A Fine Line
Many limericks get their laughs out of schadenfreude (our rather objectionable tendency to feel pleasure at another’s misfortune). Such a one I wrote today:
An naïve, pure-hearted young vet
Found his clients became quite upset
When he first manifested
Conditions first tested
By Georges Albert Édouard Tourette.
To show just how slight a distinction there is between comedy and tragedy, I wrote an epilogue describing this poor guy’s later life. If this section is funny at all, it’s because of its very seriousness.
Thirty years on, and his debts
Are greater than all his regrets;
He garners his keep
On a farm, shearing sheep,
Hooked on gambling and light cigarettes.
Thanks again to the Limerick Database (see my earlier post about it) for both precipitating and facilitating my limerick writing!
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Tags: limericks, poetry, schadenfreude, writing
Fixed-Width Limerick
The Limerick database was set up by xkcd creator Randall Munroe, with the aim of re-popularising this often dirty, often clever form of poetry (originally popularised by Edward Lear).
The off-beat and nerdy tastes of his xkcd following is clear from the current three most popular limericks:
There was an old man
From Peru, whose lim’ricks all
Look’d like haiku. HeSaid with a laugh “I
Cut them in half, the pay is
Much better for two.”
A woman in liquor production
Owns a still of exquisite construction.
The alcohol boils
Through magnetic coils.
She says that it’s “proof by induction.”
A dying mosquito exclaimed,
“A chemist has poisoned my brain!”
The cause of his sorrow
Was para-dichloro-
Diphenyl-trichloroethane
I wanted to take the idea presented in the xkcd comic “Fixed Width” and apply it to Munroe’s newest creation, and after a fair amount of word-wrangling here’s the limerick I came up with:
Rob, an odd fellow, designs
Poems of equal-length lines
And he limericks with flair
As his forethought and care
Ensure a word count of 3 9s
Each line is 27 characters long – and on top of that, there are 27 words in total.
Writing a limerick that works well in spite of the triple restrictions of line length, word count and limerick metre was an interesting challenge. You can vote on it here, or check out the hundreds of other submissions at LimerickDB.com!
Update: #20 and rising on the LimerickDB Top 150 list…
Update II: #15…
Update III: #10…
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Tags: limericks, poetry, writing, xkcd
Irony: a motivational poster
Advisory: this “motivational” poster (made using Despair, Inc.‘s neat generator) is not suitable for the already depressed.
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Tags: depression, irony, motivational poster
Stick Figures
Modern masterpieces like xkcd, Animator vs Animation and the wonderful N game have proven the versatility of expression of the humble stick figure. The Fancy Pants Adventure can be added to this list of great works. Its brevity is the source of its wit, and the beautifully-animated main character (with the colour-changing pants) the source of its immense charm.
EDIT: now links to the Kongregate version of the Fancy Pants Adventure.
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Tags: flash, games, xkcd
FreeRice
Vocabulary games and fighting world hunger: mutually exclusive? Apparently not.
FreeRice has two goals:
- Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
- Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
[...]
For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger.
Play FreeRice now, and help feed the world’s poorest people.
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Tags: charity, games, language, poverty
Serbs’ serves lead to -victory.
Both Australian Australian Open contenders (1, 2) have been knocked out by Serbs with names ending in “-vic”. A conspiracy? Perhaps not: research has shown that nearly all Serbian tennis players have names ending in “-vic”.
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Tags: tennis
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
Hello world! Welcome to this blog. This is my first post. Please skip over it so you can get to some real content!
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