It's been a slow week

The recent run of poor weather has rather hampered the progress of the Project this week, as class after class succumbed to the snow and the icy roads. I had high hopes that the Friday lunchtime group would make it - I was planning to introduce them to comic metre, especially the anapaest. As any fule kno, the anapaest is a rhythm based on one or two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable (di-DUM, or di-di-DUM). This results in verse structures like the one below:

di-DUM di-di-DUM di-di-DUM
di-DUM di-di-DUM di-di-DUM
di-DUM di-di-DUM
di-DUM di-di-DUM
di-DUM di-di-DUM di-di-DUM

or putting words to the rhythm, something like:

There ONCE was a MAN from NanTUCKET
...

That's right, it's a limerick! And what limerick do you think I planned to show them, as an example of modern English anapaests?

This one!

(check out the rest of the site by the way, some of the limericks which actually pay attention to things like rhythm and rhyme are both hilarious and extremely intelligent! It reminds me of one of my own pet projects I'll get round to one of these years, posting all the limericks and comic verse I've written about my subject area.)