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Higgledy piggledy
Mar. 7th, 2019 03:02 pm
It occurred to me the other day that what our current national soap opera calls for is the limerick's more refined cousin, the double dactyl:
Higgledy piggledy
Watch the prime minister
Squirm as he's lectured on
Fine points of law
He says "that's her truth!" but
Uncompromisingly
Jane says "me too!" and J-
T shrugs "qui moi?"
[ETA, March 10: I took a, uh, walk in the snow yesterday and produced the following improvement:
Higgledy piggedy
Watch the prime minister
Squirm as he's lectured on
Fine points of law
Did JT pressure her
Unconstitution'ly?
Butts says he didn't; J-
T shrugs, "qui, moi?"
This version, striking the old one, does have the advantage of preserving the useful hexasyllable "uncompromisingly" for future use; strictly following the rules of the game, one can use any given hexasyllabic word in only one double dactyl.]
*****
But maybe by now we have descended into limerick territory:
There once was a fixer named Butts
Whose friend the PM was a putz
He told a good story
JT wasn't sorry
But wait till the A-G rebuts!
*****
Meanwhile, down south, the limerick is too good for them, really, but anyway:
There once was a lawyer named Cohen
Whose lies made the president moan
What he said about him
Wrecked his date with lil' Kim
And so all in a huff he went home
*****
I was introduced to the double-dactyl form by a photocopied "Glossary of Heideggerian Terms" passed around in one of my classes at Queen's by Carlos Prado. At the top of the first page was hand-written "R. Rorty", whether by R. Rorty himself or not I don't know, and I don't know whether R. Rorty was responsible for any of the content--and I don't remember at this point whether I've ever asked Prado. I used to go looking for it now and then in my stacks of old papers but finally gave up years and years ago. Anyway, two entries in this glossary had definitions in double-dactyl form. One--I don't remember of what it was supposed to be the definition; maybe "Heidegger" himself, or "(in)authenticity", or "Fuhrer", who knows--went like this:
Higgledy piggledy
Herr Rektor Heidegger
Said to his students, "to
Being be true!
Else you may fall into
Inauthenticity
This I believe, and the
Fuhrer does, too!"
I see now that that one was actually published, nineteen years ago, in Mind (PDF) (which I see has the third line beginning "Cautioned his ... ", which could well be what my photocopied source had too for all I know), of all places, attributed to Peter van Inwagen, and was subsequently reproduced in, among other places, a National Post column by Robert Fulford.
The other one was the definition of "Derrida":
Higgledy piggledy
Wily Jacques Derrida
Hints that the Seinsfrage
Shouldn't be pressed
Only a chauvinist
Ithyphallologist
Asks whether being is
More than a text
That one hasn't appeared anywhere on the net before, as far as I can tell, so there you are, internets!
(I was reminded by these two examples that I had gone too easy on myself in writing my own double-dactyl by forgetting the rule that one line should comprise only one hexasyllabic word--hence the somewhat infelicitous "uncompromisingly" I've now inserted. (And if we're counting infelicities, yes, it does make me itch to call a female public figure by her first name, but I figure we will allow it for the sake of the Jane's Addiction reference.) The January 2000 issue of Mind has another double-dactyl, on Parmenides, also attributed to Peter van Inwagen, which has as its hexasyllabic word "oleomargarine", which I'm pretty sure is a word I saw listed in a rhyming dictionary just in the last week or so as a six-syllable rhyme for "bean".)
--
Currently under my porch: -5.1. Currently at Havelock: -7.4. Currently at Peterborough airport: -6.6, which will be the high for the day. Could break -20 again tonight--it was -28.2 at Bancroft this morning--but we're finally coming out of deep winter in the next 24 hours. Finally got my maple taps in today, several weeks later than each of the last couple of years. I have to remember in future years, though, that the sap can be running with the air temperature well below freezing as long as there's enough sun to heat the trees to above freezing. When I tapped my two trees a couple of hours ago, one of them was still frozen but the other was running.
Higgledy piggledy
Watch the prime minister
Squirm as he's lectured on
Fine points of law
He says "that's her truth!" but
Uncompromisingly
Jane says "me too!" and J-
T shrugs "qui moi?"
[ETA, March 10: I took a, uh, walk in the snow yesterday and produced the following improvement:
Higgledy piggedy
Watch the prime minister
Squirm as he's lectured on
Fine points of law
Did JT pressure her
Unconstitution'ly?
Butts says he didn't; J-
T shrugs, "qui, moi?"
This version, striking the old one, does have the advantage of preserving the useful hexasyllable "uncompromisingly" for future use; strictly following the rules of the game, one can use any given hexasyllabic word in only one double dactyl.]
*****
But maybe by now we have descended into limerick territory:
There once was a fixer named Butts
Whose friend the PM was a putz
He told a good story
JT wasn't sorry
But wait till the A-G rebuts!
*****
Meanwhile, down south, the limerick is too good for them, really, but anyway:
There once was a lawyer named Cohen
Whose lies made the president moan
What he said about him
Wrecked his date with lil' Kim
And so all in a huff he went home
*****
I was introduced to the double-dactyl form by a photocopied "Glossary of Heideggerian Terms" passed around in one of my classes at Queen's by Carlos Prado. At the top of the first page was hand-written "R. Rorty", whether by R. Rorty himself or not I don't know, and I don't know whether R. Rorty was responsible for any of the content--and I don't remember at this point whether I've ever asked Prado. I used to go looking for it now and then in my stacks of old papers but finally gave up years and years ago. Anyway, two entries in this glossary had definitions in double-dactyl form. One--I don't remember of what it was supposed to be the definition; maybe "Heidegger" himself, or "(in)authenticity", or "Fuhrer", who knows--went like this:
Higgledy piggledy
Herr Rektor Heidegger
Said to his students, "to
Being be true!
Else you may fall into
Inauthenticity
This I believe, and the
Fuhrer does, too!"
I see now that that one was actually published, nineteen years ago, in Mind (PDF) (which I see has the third line beginning "Cautioned his ... ", which could well be what my photocopied source had too for all I know), of all places, attributed to Peter van Inwagen, and was subsequently reproduced in, among other places, a National Post column by Robert Fulford.
The other one was the definition of "Derrida":
Higgledy piggledy
Wily Jacques Derrida
Hints that the Seinsfrage
Shouldn't be pressed
Only a chauvinist
Ithyphallologist
Asks whether being is
More than a text
That one hasn't appeared anywhere on the net before, as far as I can tell, so there you are, internets!
(I was reminded by these two examples that I had gone too easy on myself in writing my own double-dactyl by forgetting the rule that one line should comprise only one hexasyllabic word--hence the somewhat infelicitous "uncompromisingly" I've now inserted. (And if we're counting infelicities, yes, it does make me itch to call a female public figure by her first name, but I figure we will allow it for the sake of the Jane's Addiction reference.) The January 2000 issue of Mind has another double-dactyl, on Parmenides, also attributed to Peter van Inwagen, which has as its hexasyllabic word "oleomargarine", which I'm pretty sure is a word I saw listed in a rhyming dictionary just in the last week or so as a six-syllable rhyme for "bean".)
--
Currently under my porch: -5.1. Currently at Havelock: -7.4. Currently at Peterborough airport: -6.6, which will be the high for the day. Could break -20 again tonight--it was -28.2 at Bancroft this morning--but we're finally coming out of deep winter in the next 24 hours. Finally got my maple taps in today, several weeks later than each of the last couple of years. I have to remember in future years, though, that the sap can be running with the air temperature well below freezing as long as there's enough sun to heat the trees to above freezing. When I tapped my two trees a couple of hours ago, one of them was still frozen but the other was running.
