n0jaa
12-21-2006, 05:14 PM
Here's an example of how (or how not) to take a nice poem like "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and turn it into a cerebral, verbose "sentiment" (?).
An Intellectual Night Before Christmas
It was the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as "Mus musculus". Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood-burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.
The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the herbaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.
Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus "Rangifer", piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power traveling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous than patriotic alarming predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath mystically through contractor labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen "Now Dasher, now Dancer ..." et al. - guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could easily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 pedal extremities.
As I retracted my cranium form its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost celerity and via a downward leap - entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the residue from the oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to the street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.
His orbs were scintillate with reflected luminosity, while his sub-maxillary dermal indentation gave every evidence of enjoying amiability. The capillaries of his rose mallow regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the colorations of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the "Prunus avim," or sweet cherry. His amusing sub -- and supra-labials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.
Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose gray fumes forming a tenuous ellipse about his occipital zones, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of pectin-infused fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less an abase, jocund, multigenerational gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from being so. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.
Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned articles with merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave taking, and forthwith affected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself up a short vector on to his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed.
But I overheard his parting exclamation, immediately prior to his ambulation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self-same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for salubriously beneficence and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn.
# #-- Author Unknown (probably a good thing!)
An Intellectual Night Before Christmas
It was the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as "Mus musculus". Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood-burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.
The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the herbaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.
Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus "Rangifer", piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power traveling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous than patriotic alarming predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath mystically through contractor labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen "Now Dasher, now Dancer ..." et al. - guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could easily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 pedal extremities.
As I retracted my cranium form its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost celerity and via a downward leap - entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the residue from the oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to the street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.
His orbs were scintillate with reflected luminosity, while his sub-maxillary dermal indentation gave every evidence of enjoying amiability. The capillaries of his rose mallow regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the colorations of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the "Prunus avim," or sweet cherry. His amusing sub -- and supra-labials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.
Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose gray fumes forming a tenuous ellipse about his occipital zones, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of pectin-infused fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less an abase, jocund, multigenerational gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from being so. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.
Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned articles with merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave taking, and forthwith affected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself up a short vector on to his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed.
But I overheard his parting exclamation, immediately prior to his ambulation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self-same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for salubriously beneficence and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn.
# #-- Author Unknown (probably a good thing!)