John Cowan has alerted me to this page of what its creator, Kevin Wald, calls “Some other things I’ve written. For the most part, these are parodies of various sorts.” John brought it to my attention, and I bring it to yours, because of the Philological Miscellany section, which will warm the heart of anyone who has ever dabbled in Indo-European studies. I’ll give you samples of “Cole Porter does Indo-European” (“In India they think it’s pleasin’/ To say all alike their e’s ‘n’/ Their a’s ‘n’ o’s./ Anything Goes”) and “Bartholomae, Grassman, and Grimm“:
The cowpokes who roamed the Urheimat
And worshipped a god called Dyeus P@ter
Used plenty of words (and not mime, ought
To mention) which spread just like butter.
A bunch of these seem to include a
Root *bheudh-; we believe this because
We have words like “bid”, “beadle” and “Buddha”,
And three very interesting laws!
Buddha, tell us!
Which of your stops should be heh-less?
We needn’t decide this by whim —
We’ve Bartholomae, Grassman, and Grimm!
…and let you go there for more, if such is your desire.
I detect some influence from Flann O’Brien: http://www.zcp.uni-bonn.de/. My favourite quote:
They rose in their nightshift
To write for the Zeitschrift,
Binchy and Bergin and Best.
As seen here in 2008!
A world full of Tom Lehrer fans is a happy place.
Wandering through old messages from that 2008 link, I came upon 2004’s “Downwalling”. A newspaper editor (who he was varies with the teller) supposedly once wrote in a memo: “If ‘upcoming’ appears in the paper once more, I will be downcoming and someone will be outgoing.” Irrelevant to the post’s point (and comments are closed), but funny anyway.