Theatrical Germs Winner, Dirty Word Usage Competition
Monday, May 31st, 2010From the marvelous mini-Annals of Improbable Research (”mini-AIR”), May edition:
2010-05-07 Theatrical Germs Poet
The judges have chosen a winner in the Theatrical Germs Limerick Competition, which asked for a limerick to honor the study
“Artaud, Germ Theory, and the Theatre of Contagion,” Stanton B. Garner, Theatre Journal, Volume 58, Number 1, March 2006, pp. 1-14.
The winner is INVESTIGATOR MIKE ADAMS who wrote a limerick that digests TWO studies mentioned in last month’s mini-AIR:
Descriptions of Theatre as Plague
Are obtuse, pretentious and vague.
But they aren’t the worst crap;
Family Sciences’ Knapp
Makes me reach for my bottle of Haig.
Here’s the offering from LIMERICK LAUREATE MARTIN EIGER, whose limerick honors both Antonin Artaud and Louis Pasteur:
When science provides useful facts,
The theorist of drama extracts
Those conforming to taste.
Details are replaced.
Thus cruelty’s explained, in two acts.
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2010-05-08 Dirty Word Usage Competition
Theater and germs inspire this month’s limerick competition. To enter, compose an original limerick that illuminates the nature
of this report:
“Sex Roles and Dirty Word Usage: A Review of the Literature and a Reply to Haas,” Timothy B. Jay, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 88, no. 3, November 1980, pp. 614-21. The author, at North Adams State College, explains:
“A. Haas found that little evidence exists to distinguish between males’ and females’ use of dirty words. In contrast, the present
author’s review found several empirical studies comparing the sexes. It is argued that establishing whether differences exist does not necessarily require recording colloquial speech, nor would the phenomenon have to be studied entirely outside of the laboratory setting.”
RULES: Please make sure that: (1) your rhymes actually do; and (2) your poem is in classic, trills-off-the-tongue limerick form.
PRIZE: The winning poet will receive (if we manage to send it to the correct address) a free, perhaps expletive-enhanced, high-res PDF issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. Send entries (one entry per entrant) to:
DIRTY WORD USAGE LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o marca AT improbable.com
