Day 945: About Limericks and Imaginary Tours

Mind’s Eye Limerick Tours offers imaginary tours that end with limericks.  Here are some limericks about limericks and imaginary tours:

This writer of rude verse opines
That a limerick’s a verse of five lines
Its nonsensical bent
Has humorous intent
With triplet and couplet end-rhymes.

Bard Ogden Nash died before blogs
But he sometimes wrote verse about dogs
So here’s the inaugural
Of a blog of rude doggerel
That I hope will not make you saw logs.

If you’re someone who finds verse sublime
In the limerick form with tortured rhyme
This site is for you
Take a minute or two
I don’t think you’ll find it wastes time.

When famous bards Byron and Blake
Decided mind-journeys to take
To examine the soul
It wasn’t as droll
As the journeys that we’re going to make.

Though our travels may seem quite chaotic
We’ll avoid things that make us neurotic
Like airport security
While arriving with surety
As we mind-travel to sites exotic.

You may find our tours a bit quirky
Like Hollandaise sauce on beef jerky
And may not rejoice
In a rude place-name choice
When you wish to tour Maui or Turkey.

But, if real travel has become knotty
And you’d rather have “Beam us up, Scotty”
Then get on our bus
And come on with us
To places that some may find naughty

Day 944: About Limericks I

One of the many definitions of “limerick” extant is, “a humorous, frequently bawdy, verse of three long and two short lines.”  Humorist, Don Marquis, is quoted as dividing limericks into three types:  “Limericks to be told when ladies are present, limericks to be told when ladies are absent and clergymen are present, and LIMERICKS.”  In addition to being a form of verse, Limerick is a city and a county in Ireland though the connection between verse and locale is a bit obscure.  Having written more than 900 limericks in connection with Mind’s Eye Limerick tours, Laetitia felt qualified to write some limericks that comment on the limerick, itself.

Limericks brief and oft written in haste
Are on subjects that rarely are chaste
And some may opine
Are fit only for swine
Though Freud thought such prudes were two-faced.

If you’re one who would like to avoid
Impure thoughts that are subjects for Freud
From our website take flight
And find one on Snow White
Or knitting with Aunt Murgatroyd.

Day 943: Presumption of Mendacity

Laetitia’s Uncle Ralph is a bit of a curmudgeon.  He doesn’t watch news on television because he claims it continuously sets off his “shit detector.”  This is an expression he got from Ernest Hemingway who is quoted as saying, “The most essential gift for a writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector.”  Uncle Ralph says that one should view everything presented on televised news with “presumption of mendacity.”  That is, “view it as a lie unless it can be independently verified.  This is essentially the method scientists use to ferret out bullshit.  Unfortunately, science is expensive and these days, when money gets scarce, providers of funds sometimes try to interfere with and corrupt the published results.  There may have been a time when television news providers practiced quality control and actually verified their news content, but these days they seem mostly interested in entertainment.  Uncle Ralph’s views inspired Laetitia’s limerick of the day.

TV news has lost its capacity
To distinguish trash from veracity
Leaving viewers bereft
So that all they have left
Is to presume it all is mendacity.

Day 942: Cadfael

When Laetitia has time off from leading imaginary tours she enjoys books.  Recently, she’s been reading the Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters.  Set in twelfth century Shrewsbury on England’s Border with Wales, the stories from the twenty books in the series are woven into the nineteen-year period of anarchy and civil war when King Stephen and Empress Matilda (Maud) fought over the English throne.  The period marked the end of the Norman monarchs and the rise of the Plantagenet dynasty.  Brother Cadfael is a former soldier who is the herbalist for the monastery and has a knack for solving mysteries as well as preparing healing unctions.

In Shrewsbury, twelfth century time
Monk, Cadfael, raises horehound and thyme
In Ellis Peters’ fine series
As he doctors and queries
While his sleuthing solves many a crime.