Limericks

Cephalopod Awareness Day

I missed it (by Australian time). October 8th was International Cephalopod Awareness Day. Not having much time, I've collected some of the cephalopod poems I'd written for PhaWRONGula.

An Awdl Gywydd for Pharyngula: Firefly squid

Skin-deep creatures, rage the night,
Flaunt your brightness to excess;
Flashing features, star-like, proud,
Show the crowd your nightclub dress.

A Lehrerian tango for Pharyngula: More cephalopod art

Dim the lights for a tantric temptation;
Feel this rhythm of writhing elation;
Great Ones watch us askance as the night bids us dance
And the music demands the tentacle tango.

All alone in your tank, are you sighing?
Let me taste every tear that you're dyeing;
Feel the lure of my charms; leave your marks on my arms;
Come to me, and we'll trip the tentacle tango.

As I fondle each sensuous sucker
Is it out of the question to pucker?
Your rapturous grip makes each dance step a trip
When we dance, beak to cheek, the tentacle tango.

Though my friends say I'm wasting my life on
A wet bag with eight legs and a siphon,
Still I'm lost without trace in your tactile embrace
Every time we attempt the tentacle tango.

A limerick for Pharyngula: Cirrate octopus

They're luminous, leggy and lissome,
In diaphanous drag. Don't dismiss 'em.
You see, I'm a sucker
For 'podes when they pucker,
But I can't find the courage to kiss 'em.

And some double-dactyls:

Re: Pharyngula: "los diablos rojos"?

Rudyly-skewdily
Tabloid Canadian
Libels the Humboldt with
Fishermen's tales,

Marking himself as a
Cephalopodophobe—
First to be food when the
Old one prevails.

Re: Pharyngula: Cephalopod gnashers

Buccally-luckily
Two-spot the octopus
Suckers his snacks with his
Tangly physique,

Munching his meals with a
Macho-mandibular
Chitinous crab-opening
Muscle-bound beak.

Re: Pharyngula: God hates squid

Lexegete-flexegete,
Answers in Genesis
Claims that an octopus
Is not alive;

This is great news, 'cause their
Masturbiblationry
Lore will allow undead
Squid-men to thrive.

Re: Pharyngula: Florid squid prose

Squiddily-diddily
Gigas (Dosidicus),
Migrating north from its
Home in the deep,

Causes reporters to
H.P.Lovecraftily
Paint purple prose while the
Old guy's asleep.

Just sing!

Thoreau thought it patently wrong,
Most men's days are distressingly long,
Filled with dull desperation;
They face expiration
Without giving breath to their song.

Flauting

A wandering woman in Spain
Sought limericks to help her stay sane,
But they curled in her cortex
And formed a verse vortex
That drained the remains of her brain.

Arrr! Me daughter's birthday

Dearest daughter, from me and yer mum,
May yer birthday be comfortably numb,
And yer friends have the grace
To keep out o' yer face
While ye'r mournin' the end o' the rum.

IED = Idiocy Exploiting Device

Chicken Licken looks up at the skies
And finds Mooninites: bombs in disguise!
How safe do you feel
When the guys at the wheel
Are too frightened to open their eyes?

So Sorry Uncle Albert

OEDILF Stampede

The BBC mouthed the man's words
To its regular erudite nerds.
As limericks were sampled
Our server was trampled
By fun-loving pun-hungry herds.

(When I went to bed last night the site was loaded beyond capacity. It's usable again this morning.)

Team Fiction

How Kaavya Viswanathan got famous.

I'd say that there's more to this story
Of KV's reuse of priori.
Forty passages found
Makes 'internalized' sound
More like 'ripped off for personal glory.'

Say "I stole it. It's time to come clean,"
or "My book's from a chick-lit machine"?
No, instead, hide behind
The mystery of mind:
"Take pity, I'm only nineteen."

To admit that she deliberately plagiarized would be an extremely bad career move.

To admit that she didn't write the passages herself, and that she wasn't so much an author as a young attractive iconic front for a profitable prose machine, would be better for her but would be bad for the book packaging company (who would then have to admit that their company provides stolen material).

Her least dangerous path is to blame an untouchable source--the mysterious workings of her mind. People can say that they find it completely incredible, but who can prove or disprove it? So, there are identical wordings? An amazing memory could be expected for a talented writer (forgetting of course that she can't remember what belonged to someone else). Maintaining a shred of plausibility is all she needs to do to be able to profit from the extensive exposure.

(Via 3 Quarks Daily)

(More discussion at newsmericks)

Silliness

There once was a poet named Sam;
Into measureless caverns he swam,
Down the sacred Alph stream
In a laudanum dream,
Where he feasted on green eggs and ham.

Gutsy Effort

Two Aussies had proved the connection:
H. pylori to gut insurrection.
Said Barry J Marshall,
"No—bellies are partial
to Helicobacter infection."

2005 Nobel Prize in medicine

More on Helicobacter in the Loom

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