Wednesday 12 August 2015

Limericks on Stephen Fry

When the abysmal phenomenon I call tatter came on the scene, I was told that one may enter observations each amounting to no more than 150 characters.
I thought this a fine enough challenge and it might stimulate the creation of lasting contributions (like haikus).
I set out to deliver something that might amuse (slightly) and would be a message of EXACTLY 150 characters. Each message (I did three) would be a limerick. This would include the line (and  between word) spaces as countable characters.
My limericks would be about Stephen Fry - then spoken of as one of the nation's most prolific tatterpeople, evidently writing something each or most days, and spurring a "following" of scores of thousands of people who would read his thoughts and respond.
The fact that he himself could NOT further respond to the contributions of each of thousands made it a bad scene in my eyes - one masquerading as "communication" but really being no such thing.

When I opened the entry I had contributed, I was aghast to see the lines of words I had sent in were rolled out as if they had no line spaces and were all in one line. This destroyed the form of the limerick; thus the system not only failed to give an opportunity to "communicate" (might Mr Fry even or ever see one of my limericks and, heavens above, even reply?) but it "trashed" the contribution one had offered.

Here now is the first limerick I offered -

(this is an experiment - will it appear in the message AS a limerick? - let's see....)

A tele celebrity Fry
Saw no reason that he shouldnt try
To fritter his wit
And then force it to fit

Into twitters that aesthetes decry

so then I made up another two ....

St Ephen in seven score places
Throws wit thrusting pith in our faces
His aphorisms fly
Leaving crispy and dry
Us twitterati stuck in our places


St Ephen would never proclaim
That democracy's now not the same
As we twitter each day
With but little to say
To politicos playing their game

Well - I am sure Mr Fry might be mildly amused and make up far better ones - he is a truly clever man and good luck to him; he has entertained me a good deal.

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