Monday, April 21, 2008

the web site you seek; cannot be located but; countless more exist

See what you miss if you don't pay attention?

Haiku have a 5-7-5 structure, in terms of syllables per line - most people know that, myself included. But have you ever considered the metric structure of a limerick? Assuming that you're going to exclude the smart-arsed mucking around with the form of ones like this:
There was a young man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped at line two
- or its counterpart:
There was a young man from Verdun
- then your orthodox limerick has an 8-8-5-5-8 structure. That's 34 syllables. Skip back to the top and count the syllables in a haiku. That's right, 17. So one has twice the syllables of the other. Take that idea to its logical conclusion and you get this. Genius. On such leaps of intuition and creative thinking is modern civilisation built.

On an unconnected topic, I ordered a couple of bike accessories from the excellent people at Wiggle the other day. Now there may be a time in a Briton's life where the American usage of the word "fanny" ceases to be a source of sniggering amusement, but I certainly haven't reached it yet, and frankly I hope I never do. Click the image for a bigger version (of the word "fanny", among other things), as always.

And finally, while we're sniggering away to ourselves, here's those filthy haiku and limericks you were wanting.

4 comments:

The Black Rabbit said...

Yeah yeah.
But where exactly IS this late borthdee card?
Eh?
Hmmmmm....

electrichalibut said...

You serious? It should have got to you about a day late, no more than that. If the postie has lost it I'll be gutted, as it was an ipsolute byoody.

The Black Rabbit said...

No card bate.
You LOSE the "card altering game" then and can blame the postie for it!

electrichalibut said...

Fuck that, I'll get you another one. It'll be even better.