Let’s say, hypothetically, that your weight has drifted up a smidge, and you decide to cut back on the calories and ramp up your exercise program. Of course, you will need constant positive reinforcement. You adjust your diet to cut out everything bad and increase the vegetables. You drink tons more water. Everything feels good. You suit up in your shorts and your good-luck tee shirt. You climb on your exercise bike for a good first-day workout. And the seat post breaks under your fat tuchas and you fall to the floor in tears. Can the Haagen Dazs be far behind?

According to today’s NYT, Peloton is recalling over 2 million of its exercise bikes due to numerous reports of breaking seat posts. Ouch! Not only are all the fat tuchases tumbling to the ground — the company’s stock price plunged 9% immediately, and more than 20% over the past month.

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In today’s puzzle, the clue at 55A was “Portmanteau structure built from discarded cans,” and the answer was BEERAMID. Here’s one (burp!).

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Edward Lear was born on this date in 1812 in a suburb of London. He wrote a nonsense book (!), and was considered a master of limericks. Master schmaster — I checked on the limericks and they’re just not funny. He seems not to appreciate that the last line is supposed to be a kicker of some sort. Here’s a typical pair:

There was an Old Person of Dean,
Who dined on one pea and one bean;
For he said, “More than that
Would make me too fat,”
That cautious Old Person of Dean.

There was an Old Person of Dover,
Who rushed through a field of blue Clover;
But some very large bees,
Stung his nose and his knees,
So he very soon went back to Dover.

Amirite?

Alright, so to hell with the limericks. He also wrote The Owl and the Pussycat. Here are lines 27-33. They contain the word “runcible,” which he just made up (he did that a lot), and is now included in many dictionaries.

They dined on mince and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Lear was so good at drawing animals and birds that he got a job with the London Zoological Society. Here’s one of his works.

He lived on Lord Stanley’s estate and entertained the children with his silly stories and verses. That’s how his Book of Nonsense came about, which was published in 1846 and sold very well. According to Wikipedia, Lear was known to introduce himself with a long pseudonym: “Mr. Abebika kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto phashyph,” or “Chakonoton the Cozovex Dossi Fossi Sini Tomentilla Coronilla Polentilla Battledore & Shuttlecock Derry down Derry Dumps.”

Lear never married. The closest he came was two marriage proposals he made, both to the same woman, who was 46 years younger than him. Seriously, Lear? Later in life he relied for companionship on his Albanian chef, Giorgis (who he said was a terrible chef), and his (Lear’s) beloved cat Foss. Lear died in Sanremo, Liguria, Italy, in1888 at age 75, when the seat post on his exercise bike broke. [No it didn’t.]

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It is also the birthday of Rosellen Brown today: Happy 84th! Brown attended Brandeis as a Woodrow Wilson fellow after graduating from Barnard in 1960. She met her husband at Brandeis, on the kosher line. [I made up that last part.] They were both strongly motivated by humanitarian concerns and moved down to Mississippi to teach at Tougaloo College near Jackson, a mostly Black school, for a while.

Much of Brown’s writing concerns race. Her most successful novel, Civil Wars (1984), features an unlikely pair of civil rights activists—wife Jessie, a Jewish New Yorker, and husband Teddy, a renegade liberal Southerner—whose lives are altered when they take in Teddy’s spoiled and bigoted nephew and niece after their parents die when the seat posts on their exercise bikes break. [I can’t seem to let go.]

Her novel Before and After was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson.

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It was a long day. Good night! There will be more nonsense to mine tomorrow, God willing.