderbuss did draw.

The little boy awoke and cried "Who is that ugly man?"

 This was more than Rump could take and so away he ran.

He never saw his child again; the mother spread such lies

That the Brothers Grimm began to puff them to the skies.

He had to leave the country so he wouldn't go to jail,

Haunted by the infamy brought on by fairy tale.

That, at least, is what he writes – he takes three-hundred pages

To get his lurid story told in prosy, windy stages.

It never should have gotten out of any bookstore's cellar;

But today it tops the lists, a national bestseller.

I suspect the truth of it lies somewhere in between;

Our memory is nothing but a hazy, dim smoke screen.

---

check out the rest of the Windows Live™. More than mail–Windows Live™ goes way beyond your inbox. More than messages

Pinocchio Incorporated

Pinocchio became a boy and lived with old Gepetto;

'twas only then he noticed they resided in a ghetto.

The shacks around him, picturesque by moonlight it is true,

In daylight took on squalor and a smell just like the zoo.

Gepetto's loft was cold and damp, he had no means to heat it.

Their food was mush and herring bones; he could hardly eat it.

At school Pinocchio found out his brains were still of wood;

He wore a dunce cap every day, and in the corner stood.

The cricket was no help at all; he strummed a ukulele

and sang off-key and suddenly bet the ponies daily.

His losses were so heavy that he pawned Geppeto's tools

To keep from being beaten up by Cosa Nostra mules.

Pinocchio dropped out of school and ran with the wrong crowd;

He started being sassy, mean, and cussed away out loud.

He hijacked cars, went into bars, and caused a lot of trouble;

The cricket got him betting on the wicked daily double.

Finally the Blue Fairy came down again to wonder

If she'd been mistaken and had pulled a major blunder.

Before she could do anything Pinocchio had grabbed her,

Stole her jewels and magic wand and then he gently stabbed her.

It wasn't long before the kid was running his own gang;

Geppeto prophesized that soon he'd surely have to hang.

But instead he was the head of business corporations

That sold and traded lots of things in many different nations.

To terrorists he sold good guns, to madmen atom bombs;

To hospitals he sold cheap drugs that had them singing psalms.

With cheap cement he built some schools that certainly would topple.

He was a guest on TV shows with people like Ted Koppel.

He got to be quite wealthy and respected and admired;

He had the cricket downsized and Geppeto he had fired.

Pinocchio Incorporated is a big concern;

With bonuses, the management has money they can burn.

On Wall Street now Pinocchio keeps bankers on their toes.

The secret to his power is . . . his nose no longer grows.

---

See all the ways you can stay connected to friends and family

Cinderella . . . the rest of the story

After Cinderella put the slipper on her foot

No longer did she labor in the ashes or the soot.

She moved into the Palace with the Prince right by her side.

Their wedding was most beautiful and everybody cried.

Her stepsisters remained at home, as ugly as could be,

Eating Haagen Dazs ice cream and watching the TV.

But strange to say the stepsisters began to really bloom,

And by their middle twenties they could light up any room.

A plastic surgeon helped them out, as well as liposuction.

They went to Paris for their gowns and haute cuisine instruction.

Meanwhile Cinderella had five children in a row;

She got a lot of wrinkles and her hips began to show.

The Prince turned out to be a bum with lots of drinking buddies,

Leaving Cinderella with the castle fuddy-duddys.

She started taking sleeping pills and flirting with the help.

She let herself go right to pot – her hair became like kelp.

One day when all the sleeping pills could not erase her sorrow,

She went to see her stepsisters, a jug of wine to borrow.

When she beheld their graceful lives, all elegance and chic,

She ran back to her castle with a grimace and shriek.

She told the executioner to rid her of their presence,

And burn the whole chalet right down with help from local peasants.

When the deed was over Cinderella felt quite fine.

Next she bumped her husband off with doctored-up moonshine.

She sent her kids to boarding school and reigned without remorse,

Raising all the taxes, waging war with awful force.

Finally the people threw her off her mighty throne,

And locked her in a dungeon where she perished all alone.

Let this be a lesson to those seeking their Prince Charming –

When our wishes are fulfilled, results can be alarming.

---

What can you do with the new Windows Live? Find out