Logo for Joe Pivetti dot Com Website       Newer than the Ewer of Doodles (3)
Schoooner or Later



Afore a yarn, and to wet his lips somewhat,
A tired old man unshived a scuttlebutt.
He ladled out a mighty cold swill,
Drank up, and began this tale.
"We be racked by a gale.
We reached and we ran
Out across a tempestuous sill.
Then be it still; betime she lay in irons.
We unbrailed and swigged up more sail,
Up close to the hounds and the bibbs.
But a strong flaw popped a gib
And we untillered into a skerry allision abeam -
Despite a fast aback by the team.
Well, we 'ad to kedge off a bit
With a rode and a killick.
We opened the scuppers and limbers
And manned the bailers and pails.
Our Cap'n and bos'n hollered
Fer the gadget to watch o'er the wales...
Hopin' that we'd hold fer a trick."

"The deck be rent and come proud
Such that haulin' a gaff apeak allowed
A batten and carling test for yer feet.
Oh, yarr, we sure be beat...
And with me under the weather.
But we got to work together.
We laid some cargo out on the deck
With a snorter or two for a check
Without garbling and aft of a dodger it be.
Then we steeved the richest into the cuddy.
Then we swayed up the lines,
Stepped o'er the ballantines,
Untallied the sheets and wung out the sails,
And scudded on a new run and saw...
We must outfoot a yare spanker
That had come about from a brume with the law."

Atop the binnacle I could see when we
Took to a rhumb friendlier than the rest.
And finally we found haven from that stormy sea.
There a mate tossed out a hockle abreast
And played it out to the bitter end
Before it be taken up by matelots of men.
We hauled alongside their bumboat of a dink
So's we might tap the slush fund for salt horse
And rations of new rum to drink.
After the fare came up the brow,
Or by way of the bouse,
We had a fare samplin'
Such that the ship's chippy
Got sideways to a bumpkin.
He burst into staggerin' rage and racket
And with boom vang and becket
He went to war with a tar
Who came to arms with a long spritted crance.
They injured the crew more than themselves
And after their dance...
They had the devil to pay.
It was that or the captain's daughter.
So o'er a hull they went athwart her
With beetle and loggerhead
To seal the unsealable seam
And drink their fill of the sea.
'Avast' called our mate of dread
When he saw they'd be awash
Afore he thought they'd atoned fully.
So he took a bight around each limb fast,
Stretched 'em across a bitt
And gave 'em the bimmy
(Till they was soft, baggywrinkly
And not worth a brit)."

I was that tar and I went
Over and ashore in a trice
When that ship was careened,
Unstepped and unbent.
I'm here to tell ya in shame
That I've nothin to show
For twenty years 'fore the mast.
Not a cringle or clew to me name.
But I'll never be pooped again
For that mate's starter is me end."
He cut off his queue and said
"This will have to stead as me bottomry
And ye'll do me right handsomely
If ye might pipe me down
To rest 'neath a heavy groin
With the foam of a torrid overfall nearby.
There where I might go full and by
Not down to Davy Jones' locker,
But with spindrift up to that taunt aerie;
Which'll be the final nest for this ol' lubberly sailor."

Here is a link to a glossary of nautical terms
Siesta Del Toro

          

A bull dozer lay under a shade tree.
Horning in on the action was he.
So I decided to to discontinue my afternoon nap
And give that good for nothing a rap...
On the knuckles but I couldn't locate said place.
So I decided a bucket of ice water to the face
Might just as well get him off of my spot
Because where he was, wasn't so hot.
But I forgot to remove the couple of bottles of beer
So I ended up with a rather startled steer.
La niveladora es muy loco y muy feroz,
Which is going to keep me from a decent doze
Of my own, so what am I gonna do
With a half ton of whirling fury and lots of moo.
Toro, oh toro, I sang as I tried to calm him down -
Before I asked the bull to quietly leave town.
He pawed the earth and bellowed;
He was an unhappy fellow.
But he caught sight of the heifers
Down in a meadow full of clover
And judged the better part of valor is discretion
And left me to my shady closed eyed reflection.
Reservation for a Byte

   

A digital word has byte endianess:
Little-endian numeric significance increases with address
(Opposite of the order Big-endian employs);
Therefore, 01 big-endian equals 10 little-endian [boy!].

The Lilliputian emperor mandated a soft boiled eggshell
Be opened only from the little end, and so
The big endians all fled to the isle of Blefusco
Where they could crack the code without quell.

Big Blue was big-endian and little-endian was Intel;
Some codes are  mixed-endian, middle-endian or bi-endian as well.
Old ARM processors had half little-endian/half big-endian floating point representation
But CANopen parameters are little-endian with no reservation.

Early endianess issues resulted in the NUXI rift,
But there is no endian problem while in a TIFF
Because a reader can swap bytes
Depending upon some explicit signature sites.

Bit endianess is for transmission order over a serial medium
[And if you should enjoy your breakfast news drier],
Berkeley socket functions can convert protocol host order over wire
[But such unusual little bitty handling can be an awful tedium].

Thankfully, a byte order mark signals the endianess of a stream
And that puts teeth into the ending of this "bye endian" scheme.
Does It Matter?



There's lots of room in intergalactic space,
So it's rare when two hydrogen atoms arrive at the same place;
Especially two of opposite spin.
So be it, and barring unusual magnetism,
They will form a para-hydrogen bond to mate;
Entering into a singlet state.
Their home is of a cold and vacuous norm,
Keeping them in a diatomic solid form.
Such is the stable life of our most prevalent
Universal constituent.
Tao, Dao or I Ching?



"You must know the whey
Before you take up curd today,"
Said the chi elder
To his disciple cheese-maker.
"Before you can spoil the milk
With the caseiculture creamery ilk
You must seek an internal bacterial amalgamation
And initiate rennet based coagulation
Followed by brining and moulding
To be truly bleu and well for the mongering."
Driving through the woods



I'm a driver for hire,
A wedge to espouse,
An iron in the fire,
And still I putter around the house...
Until the fairway woods look nice.
I'm not fit to a tee
To topper, to hook or to slice;
Still I caddy about without pity.
I'm no birdie, eagle or ace
Flying around to the right place.
I'm more like a bogie than a par
So I'm yet to be on the pro-am radar.

Still I'll stamp a bit, address the ball,
Call fore and recall
That chunking a flat shot might be tough
To float from the rough.
If my divot's the size of a crop
Just gimme a mulligan or a drop.
Knowing me, I might lie in a funk or
In a hazardous bunker.
But still, a bladed shot might broach
A dead handed approach
To the green
At hole number nineteen.

It's not a chippie so please abide
And let me break it from the high side.
I don't mean to brag
But pick up your marker and pull that old flag,
Man, because though I'm away,
I'll one-putt it in this day
Like I'm a Golden Bear or a Shark,
Six under, down at the Scotch park.

Jude and I



I met the gardener of Eden
And our mammoth love
Rose from lake and forest
To a height well above
What joy alone might send.
We donned wedding garb and then...
We yachted off to a Little Inn on the Bay,
Then flew on to Yassua island the next day.
We were there for some kava and a Fiji Baby toast.
We enjoyed the bonfire, private isle and "bugs" the most.

Love, peace and happiness with my wife,
And a post-Cambrian explosion of life,
Nurtured in our surf city abode.
Now our love soars in eagle mode.
My heart is ever blooming
With the sweet scent of roses and jasmine,
And it's growing stronger with the TLC
That I so believe
Is the best that a man could receive.

Et maintenant, je célèbre l'anniversaire cuivre
À Montréal, avec ma belle épouse
Qui es mon seul amour pour la vie,
Comme je l'ai toujours envie de tu aimer
Mon amour, mon Judi.

[And now, I celebrate our copper anniversary
In Montreal, with my beautiful wife
Who is my only love for life,
As I always want to love you
My love, my Judi
.]




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"Swaging steel is a long drawn out process."
- Solomon Tall (7/4/2016)

"The chief engineer's concern is drawing bridges to heaps of wampum."
- Solomon Tall (7/21/2016)

more Tall-isms here



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