Comments on: Earliest Known Limericks!

By: AL

AL — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:43:41 +0000

Curious. Your name is Anton Flinge and yet you speak with the same mellifluous sesquipedalianism, tossing off the same insupportable citations, as my beautiful daughter Felony. Most confusing. Do you happen to commute to class in a Zamboni machine?

By: Anton Flinge, D.Litt

Anton Flinge, D.Litt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:07:38 +0000

Regarding the early kings of Esoterica, we may never know their names. Scrolls from that period are few and they all say “We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you.” It wasn’t until Minutia conquered the Recondites and brought to Esoteric culture its distinctly incidental flavor that we begin to see voluminous records.

By: AL

AL — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:16:30 +0000

I feel so fortunate to have fallen in with such scholarly companions just when I needed to discover — who was the first king of Esoterica? And speaking of that, what rhymes with Oxyrhincus? These are important things the mainstream media simply refuses to deal with, which is why they’re in decline.

By: Anton Flinge, D.Litt

Anton Flinge, D.Litt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:13:38 +0000

What, this?

The stand of cypress (with crocodile!) that costs the author three strokes? You don’t have to be Tigris Woods to grok those stylings, Mr. Alber. Please — leave the cuneiform to the cuneilinguists.

By: Steve Alber

Steve Alber — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:47:01 +0000

Clearly, you guys as confusing “tee” with “tea”. The ancient text you cite above has nothing to do with golf. Instead, it’s an invitation to a tea at a Mesopotamian country club. (And if you look carefully in the third line, there’s a veiled hint that something stronger will be served in the gentlemen’s locker room.) C’mon guys, a little scholarship would surely suit you to a tee … but that’s another story.

By: Anton Flinge, D.Litt

Anton Flinge, D.Litt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:54:39 +0000

Yes, well.

Notice the four tees disappearing into the snapping jaws of a crocodile:

Followed, quite naturally, by a furrowed brow:

Even more striking is the dire note on which this tablet ends: a number of tees assembled in such a way as to depict a great white shark, in what must be a reference to the water hazard on 3.

Heaven help the donkey, indeed.

By: AL

AL — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:40:06 +0000

The lost secret of Mesopotamia is that one of those tees will give you four extra yards on your drive, and our scholars will not rest until they find it.

But why, if I may ask, are you quoting a Shakespearean sonnet in your clumsy attempt to discredit a limerick? It’s his eleventh, I believe, “Heaven help the donkey in my orchard / to plow, to till sweet silent thoughts.”

By: Anton Flinge, D.Litt

Anton Flinge, D.Litt — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:59:23 +0000

Impossible. Virtually all writing from that period centers obsessively on golf tees. See for yourself.