05 June 2007

Apropos of nothing in particular

According to Healy Willan, there are three kinds of limericks:

- Limericks for women and children;

- Limericks for the clergy; and,

- Limericks.

Limericks have always been a favourite of your humble e-scribbler. They allow for a certain verbal ingenuity to fit a humorous and ribald comment within a confining structure. Fitting the most meaning into the smallest space is a challenge.

If memory serves, Craig Welsh once wrote a column in the old Express lambasting the city council for appointing a poet laureate. He received an e-scribbled original limerick on the subject and true to his name never bothered to reply.

All of this is merely an introduction to a simple limerick that serves to point the uselessness of some people's use of figures to support an argument. It's funny too, and for those of gentle disposition, definitely in Willan's third category of the five-lined poem.

There once was a young man named Paul,
Who had a hexagonal ball.
The sum of its weight,
plus his penis, times eight,
was two thirds of three fifths of fuck all.

-srbp-