The twenty most often viewed Whales over the full year of 2020, according to my web statistics, in order of popularity (except that I reversed the first two so that you could read them in order). The one at the top has not many more views than the one at the bottom. There are thousands of Whales to choose from, after all.
I draw lessons from this list. First, I should write more poems. Second, I should have given up after about 2004. Or does history always overshadow the present?
3 May 1992 | Yeah, I wanted to go burn down some buildings too. But then I remembered how long the future is. |
4 May 1992 | Not enough circuses. |
25 February 2001 | If we could learn only from people who knew more than us, there would be no people who knew more than us. |
14 May 2018 |
How Long Before We Return to This Debate?
Dove: It can’t be won! |
30 November 2001 |
Oh say, can you see, by the light’s early dawn, That daring young man on the flying dugong? There seldom is spurred a less probable bird Till Willie comes home from the war! |
13 October 2004 |
Proposed New Air Force Motto
Ours is not to reason why. |
28 April 2001 |
Thank you, Sappho. Thanks for the gorgeous stanza. Thanks for dropping down in a whir of wings to Bless the free-verse age with expensive doodads. How did you ever
Find a way to write in Aeolic Greek that
Say the white implacable textbook authors, |
21 February 2001 |
If the only tool you have is a hammer:
A. Every problem begins to resemble a screw. |
27 March 1999 |
The Serbian Ethnic Cleansing Song
Let the firebrand awake! |
15 April 2001 |
This, Now, This Is A Double Dactyl
Higgledy piggledy
Misunderestimate! |
10 July 2001 |
A Note to Artificial Language Designers
Put out your eyes as if they were a fire. |
10 December 2005 |
Lunch comes in at the mouth, And weight goes onto the thighs, And all we learned in our youth Is hatred of exercise. I lift my fork to my mouth, While reaching for the fries. |
30 March 2007 |
Beauty has teeth, teeth beauty; farewell, wits, That’s all you know as you are torn to bits. |
6 December 2003 |
Oompa Loompa Land Located In North Korea
Itsy, Bitsy, Tiny and Few,
What do you get when you conquer the Earth?
Itsy, Bitsy, Tiny and Bomb, |
11 September 2008 |
Her caloric makes her hot, but cholera makes her skinny. I don’t think I would call her a lot, but I might call her a ninny.
In fact, I’d collar a collie’s flea |
22 March 2003 |
The Ballad Of Frightening Small Children, Or,
Better Loud Noises In The Night Than Secret Police
Over the hills and over,
To George it is for the voters.
There are the flames of Baghdad, |
10 January 2001 |
The ancient Greeks still hold the world championship of making up words for figures of speech. Metaphor and simile and metonymy and synecdoche are a drop in the bucket of the dawn of the very start of the list. I mean, they had a word for distracting the teacher from your bad haircut by saying that the llama ate your homework.
My principle is to make everything as funny as possible, but not funnier. I wrestle daily with sinewy questions like, “What’s a bigger hoot, string cheese hysteria or nuclear brain fungus?” I want every Daily Whale to be like a chapter in a John Sladek novel. When you read it it’s funny, then when you think about it it’s funnier. Let me explain what I’m explaining here. Diaporesis, from yesterday’s so-called clue, is pretended doubt. |
8 November 2016 |
Squirming and squirming in the brightening glare, The public hears an executioner; They’re not sure who; the center is long gone; Extremism is loose like Genghis Khan; The best are unconvinced, although the worst Say that they are on balance unconvicted.
I think there’s something scary going on. |
16 April 2001 |
You know when actors get it down cold? Get it down too cold, and it’s icy.
The same goes for everything else. The people who have the most fun are those who’ve never figured life out. |
21 February 1992 | Where stupidity is not allowed, it becomes obligatory. |
the Daily Whale copyright 1992-2021 Jay J.P. Scott <jay@satirist.org>