Fun_People Archive
1 Mar
Limericks about limericks

Date: Fri, 1 Mar 96 18:04:28 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Limericks about limericks

From: Lani Herrmann <lanih@info.sims.berkeley.edu>
> From jmichael@sas.upenn.edu Sun Feb 25 20:26 PST 1996
> Subject: (fwd) More limericks about limericks (fwd)
 > darus@mcs.com (Jim Wygralak) wrote in rec.humor.funny:
>A friend of mine came up with this one and gave me permission to submit
>it, saying he wanted to be attributed by his initials, EFS, only.

>There once was a man from the sticks,
>Who liked to write limericks.
>But he failed at the sport,
>Because he wrote them too short.

Ah yes. Jokes on limerick length. I remember seeing the following two
similar jokes in OMNI magazine back in the early 80's, though I don't
know where they got them:

===
There once was a lady from Crewe
Whose limerics went to line two.
---
There once was a man from Verdun.
===
Thus inspired, my brother Scott and I set about making joke limericks for
3, 4, and 6 lines. If memory serves:
===
There once was a lady from Bree
Whose limericks went to line three,
And never went farther.
---
There once was a man on the floor
Whose limericks went to line four.
He'd start up the trend,
and then it would end.
---
There once was a man from the Styx
Whose limericks went to line six.
He never did know
How far they should go,
And never did bother to fix
Them at all.
===
Of course, you can joke on things that aren't length:
===
There once was a man with a dime
Who wrote limericks some of the time.
He wrote just a bit,
But they sounded like s___
'Cuz he never could get them to sound right.
______________________________________________________________________________
[Oh okay, I'll indulge myself with my own favorite self-referential limerick:

A cheerful young lad from Iran
Wrote poems that wouldn't quite scan
  When asked how he'd do it
  He'd say, "Nothing to it!"
I just always try to put as many words in the last line as I possibly can!
-psl]

© 1996 Peter Langston