IJMC - Literary Criticism

Ok, tonight is one of those bad nights. My head hurts and my body aches
and I am tired all over. At eight pm. Now then, if that was all, I would
not even bother to mention it. I have been tired before, as many of you
know. However, I wake up tomorrow morning to go to my first root
canal. Followed by work immediately after. Oh yeah, I got so much to look
forward to in going to sleep...gotta do it though, so g'night. Wish me
luck, I hear these root canals hurt like a turkey the day before
Thanksgiving...well, maybe not that bad. Oi.                        -dave



  H.W. Longfellow

 Listen, my children, don't dare ignore,
 The midnight actions of Bush and Gore
 In early November, the year ought-ought,
 Hard to believe the mess they wrought.

 Two billion bucks of campaign bounty
 All came down to Palm Beach County.
 What result cold have been horrider
 Than the situation we found in Florider?

     Ogden Nash:

 I regret to admit that all my knowledge is
 What I learned at Electoral Colleges,
 So tell me please, though I hate to troubya,
 Will the winner be Al, or will it be Dubya?

 Dr. Seuss takes a look at election officials:

 I cannot count them in a box
 I cannot count them with a fox
 I cannot count them by computer
 I will not with a Roto-Rooter
 I cannot count them card-by-card
 I will not 'cause it's way too hard
 I cannot count them on my fingers,
 I will not while suspicion lingers.
 I'll leave the country in a jam=AF
 I can't count ballots, Sam-I-Am.

 Edgar Allen Poe is his usual gloomy self:

 Once upon a campaign dreary, one which left us weak and weary
 O'er many a quaint and curious promise of political lore
 While we nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a yapping,
 As of some votes overlapping, energy-zapping to the core
 "Tis a mess here," we all muttered, as the network anchors stuttered,
 Stuttered over Bush and Gore.

 Could there be another election with such a case of misdirection, yet
 fraught with tension to the core? Quoth the ravers, "Nevermore."

 Britain's Edward Lear's limerick is lighter:

 There once was a U. S. election
 That called for some expert detection:
 How thousands of pollers
 Could become two holers
 Like outhouses of recollection

 Joyce Kilmer's a media analyst:

 I thought that I would never see
 The networks all so up a tree.

 Walt Whitman is lyrical, as always:

 O' Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip's not done
 The ship has weather'd every rack, but nobody knows who's won.

 Alfred Noyes rhythmically rumbles:

 And still of an autumn night they say, with the White House on the line,
 When the campaign's a ghostly galleon and both candidates cry, "'Tis
 mine!"

 When the road is a ribbon of ballots, all within easy reach,
 A highwayman comes riding,
 Riding,
 Riding,
 A highwayman comes riding and punches two holes in each.

 Clement Moore adopts a holiday theme:

 'Twas the month before Christmas, when all through the courts,
 all the plaintiffs made stirring bad ballot reports.

 Which leaves the problem:

 Perhaps the best way to stop complaints that are raucous is
 start over again, with the Iowa caucuses.