Poetic License

There was a young man from Lahore
Whose limericks stopped at line four.
When asked why this was,
He responded, “Because.”

Also:

There was a young man from Iran
Whose poetry just wouldn’t scan.
When they said, “But the thing
Doesn’t go with the swing,”
He replied, “Yes, I’m aware of that, but I like to put as many syllables in the last line as I can.”

| Humor · Poems

A Plate Worse Than Death

Here’s a masochist’s lunch menu, courtesy of various bad-food gourmands:

  • Basil Seed Drink. “Forcefully overrides the throat’s core instinct not to swallow tadpoles or chilled vomit.”
  • Squid Ink Pizza. “Looks terrible & stains your mouth black, so I have never found a reason to eat more than a spoonful of the stuff.”
  • Happy Plum Candy. “There is no way to describe the horror of the sweet/sour spicy coating as it smothers you physically and emotionally and drags you, screaming and kicking, into a hellish, fiery pit of excruciating pain and agony, where it slowly flogs and tortures you in the sulphurus recess of your darkest fears for hours on end, before finally leaving you, mangled beyond recognition, to die. And that’s not the worst part.”

You can wash everything down with Boo Koo Energy Drink, “the giant bastard son of Mountain Dew and 7UP, with a bit of mineral water thrown in to add just a hint of inbreeding.”

Bon appetit!

| Humor

Doc Holiday

Doctor Zebra’s Medical History of American Presidents gives the lowdown on all 43 commanders-in-chief. Excerpts:

  • George Washington really did wear dentures, made of hippopotamus ivory, seahorse ivory, and lead. “Other sets used the teeth of pigs, cows, elks, and humans.”
  • A dentist once broke off part of Lincoln’s jawbone while pulling a tooth — without anesthesia.
  • JFK was diagnosed with Addison’s disease in 1947 and given less than a year to live. In October he was actually given last rites.
  • Reagan quit smoking easily, which can be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease.
  • George W. Bush has creases in his earlobes, which may be a marker for increased cardiovascular risk. No one knows why.

The Constitution explains what to do if the president dies, but not if he’s incapacitated by illness. “Note the heavy burden of disease that has afflicted our presidents,” writes the anonymous doctor. “We have been very lucky indeed.”

| History · Trivia

“A Stubborn Attempt to Think Clearly”

From A.J. Ayer to Xenophanes, TPM Online’s online quotation database serves up shining pearls from philosophers new and old:

  • Seneca: “There is no great genius without some touch of madness.”
  • John Dewey: “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
  • Miss Alabama 1994: “I would not live forever because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.”

Wait, how’d that last one get in there?

| Quotations