Meine Gesamtkunstwerkpoesie ist Verpfuscht

Funny how having a hobby like chainmail leads the minds in weird directions.

I had a bit of a slow workday today, and my mind began to wander to about the third maille project I have planned after I finish the one I'm working on now. My daughters have decided they want maille dresses, of course; so I have to think of ways of making maille dresses for them that actually look right. I mean, that's one heck of a novelty item, there; it's not likely they'll be wearing these things to church some bright and cheery Sunday morning. So I don't just think about the maille outfits themselves, I think about the whole ensemble.

Q: Why the heck would a girl be wearing chainmail?
A: Because she's a warrior maiden, darn it!

So, the next question becomes: what kind of warrior maiden?

Well, I have a cute little wood-elf outfit in mind for the Adrenaline Junkie, when I get done with the hauberk I'm making for the Happy Boy. But after that, for the Pillowfight Fairy?

Gotta be a valkyrie. Definitely gotta be a valkyrie.

Well, as I said, it was a slow day at work; and as I was sitting there in front of the glowing box, my mind started to move onto valkyries. And then I started thinking about Wagner's Ring Cycle, and about Brünhilde, and...

See, now, this is the way my only-sometimes-coherent mind works:

...and then I started to think of a limerick about Valkyries.

?!?!?!?!

Yup. Bet you never thought of that one before. A limerick, of all things, for crying out loud? Wagner in his grave has just rolled over.

Well, yes. After all, there's something subtly humorous about the Ring Cycle. It's so big, and so grand, and so darn serious, that it walks very close to the edge of self-mockery. And it only takes a little push before it tips over--like that glorious "Kill the Wabbit" number that Warner Brothers did back in the sixties, that youtube has quite lamentably taken down for copyright reasons. I mean, photographs like this one do tend to lend themselves to parody and ridicule, precisely because the people therein take themselves so seriously.

So--the limerick! Take a good long look at the photo at the link, try to ignore the fact that the bearded guy is Wotan (a bass) and not Siegfried (a heldentenor), and...

...well, it works best when read out loud, very dramatically. Think William Shatner dramatic.

The young heldentenor, he swünz,
At the song of great Hilde von Brün's;
With her spear, shield and armor
So nothing can harm her
Magnificent, iron ballünz.

[insert sound of record scratching...]


...


Ok, so much for my Gesamtkunstwerkpoesie. By this point I was in the rhyming mood. I was also approaching Vogon territory, but I was having fun.

So!

Well, I suppose I should have stopped, but I didn't. So somewhere from the depths of my head (depths of my head?) I coaxed this one out, on a topic near and dear to my wife and me right about now:

A tutor who tuted the flute
Tried to tutor his toddler to pooot.
But the bairn loved the swooshie,
And quite feared the flooshie,
So the toddler pooot tut'ring was moot.

And no, this limerick was not autobiographical. Not even in the slightest.

Y'all are lucky that I decided not to rhyme flusher with gusher. I was tempted to, but that might have been pushing it a little too far. And the whole flusher/gusher thing isn't autobiographical, either. Nope. Not at all.

Once upon a long time ago, I blogged a limerick I had thought up, and my sister-in-law (who had just had a long-distance online haiku contest with a friend) quipped:

This makes me think that a limerick contest with Tim would be inadvisable.

I appreciate the sentiment, of course... but the more I write these things, the more I think that limerick contests are probably inadvisable under any circumstances.


...


Which brings me to the third one. At this point I was almost but not quite rhymed out. And I was definitely in Vogon territory by now. So I thought of one that my mother most likely would approve of, as would my wife. The sentiment here should be well considered by anyone who decides to do limericking on the internet:

Don't advertise smut with a bugle!
With naughtiness one must be frugal.
Though your meaning be mean,
Your words must be clean--
Lest you draw all those perverts with Google.

So that's probably it for one day. I'll try to be more productive at work tomorrow.

P.S. Here's a little fun one I saw somewhere. Do I have any commenters that can interpret this one for me?