Remember limericks? They were huge in the mid-20th century, but fell on hard times over the last couple decades. Now so many dirty limericks are a generation out-of-date, and the really clever ones lie neglected and un-retold.
I want more limericks, and I want the cleverest ones collected somewhere. It strikes me that a certain modern system for collecting bits of funny text might be perfect for both these goals.
So, after a moment’s work, I’ve set up LimerickDB.com, which you’ll recognize as similar to bash.org. Submit away, both old and new! Anonymity is encouraged and a respect for meter is required. Dirtiness is not mandatory, but it helps.
xkcd 
Geeks must like limericks. There are several dozen already.
The one I submitted that starts with “A burleycue dancer…” is by Cyril Kornbluth, pulled from the “Fantasia Mathematica” anthology.
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I was just thinking about limericks a few days ago! Yet another example of “Randall Is In My Head.”
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there once was a man who could boast
due to low latency at his host
that when blog posts went down
he was always around
to sit down and type swiftly “FIRST POST”
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Xenobiologista and Colin
Pals, your lifespan predictions are fallin
And I won’t stop at you
Warn your families too
I’m more pissed than Mao talking to Stalin
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I don’t think I can fit these in your site and make sense, but freshman year I had 2 weeks to make a binary tree class. After finishing it in about half an hour, I was left with plenty of time for comments. I have a whole program full of stuff like this:
void tree::_count(int& c) //_count steps through tree recursively
{ c++; //while always incrementing c
if(left) left->_count(c); //repeat if its there,
if(right) right->_count(c);} //and jump to it’s heir
//so c can return count to me
tree::~tree(){ //This function does nothing you see,
} //I tried to have it use kill() tree.
//But kill() calls delete,
//and makes it repeat…
//An infinite loop guarantee!
tree* left; //tree* left is the small value’s node
tree* right; //and tree* right is left’s antipode
string data; //right here is the key
int byte; //and where it may be
void _count(int&); //_count tells how much data has flowed
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Wow, this is a ridiculous coincidence. I’ve been writing limericks on my own for over a year and now this site gets created. I’m so very, very happy.
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I see what you did there, taking down the part about 4chan. Fear of Anonymous striking you down, eh?
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…the limerick that I’ve always wanted to hear to the end is from a star trek episode…
“There was a young lady from Venus, whose body was shaped like a—”
– ST:TNG, S01E03, “The Naked Now”
…sadly, I had to look up the episode number and name *sigh*
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You allow multiple up/down votes from the same person on the same limerick as long as they wait 5 seconds.
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> I see what you did there, taking down the part about 4chan. Fear of Anonymous striking you down, eh?
Nothing of the sort — I just decided it wasn’t adding to things. If nothing else that was a compliment to 4chan, who I have a sort of grudging old-school affection toward.
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> You allow multiple up/down votes from the same person on the same limerick as long as they wait 5 seconds.
Yeah, this is just like with xkcdb.com, where the moderator just keeps an eye out for too many votes from a given IP. Rash doesn’t seem to support any kind of complicated moderation, sadly, which means I have to do that from the http level. For now I could just kick up the delay to 30 seconds, although that means you can’t place two separate votes within a short time for any quotes …
Rash seems to be a work in progress.
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the thing about the requirement for meter, though… it’s not a strict metrical system, like iambic pentameter and the like (accentual syllabic). it’s a very loose metrical system, accentual only, with no guidelines on syllables. stresses are 3 3 2 2 3, yes? and even then, where the stresses lie in any given poem often can be debated. the wonderful thing about this system is that it’s so easy to follow. the anglo saxon poets used a four stress per line meter, and most popular poetry, like nursery rhymes, use this accentual system. mk, lesson over. thus speaks the english nerd.
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If only the other Anons could put their minds towards doing something useful; the power we wield these days is enormous. We could cause huge shifts in politics, religion, the media, etc, but instead we just raid Habbo over and over again. I can see why you have the old school affections towards us, but don’t really support us as we no longer strive to reach our potential.
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Didn’t you complain about bash.org style rankings when you did thefairest.info et al.? What with older submissions being ranked higher by dint of having more time to collect votes?
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You know, I just discovered a few weeks ago that one of my favourite songs, “We Will All Go Together When We Go” by Tom Lehrer is written in Limericks! Here is an example verse (the song is about how nice it is that we’ll all die at the same time, with no mourning. it was written during the cold war when WW3 looked imminent):
We will all bake together when we bake.
There’ll be no-body present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly Three Billion hunks of well-done steak!
It’s also the only thing I’ve heard that puts music to the Limerick meter.
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See:
$ whois -h whois.ripe.net -t limerick
for another database of limericks.
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I’m very disappointed that limerick #69 ended up being about mosquitos and not about sex acts.
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Change the title of the site so that when I link to it on facebook it doesn’t call it “Rash Quote Management System”!
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I get my daily fix of limericks from OEDILF:
http://www.oedilf.com/
Original — and often very clever — limericks, at that…
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Theres a comic called XKCD see
The humor does oh so amuse me
So I check it all week
The updates are meek
But when they come; oh how they please me!
— Chad S.
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I’m not taken with the forced anonymity; there are already several famous limericks up there whose authors are known and deserve to be credited.
I’d suggest a feature to enable corrections where one comes across poor scansion, but perhaps it would cause trouble.
It’s already clear that the warning about scansion needs to apply also to punctuation. Contrary to what some people seem to think, it’s not all right, to put commas in, all over the place, just because there happens, to be a line ending there.
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I’ve been communicating with some of my friends in limericks fairly constantly for the past term or so — none that are interesting enough by themselves to put up though, I’m afraid.
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Ekimekim, it’s uncommon, but Gershwin did it too in “It Ain’t Necessarily So”. Limerick meter, anyway, with repeated lines instead of an entire limerick rhyme scheme.
Ol’ Jonah, he lived in a whale
Ol’ Jonah, he lived in a whale
He made up his home in
That fish’s abdomen
Ol’ Jonah, he lived in a whale
Methuselah lived nine hundred years
Methuselah lived nine hundred years
But who calls that livin’
When no gal will give in
To no man what’s nine hundred years?
etc.
(I could swear there was another song with that meter, but it’s not coming to me now.)
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I almost hate to mention it, but the great blog Metamorphosis (http://metamorphosism.com/archives/002601.html) has a Valentine’s Day Limerick Contest each year. It has strict rules about subject matter, too, which only makes it more fun. I almost hate to mention it because I’m a past winner and want to win again this year…
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“the power we wield these days is enormous.”
no
you are a user on an internet site which is an offshoot of another internet site. you hold no power over anyone but your own imaginary hive-mind.
4chan is an awful, awful website.
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I assume you know about Edawrd Lear, right?
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Edward, even.
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Randall made a quote database
Where limericks would chat quotes replace
We all know in the latter
The authors are fatter
And often get sprayed with a mace
(I’ll admit the above one’s untrue
I can’t write in the morning, can you?
I tell my untruth
Because in my youth
I need to be rhyming and new)
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I love limericks 😀
Is there any chance there will be an RSS feed for the site any time soon?
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I submitted one I wrote years ago where the meter is in reverse (“A Limerick-writer perverse…”) – hope that’s allowed. 🙂
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I recommend this volume featuring many older limericks. It is a well organized and spaciously printed hardcover, available used on Amazon for $0.01 + shipping. In the editor’s words, “”This is the largest collection of limericks ever published, erotic or otherwise. Of the 1700 printed here, none are otherwise.”
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Speaking of the meter of limericks, mel, my favorite limerick has always been:
There once a man from Japan
Whose Limericks would never quite scan
When asked why was so
He said “I don’t know”
“But maybe it’s because I always try to cram as many words into the last line as I ever possibly can!”
(it’s better when read aloud, of course, rushing the last line to try to make it fit into the same amount of time as the first two lines)
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>If only the other Anons could put their minds towards doing something useful; the power we wield these days is enormous. We could cause huge shifts in politics, religion, the media, etc, but instead we just raid Habbo over and over again.
The problem with organizing the masses to do anything is….the masses are really, really dumb, on the average.
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I’ve added the only limerick I ever wrote, inspired by uncyclopedia:
There once was a CEO named Steve,
Who threw chairs at employees for reprieve,
He shot lasers from his eyes
To bury other guys,
And he’ll Fucking Kill? you if you don’t believe.
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“The problem with organizing the masses to do anything is… the masses are really, really dumb, on the average.”
You underestimate a simple fact, sir: that none of us is as dumb as all of us. The masses are individually dumb, sure – but as a group? 4channers can reach a level of stupid that few could even imagine.
Imagine, if you will, PATRIOT act -enabled wiretapped phone calls being cracked by Anons and crapflooded with requests for Battletoads.
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Anon, we must make this happen. I’m sure that we could convince the rest of us to do it. Also, we do wield power, if you don’t believe that, go look at what happened when we hacked Fox news. Why is it that some of us have been arrested by the FBI? I say we have power.
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There’s a very good qdb system called Chirpy (http://chirpy.sourceforge.net/). It’s far better and far less buggy than rash, and it’s used on a number of sites such as
http://quotes.burntelectrons.org/ (irc.mozilla.org qdb)
http://tjbash.org (TJHSST quotes)
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What i find interesting is the choice of the first line usage. It seems that one can either use the initial line as a way to advance the story (introducing character and action, or functioning in a similar vein), in which case the author will have 5 lines in which to create a basic storyline with varying degree of wit and/or wisdom. One could also decide on a story with a difficult A rhyme, in which case you can use the first line as a sort of ‘throwaway’ by just creating a town name that ends like said rhyme in order to complete the scheme. Of course, then you only have 4 lines to present the plot, so your story has to be even more streamlined.
Unfortunately, none of this structural analysis is making my limericks come out any better.
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Great site! Should be good for many happy hours of perusing.
Pardon my ignorance, though, but what does it mean to “flag” something by clicking the “X”s next to the titles?
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To: Bob the Squirrel
Re: Flag
To flag something is to put an entry up for review that you find a.) offensive*, b.) distasteful* or c.) incorrectly added to the database. The admins will review the entry and decide whether a, b, or c are justified.
*relative to the other content of the site, i.e. racially abusive, etc.
_____
Also, how far backed up is the database, so I know if my two entries have been denied or not. (I thought they were passable, if rather tame…)
Using HTML and not Flash
And presumably quite little cash
One guy named Randall
Flew off the handle
And created a fun clone of Bash
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For a great book of limericks go
To any big bookstore you know
For Penguin Limericks look
Its a great little book
and its Copyright 2000 or so
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My wife recommends Joe Greens’ “The Limerick Odessey” … http://limerickodyssey.blogspot.com/
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Ooooh I love this DB
Now somebody just needs to make a handy Facebook Application for this so I can share to joy with others!
(wut u say? a useful facebook app?! UNHEARD OF!)
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I love limericks!
I only I coulds write good.
;D
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There is a chain of limericks that I’ve been desiring/seeking for aeons, but by now I only remember that it involved frosting and that the last line was:
“Quite frankly my dear, you’re exhausting!”
Please add it if you’ve got it.
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I don’t know if anybody here is familiar with Bob and George, but I was reading the author’s commentary today, and xkcd was mentioned. I guess being called “a huge geek joke” is about the most flattering compliment you can give this awesome comic.
http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/index.php?date=010205
Feylias, it’s called Jenny’s Poem. And it’s beyond dirty. Plus it’s a whole lot of 5-line limericks, so I’m not sure it’d go into the DB. But with the words you gave me, it’s possible to find it with Google.
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What a wonderful site!
Problem though, the limericks have been stuck at #269 since this afternoon. And I submitted quite a doozy! 😦
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When my husband and I married this last summer, a friend of ours gave us a gag gift of an “adult trivia” game. Sadly, the thing was published before either of us were born, but nearly every other card contains a dirty limerick! I’ll be sure to take the time to input a few into the db. Be warned, though: many of them are terribly lame 😉
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