LimerickDB.com

Posted byRandall 197 Comments on LimerickDB.com

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 Now so many dirty limericks are a generation out-of-date, and the really clever ones lie neglected and un-retold.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.

197 replies on “LimerickDB.com”

  3. Somewhere at home, I have a scholarly work studying limericks, which is full of some of the best dirty limericks of the last century or so.
    I’ve just added one of my favourites to the site, but I’ll see if I can find the book and add a heap more.

    (Captcha: “he Purity”. Yeah, right.)

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  4. There once was a man who’d admit
    He was a geek, so he writ
    A brilliant web strip
    That was geeky and hip
    ‘Til the raptors found his ball pit

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  5. It seems to be stuck on limerick 302. I’ve submitted 4, but none have yet shown up. 302 has been the last for the past 15 minutes. How long does it take for new limericks to be added?

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  6. I submitted one that hasn’t shown up either, but I also accidentally clicked the “flag” link on one of the limericks first so I hope that didn’t have something to do with mine not appearing. I also found the layout a bit confusing so maybe I’m not looking in the right spots?

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  7. Most QDB sites, such ash bash.org, qdb.us, xkcdb, or limerickdb need someone to approve a quote before it is added.

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  8. http://chirpy.sourceforge.net/ limits votes to one per cookie and supports tags and a comment field. “The Chirpy! project originated mainly out of frustration caused by the Rash Quote Management System, due to its numerous bugs and its lack of efficiency and extensibility. While its developers openly admit that it was a quick job, eventually, this became unacceptable.”

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  9. Great fun reading that page!

    Seems I accidentally flagged someone’s quote by clicking that X.

    Hope they’ll forgive me.

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  10. I just want to say thank you so much for creating the limerick db! It has brought me much joy.

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  12. Pingback: stevarino - Limericks For All Occasions

  13. Any plans to include existing collections in the database? The fortune program as often distributed with Linux (probably a derivative of the BSD one) contains one thousand limericks in the “offensive” file. I realize these could be submitted individually (and some have been), but it might be interesting to toss them all in there and let the votes sort ’em out.

    Source package, which includes the offensive limericks, at http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/fortune-mod/fortune-mod_1.99.1.orig.tar.gz

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  14. Hey, I submitted a limerick a few hours ago that went like this:

    A boy from Seville once did spy
    Through a belljar the kilo, SI
    He lifted the glass
    And took out half the mass
    And thenceforth jumped four times as high

    Now there’s a less metrically proper alteration of it listed. What gives?

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  15. The lyrics to the song “The Negotiation Limerick File” by the Beastie Boys (off the Hello Nasty album) are, not surprisingly, in limerick form.

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  16. “The integral of zee-squared dee zee,
    From 1 to the cube root of 3,
    Times the cosine,
    Of 3 pi over 9,
    Is the log of the cube root of e”

    I might be making an embarrassingly obvious error here, but I get .5 instead of the given solution. Thoughts?

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  17. the limerickdb always says it’s unreachable from my computer, I’m not sure why.

    @Phil:

    the first four lines equal 1/3
    the last line should be read as ln(e^(1/3)), which is, of course, also equal to 1/3

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  18. Phil:
    int(z^2 dz, 1..3^1/3) = 2/3
    cos(3*Pi/9) = 1/2
    log(e^1/3) = 1/3

    And 2/3*1/2 = 1/3

    Hope you understood my notation.

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  20. Ah, thanks guys. I’m used to log simply denoting base 10, and natural log being used for base e.

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  21. Man, people like you amaze me. You just decide to make something, and have the brains and tools to do so, and WHAM, a whole new piece of the internet world is born. Phenomenal. 🙂

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  22. Dan A — I clicked on the link for the Limerick collection on Amazon — I have that book! Now if I only knew where it was. It was the best.

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  23. i just thought of this joke, and no one i know gets it. and then i decided to see if xkcd had any new comics up. and then i decided to see if i could email you my joke, but i found this is the easiest way to put it up. its really not a good joke at all, i just want to be able to tell somebody.

    “00000000 00000000 to your mother!!”

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  24. This is completely unrelated to the Limerick website, but I just wanted to say that concerning comic #314 (Dating Pools), I am so that girl at the end of the bell curve.

    Turn ons: Complex mathematical equations, graphs, songs about robots, medieval weaponry, and handcuffs.

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  25. @Lindsey

    You sound perfect, I’ll take half a dozen!

    XD

    Also: LimerickDB had me in stitches for about an hour. Great stuff.

    Now to finish working on my limerick… 😛

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  26. First off, this is genius, I love it, it’s wonderful. Who knew limericks could be so amusing.

    Secondly – I submitted a few limericks last night, and they haven’t gone through yet. I was just wondering if there was some sort of scanning process, and mine didn’t make it, or if the server is simply slow…

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  27. I am now of course musing on exactly how I could fill that order, but keep ripping the fabric of time/space… 😛

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  31. well, fact of the matter is that i love to read the comments you put on the comic that you get on mouse over…

    Sadly, it kinda doesnt work on firefox, it truncates it and puts…

    I am a typical geek whose solution was to go to view> source and read it from there..

    But i recently discovered that its fully visible in Internet Explorer 😦 is it possible for you to do something about it?

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  33. Sandeep, the bug in Firefox is addressed in the FAQ (the “About” link from the comic). See “Why can’t I read the whole comic mouseover text in Firefox?” for a link to an extension that corrects the problem.

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  35. Well it would be more of a fuction of time versus a row. I’m not really into determinants. I didn’t mean to post twice, I must have been distracted while typing, since I’m so dizzy. =P I also mispelled half and typed have.

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  39. There’s truth in all that she speaks
    About open source browsing techniques
    The firefox fine tuning
    Has got them all swooning
    And she’s besotted a small clique of geeks!

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  40. Does limerickdb actually work? I submitted some limericks and the don’t appear at the site. I tried contacting the admin and the mail was returned.

    Then I show this:

    % host limerickdb.com
    limerickdb.com has address 216.93.242.10
    limerickdb.com mail is handled by 0 limerickdb.com.

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  41. @ Will:

    Is that about me? (I don’t want to assume.. how presumptuous!)

    If so, it made me happy!
    Nobody’s ever written a limerick about me before, though the form does seem apt.

    Oh, and glad to be helpful. I aim to please 😉

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  43. I’m an Associate Editor at OEDILF (as mentioned by Adam Sampson above). We have over 41,000 approved limericks and thousands more going through the workshopping process. We’re aiming to define every word in the English language using a limerick — so far we’re up to the Co- section of the alphabet. We have some clever writers, too. I for one would love to see some xkcd readers come and join in the fun. It’s addictive, though — be warned!

    http://www.oedilf.com

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  45. Funny you should be talking about this, i had actually been googling funny limericks the other day because i was interested in it but at least the superficial/quick google results were not very satisfying.

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  46. My father has published not one but two books of his own Limericks here in Australia, called “Rude Places Down Under” and the creatively titled sequel “Very Rude Places Down Under”. Finally I feel able to confess that.

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  47. There once was a man from Perdue
    Whose limericks stopped at line two.

    There once was a man from Verdun.

    (There’s also one about a man named Nero, but I can’t seem to find it.)

    By Isaac Asimov and, I think, someone else – possibly John Ciardi?

    There is something about satyriasis
    That arouses psychiatrists’ biases,
    But we’re both of us pleased
    We’re in this way diseased
    As the damsel who’s waiting to try us is.

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  48. Yes Lindsay, it was *your* direction
    That I pointed my rhyming inflections
    And make no mistake
    I think Mozilla’s great
    … but I’d like to make one small correction

    *bum, bum bum*

    If it’s tool tips you need
    With infallable speed
    And a GUI that don’t vex or perplex
    It’s display standars nicely
    Linux, Windows and thricely
    .. as nicely, on ol’ osX

    So I’ve sped timing lightly
    And rehearsed politely
    I hope it conveys all my glee
    See it’s *Opera* for me
    ‘Cause like Firefox, it’s free
    And all tooltips are belong to thee!

    And no, I don’t work there
    I just felt I should share
    For me, all the standards are key (you see?)
    ‘Cause it fucks up the margins
    By a few thousand farthings
    So ANYTHING ELSE BUT IE.

    Please?

    — The Mourned Designer

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  49. /r/ing limerick version of “Doom: Repercussions of Evil”.

    I worked on it for half an hour but couldn’t get it to work. And then I was a zombie.

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  50. There was once a limerick database
    Presenting dog’rel in a font style monospace
    Though contributions did flow
    The updates were too slow
    Yet maintained steady presence in the webspace

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