IMPORTANT NOTICE: THERE HAS BEEN A LAST-MINUTE RULE CHANGE! SEE BELOW!
Things you should know, in no particular order:
This contest has been going for years, and is extremely popular. The entries are awe-inspiring. Last year some of the winners got a prize. This year, I have saved one or more of my books (Little-Known Facts) and will award it/them as a prize. I think I will get someone else to adjudicate the contest for me this year. THE DEADLINE IS 13 FEBRUARY 2010. Winners will be announced on Valentine’s Day.
RULES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. That’s just the way life is. Anything else would be, like, trying to deny this fact about our existence. Here are the rules at the present moment:
- Entries must be a limerick. Go to wikipedia.org, type “limerick” in the box, go to the entry about the poetic form, not the town, and read.
- Or google it, or whatever you people do.
- Limericks must include a structural misconception.
- Extra points for composers, musical forms, and Mahatma Gandhi jokes.
- Report on last year’s contest here.
- The arbitrary structural misconception rule was throwing people off (it was that, right?) so that has been eliminated. And composers have been done before, I think. And Gandhi wasn’t really being milked for the maximum comedy there, despite the fact that he used to sleep naked with young women to test his resolve, according to Wikipedia or someplace.
- So instead, the following rules will be in place:
- The limericks must be, as limericks often are, about love, especially its dodgier aspects BUT however use of the word “love” will result in instant disqualification. (Gamma suggested that one, I’m so proud.)
- Extra points will be awarded for the following: disgraced medical treatments, freshwater amoeba, character actors from the “That Guy” list of actors, skeletal bones, Irish politics, Irish writers, legal concepts, punctuation, and apocrypha.
SUBMIT ENTRIES IN THE COMMENTS TO THIS POST! Please include a valid email address (not posted) so that you can be contacted in case you win. Or don’t, whatever.