Washington Post - limericks by 20 August
 

I'd forgotten about this one, which no one else seems to have mentioned. The closing date is 20th August - a bit tight, but it gives you the weekend.

The subject is to compose a limerick featuring a word beginning with the letters eq- to ez-.

Here's the link:

http://bit.ly/inv983

And here's the smut that I've come up with so far.


A dentist declared an aversion
To sex, whether straight or perversion.
He confessed: “When in action,
I’m great at extraction,
But never quite mastered insertion.”

A young English rake, Cheam-and-Suttony,
Was erotically guilty of gluttony;
He seduced a spring lamb,
Then he bedded her dam,
But the latter he found rather muttony.

There was a young girl from Stoke Poges
Who yearned, with excitement, to know jizz;
Fellation with Denis
Provided, in Venice,
A fountain as big as the Doge’s.

A lovely young miss from East Anglia
Had piercings progressively danglier.
Her lover said “Hell,
I’m exploring a bell!
Can there be a vagina that’s janglier?”

An exquisite lady from Gloucester
Told a fellow who tried to accoucester:
“Though I’m busy today,
If you’re willing to pay,
Then tomorrow, you’ll be on my roucester.”

There was a young lady from Dallas
Whom suitors found frigid and callous.
She explained, “I was tickled
By Jack, so I’ve pickled
The late-presidential phallus.”

A stripper in theatres off-limit-y
Wore costumes constructed from dimity.
When they asked “Aren’t you hot?”,
She replied “No, I’m not”
As she shed them with great equanimity.

A horse-loving bimbo called Nancy
Went riding, though sozzled and antsy.
This careless equestrian
Killed a pedestrian -
Now she’s the prisoners’ fancy.

It's a challenge. I'm going to try to produce three.

After so many years immorality
Would I really enjoy immortality?
I'm at sixes and sevens,
Since fucking in Heaven's
An unlikely eventuality.

Well, that's one.

Eye-candy and randy beckon in the distance. Is eye-candy a word?

For seventy years he's been randy
For various kinds eye-candy.
He's in like a stoat,
The disgusting old goat..


Hum!


If there's ever an orifice handy.

Needs buffing up a bit but not bad. That's two.

I enjoyed them all, but please be aware that you are not going to win with the overtly dirty ones. There's no way they are going to publish John's "fucking" limerick even if it's the funniest one they receive. Some of Brian's may be clean enough, but several are not. They all have a chance of being in the judge's blog (the Conversational), where she often posts entries that were too dirty to be in the paper. This isn't to say that suggestiveness is verboten, but you have to play it right. Potty humor is fine, but don't say "crap," for example. And dirtiness that takes a moment's thought to process, so it wouldn't be immediately understood by the typical 13-year old boy, can slip by.

It's a hard standard to apply. Brian's dentist limerick could possibly make it through, being very funny, not using any "bad" words, requiring a bit of thought to process, and being based on pun. (Puns are definitely smiled upon by the judge, though not at all essential). But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if it were deemed too dirty. It could be one of the winners that is posted only online but not run in the paper.

Check out last year's winners. (Brendan finished second). You'll notice that the winning limerick did allude somewhat to sex, but isn't "dirty," and most of the rest are clean as can be. Before you say clean can't be funny in a limerick, consider the #3 winner by Stephen Gold as a refutation:

A mathematician named Fry
Was the shape of a sphere. When asked why,
He replied, “That’s abstruse,
But I roundly educe
My circumference follows from pie.”

And Ann Martin's #4 limerick is also clean and very clever;

Anatomical study will show
That five letters are all you need know:
The ELBOW is placed
Somewhere over the waist,
While the BOWEL is found down BELOW.

Both Stephen and Ann are UK denizens, by the way.

PS--
You don't just have the weekend. You have all day Monday as well, right until midnight (and, I suppose, a few extra hours if you're in UK time).

Roger, I'm well aware that the slightest suggestion of real life won't get by the Washington Post censors, but I was enjoying myself too much to worry about that. Indeed, I acknowledged at the outset that what I'd come up with was (mainly) smut. But frankly, given the stakes involved, I'm just as happy to appear in the 'Conversational' section as in the 'Puritanical'.

Moreover,

Though words in my hands are like putty,
These limericks drive me quite nutty -
It’s exceedingly hard
For the properest bard
To invent one that doesn’t turn smutty.

There are very few memorable limericks that aren't filthy. The only one I can think of is this one by Robert Conquest.

There once was a Marshal called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in
The Grand Marshal Stalin did ten in.

Of course if it's simply a matter of the word we can always bowdlerise it.

Since sex up in Heaven's

Do thirteen-year-old boys really read the papers in America? Over here they barely read anything at all unless the text is illustrated

So is this clean enough?

Towns today smell a little bit sweeter
Than those of the past with a fetor
Due to privies or closets
Full of unflushed deposits
Of that troublesome product, excreta.

Or this?

An artist whose forte was sketching
Any scene that would make a good etching
Said, "I'm saddened to find
In the popular mind
My prints are a prelude to leching."

Well, I don't know, Jerome - you write a limerick about shit and then you ask if it is clean enough. Do I smell some English IRONY here?

Ironic, moi? It has never entered my soul.

Voters greet you with Boo ! mixed with Yah ! ?
Change your accent, it's too la-di-da.
To avoid the 'posh' label
Use a plain desk or table
And get rid of that damned escritoire.

Ah, but John, as Roger pointed out, it's all in the words used. If Jerome had used the word 'shit', his entry would certainly be going down the toilet of history. But with luck, many readers will think that "Excreta" means someone who emigrated from Crete.

P.S. I like your first two - keep 'em coming!

Said Pat Myers, “Now who is this toff
Who fills with ‘excreta ’ his trough?
I’m willing to betcher he
Next writes of lechery ...
Bingo! So all Betts are off.”

And here is my chaste muse.


My poetry's all Esperanto.
Pray listen! I'll give you a canto.
According to some
it's a pain in the bum,
But to me it's as good as a panto.

Two winners for sure!

Thanks, Roger! Was surprised to find 'fetor' is the same in both our countries. I'd suspected, before a COD check, we spelt (or spelled) it 'foetor'. You live and learn.

John, you prompt the question whether Esperanto lends itself to verse and whether anyone has actually produced any.

Not sure I agree that there are very few memorable limericks that aren't filthy. The ones that pop up in my mind in the small hours are anodyne golden oldies like

There once was a plesiosaurus
Who lived when the earth was all porous
But it fainted with shame
When it first heard its name
And departed long ages before us.

Or

There was an old man of Peru
Who found he had nothing to do
So he sat on the stairs
And counted his hairs
And found he had seventy-two.

As for the algarythm . . . we shall see. :D

Indeed there is a sizeable corpus of work in Esperanto. There laureate, as it were, is a chap called William Auld. It's a bit like writing poetry in Lallans, a language no-one speaks or ever has spoken, or Cornish. Is there Cornish poetry? A REALLY Borges-like project would be to invent a language out of nothing, publish a dictionary, and then write the poetry. There ought to be an Arts-Council grant for that one - except that it would require considerable labour, and not a little intelligence, which rather puts it out of court as an Arts project.

Here is a poem by Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto.

Ho, mia kor', ne batu maltrankvile,
El mia brusto nun ne saltu for!
Jam teni min ne povas mi facile,
Ho, mia kor'!

Ho, mia kor'! Post longa laborado
Ĉu mi ne venkos en decida hor'?
Sufiĉe! trankviliĝu de l' batado,
Ho, mia kor'!

Esperanto, as you can see, is not produced arbitrarilly out of nothing. Indeed I can almost understand this without the crib which you can find on the internet.

I think this one is by John Ciardi. Hard to beat for lims based on words in this alphabetical range:

There was a young man with a rod
Who thought he'd been chosen by G-d
To exercise hell
From the girls. He meant well,
But the thunder said, "Exorcise, clod!"

John, it does almost deviate into sense, no doubt because of the Latin/Romance roots which make Esperanto seem a bit unfair to learners from other language families.

Cornish is a bit opaquer, though:

An lavar coth yu lavar gwyr
Byth dorn re ver dhe'n tavas re hyr,
Mes den hep tavas a-gollas y dyr.

As for the Borges-like project, haven't the trekkies already done something like this with Klingon?

Tolkien, of course, invented not one but several languages, and 'The Lord of the Rings' contains poems in Elvish (which are rather beautiful), in the hideous Black Speech of Mordor, and possibly others that I have forgotten. I don't know whether he actually produced a dictionary, but the languages are described in great detail, and are very convincing.

Is there Klingon poetry, Jerome? I'll look it up. I have done so. I fear it fails to grip. This one is about books.

jIH paqmey bang

chaH Depmey ‘et yIn

Hovvam pov

jevam vaj Hu’

ghorgh SIS je peD pum

joq ghorgh getlhpagh langbe’

eg je ghorgh chaH pa’vaj

Warning - XXX rated
 

Oddly enough, Jerome, when I was looking for a name for my computer company*, a friend suggested 'Allgarithms', although I didn't use it. (He also suggested 'Debuggers', but I didn't use that one either.)

* That makes it sound rather grander than it is. Actually, it's a one-man consulting company in which I am director, sole employee, and general dogsbody. What's more, my f***ing boss won't give me a pay-rise.

Here's where the prudish should leave. You have been warned.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roger, do you think this one would get through?

“My sex life is over!” cries Dobson,
Distraught, as my shoulder he sobs on.
“My splendid tumescence is
Marred by excrescences -
Who’d suck a knob that has knobs on?”

Not a chance.

That's what I thought. It probably wouldn't even make it to the Conversational. Yet (context apart) there isn't a rude word in it.

When the Democrats cry "tax-evasion"
with no semblance of justification,
those of you who think nobly can
chalk it up to Republican
arithmetic prestidigitation.

You've heard of the famous equestrian
who thought she would look rather sexy in
no clothes, so we're told,
whereupon she caught cold,
and the eye of each passing pedestrian.



The fate of this bird has been linked
to behavior that's rather distinct:
It would not copulate
with so ugly a mate,
and that's why the dodo's extinct.

The Dodo is excellent, Marion!

Yes, Marion. Both your limericks are definitely contenders. Send them in by midnight! (Not important, but you might want to put the e-word in boldface when you submit).

Roger, since we were all (including Bill Greenwell, the setter of the competition) well and truly "had" by the New Statesman over the film titles minus one letter, and there are huge numbers of funny but spurned entries sitting around here, had you thought of proposing it to Pat at the Washington Post?

Though on reflection, as it was Bill's competition, you would probably need to make sure that he has no objection to your doing so. He may have his own Machiavellian scheme for recycling it.

Good idea. They've done very similar contests, but perhaps not this particular variant. I'll suggest it.