Official "Hot-houri" thread

[kladner]

Whew! Amy Vanderbilt!

I am not sure if this is the original, but there are a lot of horrible verses, including versions of ones I recited.

I vaguely remember something about Nursery Rhymes for Horrid Children, or some such.

EDIT: WooHoo! Post 100!

[kladner]

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.

[only_human]

I looked up a Japanese word just now and learned about a form of Japanese verbal comedic entertainment that sort of fits the flow here at the moment:

An example from Yonezawa Hikohachi's collection:

A man faints in a bathing tub. In the great confusion following, a doctor arrives who takes his pulse and calmly gives the instructions: "Pull the plug and let the water out." Once the water has flowed completely out of the tub he says: "Fine. Now put a lid on it and carry the guy to the cemetery."

For the poor man is already dead. The joke becomes clearer when one notes that a Japanese traditional bathing tub is shaped like a coffin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakugo

Rakugo (落語?, literally "fallen words") is a form of Japanese verbal entertainment. The lone storyteller (落語家 rakugoka?) sits on stage, called Kōza (高座?). Using only a paper fan (扇子 sensu?) and a small cloth (手拭 tenugui?) as props, and without standing up from the seiza sitting position, the rakugo artist depicts a long and complicated comical story. The story always involves the dialogue of two or more characters, the difference between the characters depicted only through change in pitch, tone, and a slight turn of the head.

[Brian-E]

There once was a limerick by me,
Which didn't rhyme at all,
It didn't have those two lines in the middle which are shorter than the others,
Or scansion at all,
That limerick by me.
And it had one line too many.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by kladner

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.

Sorry, I couldn't identify it without cheating. It reminded me of this.

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

There once was a limerick by me,
Which didn't rhyme at all,
It didn't have those two lines in the middle which are shorter than the others,
Or scansion at all,
That limerick by me.
And it had one line too many.

Genial! (sorry Serge :P) Brilliant!
I kinda had similar idea when I read (yesterday) the wiki page (after the thingies started here, I went to "research") and I found inside about "anti-limericks", a concept new to me.
But I didn't know how to put it in words, your phrasing is indeed brilliant, I love it!
(googled for "scansion")

[kladner]

Originally Posted by only_human

Sorry, I couldn't identify it without cheating. It reminded me of this.

It was kind of cheating on my part to pull a verse from the middle of the poem, which has no serious clues in it. I was drilled in memorization when I was young, so I can pull out all sorts of obscurities.
The Wreck of the Hesperus


By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailòr,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
Oh say, what may it be?"
"'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" —
And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light,
Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That savèd she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

[kladner]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun

[kladner]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

There once was a limerick by me,
Which didn't rhyme at all,
It didn't have those two lines in the middle which are shorter than the others,
Or scansion at all,
That limerick by me.
And it had one line too many.

LOLOL! Genial!

[kladner]

I sing of two lases of Birminghan
And this is the scandal concerning them-
They lifted the frock
And diddled the ****
Of the bishop as he was confirming them.