If you ever attended a drunkfest fraternity party (talk about a redundant phrase!) you can probably finish the limerick in the title – and you know that a limerick consists of 5 lines with lines 1,2 and 5 rhyming as well as lines 3 and 4. In reading one of my favorite blogs, Freakenomics, today, I discovered an online dictionary in which every definition is written in the form of a limerick!
Currently they are accepting submissions for words beginning with aa through dh inclusive. So if you’re the creative type, think a word that starts with letters in that range and send in an entry.
Just for fun, I looked up the word “asparagus” and here’s what I got:
Asparagus, I like real well.
It gives me two things I can tell:
To my taste buds, a treat
As a side dish to meat—
To my urine, an awfully bad smell
The accompanying note to this definition stated “In doing research for this limerick (yes, a great deal of legitimate research goes behind these silly things), I uncovered the interesting (to me, anyway) fact that some 80% of all people are genetically incapable of smelling the malodorous chemical that their bodies produce when given asparagus to work with. In other words, if asparagus doesn’t make your urine stink, maybe it does but you just can’t smell it yourself! Isn’t that odd? “
If you’re wondering why I chose this word, it’s because I had asparagus for dinner last night and I fall into the group of 20% who ARE capable of smelling the malodorous chemical!
I know – it’s Saturday night and I’m reading limerick definitions on the web. Kind of sad, isn’t it? But after an hour of racquetball, doing laundry, changing the bed, putting coat #3 on the bedroom walls, cleaning up all the paint mess, cleaning off my desk, working on tax preparation and cooking dinner (well actually I re-heated some chili but I DID make Burl a grilled cheese sandwich to go with it), I’m ready for some down time.
Tomorrow I get to put furniture in my sewing room and start nesting!
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