[Brian Allgar]

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.

[John Whitworth]

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.

[Roger Slater]

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.

[Roger Slater]

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).

[Brian Allgar]

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.

[John Whitworth]

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

[Jerome Betts]

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."

[John Whitworth]

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?

[Jerome Betts]

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.

[Brian Allgar]

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!