1 Mar 2008
Hugh Fitzgerald
That last limerick, the one about Titian and the mixing of madders, caused me to recall lines from "Pnin." I tried to suppress them, but I just couldn't. manage to do so. So here they are:
"Leonardo! Strange diseases/Strike at madders mixed with red./Nun-pale now are Mona Lisa's/Lips that you had made so red."
Sorry!
2 Mar 2008
reactionry
Tippecanoe & Pimenov Too
Or: Red Square-Cut Punts
Or: School For Steroid Scandal & Coxswain
Or: Raising The Antelope
Or: The Brothers Pimenov
Many thanks for reminding me that if you're going to Pas d'elle yieux Rhone que nous (hat tip to Oliver Camford) up Subterranean Hyperspeed Internet Technology Creek (hat tip to Mary) it's best to not lose your paddle, given that you might run across someone rude enough to swim in the nude. Unlike Hugh with respect to Balthus, I'm a day late and a ruble short in wishing ein free liquor Geburtstag to Nikolai* Pimenov on his 60th.
The following isn't a limerick and I don't know how to pronounce "Pimenov." When Johnny Foreigner is a Russian, it's considered acceptable to drop the "the" and an "a", and I'll invoke poetic license in pronouncing "Now" as "Nah" and "back" as in "springbok" -which works - I think -and I don't know off-hand how best to take liberties with the "off" here, but I'll take them on the off-chance. For reasons of propriety and because Pimenov might still be alive, "cox" is used rather than "dik", as in "dik-dik." With respect to "pair", it wouldn't be helpful to speculate that William F. Buckley, Jr. might have been told in C.I.A. boot camp to "Sound off like a you've got au pair!" (which also is probably not heard in coxswain camp) because he was actually raised by a governess.
There once were men named Pimenov
Whom we will never see the "end" of,
Said Nikolai,
"No word of lie;
No cox have I;
My pair is coxless; Now back off!"
*Being different is what makes us all special someones, and when it comes to Yuri Pimenov, unless it's a case of Socialist Fraternalism, he and Nikolai are both the same, genetically speaking.
2 Mar 2008
Miv Tucker
From the first line of the one about the young fellow named Menzies I was expecting something quite different, on account of the various ways of pronouncing "Menzies".
It therefore put me in mind of this one:
There was a young curate of Salisbury,
Whose behaviour was quite halisbury-scalisbury,
For one day in Hampshire,
He took off his pampshire,
Though his vicar had told him to walisbury.
Readers who don't immediately get the joke needn't feel too bad: I first read this when I was about 12, and it was several decades before the penny finally dropped.
2 Mar 2008
Alan Joyce
Jack and Jill went up the hill,
to sit and eat a picnic.
Jack cut his wrists with a razor blade,
Jill eat. (Gillette)
