Words make the World go Round
I am on a book-based mailing list. The problem with this is people really, really like to play with words.
Why is this a problem?
Two posts came up, one after the other.
A limerick cycle by Anon.:
There once was a man from Lahore,
Whose limericks stopped at line four.
When told this was so,
He replied, "Yes, I know."
There was a young man from Dundee,
Whose limericks stopped at line three.
He said, "Yes, it's true."
There was an old man from Peru,
Whose limericks stopped at line two.
There was an old man from Verdun.
(The fifth limerick is about the Emperor Nero, but for obvious reasons
it cannot actually be quoted.)
The other involves a grammatically correct statement, but read it slowly, about a foreign exchange student named Hadd, who was the teacher's pet:
"Where James had had 'had had', Hadd had had 'had'; had Hadd had 'had had', 'had had' had had the teacher's approval."
It's not even Wednesday :)