Clerihew!

Let Me Tell You What It's Not
It might sound like one of the Golden Age of detective fiction's upper-class anti-heroes, on a par with Raffles, that is, a criminal with a heart of gold.  Well it's not.
     Again, it may sound like one of the heroes of Anglo-Saxon sagas, a mighty-thewed warrior wielding a formidable sword, stalking and tackling various chimera.
     Well, it's not!
     It is a kind of nonsense verse, invented by E. Clerihew Bentley, who was British, as we have long gifted the world with literary wonders and significantly less worthy fripperies.  The rhyme scheme is AABB, the first line introduces a famous person, and it has no proper metre.  Nor is it sensible.  Conrad came across a few amusing exampled last night and would like to put forward one for your appreciation:

Sir Christopher Wren

Said "I am going to dine with some men.

If anyone calls

Say I am designing Saint Paul's."

     For those of you unfamiliar with British idiom, Sir Chris was a famed seventeenth century architect, who designed Saint Paul's Cathedral.  Art?

An impressive pile, eh?

     I think I shall set myself a challenge today, to come up with a clerihew of my own.  Rhyming nonsense - shouldn't be too hard!
     Well, I come back to you a good 12 hours later and I have two gems of jocosity.

Alexander Graham Bell

Had an offensive smell

What can you expect from a dope

Who invented telephones instead of soap?

Sir Edmund Hillary

Often used a pillory.

He said "It's good for the neck

Before a mountain-conquering trek."

     Lest this be a bit too British for you - although how can such a thing be? - let me explain that Sir Ed (with Sherpa Tensing) was the first man to ascend to the top of Mount Everest.  And a pillory was a punishment device.  Art?

'Ere ere's a mountaineer.

The Irony, It Burns, Folds, Spindles And Mutilates
Still reading "Angel Meadow" by Dean Kirby, which puts the skids under any concept of The Good Old Days.  Greased frictionless polycarbon skids at that.  Poverty, squalor, disease, violence, alcohol and more violence.  All the things that made Victorian Britain great!
     Frederich Engels, the communist philosopher, spent time in the Meadow and, although his reportage is cool and formal, he was plainly aghast at what he saw.
     You also have to wonder how bad conditions were in Ireland as the big Irish community in the Meadow would literally prefer to starve there rather than go back home.

The much-improved Irk today

     Then!  you have the River Irk, although this is a misnomer, as "River" implies water, whereas the Irk consisted mostly of flowing liquid sewage.  In drought it was immobile liquid sewage.  Slum landlords had built perilously close to the Irk - only 6 feet separated river from housing, as well as being built well below the water level.  Flooding was a very real risk, and - I shall allow your imagination to complete the picture.

Back To "Bleeding Edge" By Thomas Pynchon
Another in a series of occasional explicatories for those of us not intimately familiar with South Canadian pop culture, and also to check whether Ol' Tom is not making stuff up.  He's pretty sly like that; puts on a convincing facade of realism only for it to be REVEALED! as pure fiction.  Like the Trystero in <Mister Hand intervenes to efface a painfully sub-sophomoric treatise that the world is better off without>
     So!  
     "Zooey Chu": not, as Conrad imagined, anything remotely connected to cobblers.  Nor zoos, although that was definitely a long way second.  No, this is a company that designs and makes seats for commercial use - look, these stack 8 high, or 20 with the optional trolley!
     "Otto Zapf":  Sounds like a refugee from Buck Rodgers.  Wrong!  This may be a coincidence, although knowing Ol' Tom like I do, I doubt any such thing.  Another company that makes chairs.

There.  A chair

     "Credenza": Technically, a sideboard.  In the BE context, a company that makes sideboards.  There is a theme developing here.  You may have noticed.
     "Wells Notice":  A letter that the Securities Exchange Commission ends to those it intends to take enforcement action against.  Conrad cannot quite grasp this concept; if you are going to investigate rampant skullduggery, or malicious malfeasance, surely you silently accumulate evidence and then POUNCE ON THEM FROM BEHIND WITHOUT WARNING!
     Of course that may just be me.

Much more interesting!
And, no, I don't care that it has nothing to do with the article.

     "Hamptons":  An area on Long Island's South Fork habituated by the well-heeled, which is Conrad's understated British way of saying "Millionaires Row".  The opposite end to New York City, which is mildly amusing and ironic in equal parts.

And we have hit count!  Well done me!

And Remember -
BOOJUM! - fighting the Winged Werewolf for 370 years -

It's a tricky job, they can dodge really well.