Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Good thing you weren't driving 1200 miles.	:-)

     Are you sure that wasn't a 600 mile detour? 8^)

             mikeP

The man went on a binge
Crying, I've gotta find an oringe
As he headed out on the range
Where the deer and the antelope cringe.

(I hear a LOT of people pronounce orange as oringe)


Purple is no problem ... I've ample purple rhymes.


Up stood the villain ... "I'll have hal'ver yer silver pardner"



Ughhh !

    
    Here's mine for orange:
    
       -------------------------------------
       This guy I know was rhyming "orange".
       East and West he drove his car and
       Just when he had found a mate
       His mind went South, alas, Too Late!
       -------------------------------------
    
    (Note bad for my first entry into 'dis lexical conference)
    
    Ken

    RE -1:
    
    	I just realized that I didn't follow the limerick style, but
    what do you think?
    
    K.R.

    Limerickth are a different topic.  Here, you can uthe any form of
    rhyme, and you can enter then entire poem, or even prothe, all at onth.

    Nice debut.  Have a great time -- we need some new blood around these
    parts...  Welcome!!!  :-)
    
    Dan
    

    Dan is sure pol-
    ite....
    

    
    (He might be ill)
    Vermouth's a cure
    Pull at a bar and
    DRINK!
    

	Cherub's lips and strands of orange
	   hair as bright as flame;
	Both befit the woman, for Ang-
	   elica's her name.


	Di

	Drenched in burgundy and purple,
	Aging with the wine,
	Hands no longer as they were pull
	Magic from the vine.


	Di

	Try it might, his hair of silver,
	    passions deep to hide.
	In his heart, though, never will vir-
	    ility subside.




	(sorry)
	Di

    Wow, those last few are awesome.  Di, you ought to submit those for
    publication in the Wall Street Journal (which prints one or two jokes
    of this sort each day) or the New Yorker.  Of course, your purple poems
    are worth much more than their weight in silver, and you probably won't
    get paid what they're worth, but orangea gonna try anyway?
    
    -- Norman Diamond
    
    P.S.  Why didn't you beat my effort at rhyming "month"?

       (Can't wait to see what other strings you'll find yankable here!!)
    

    	Please accept my congratulations too. The best set of contributions
    in many months!

	Wow - you're all too kind.  Random musings on a slow Thursday
	afternoon.

	Thanks very much,
	Di

    >Wow - you're all too kind.
    
    Now I guess I'll kill you with kindness, since you didn't want to post
    this yourself.  Would've been kinder if you hadn't finally given me
    permission to post it on your behalf :-)
    
    Incidentally, my feeble attempt at rhyming "month" was in 999.6.
    We're all waiting on you now, expecting to see something better.
    
From:	PENUTS::DDESMAISONS  "Damifino" 12-DEC-1992 01:57:32.56
To:	JIT081::DIAMOND

	I can't find the "month" note you're referring to.  But I
	did a search on rhyme and found the "difficult rhymes" note,
	wherein "month" is listed.  Coincidentally, the next word on
	the list is "chimney".  Last night, some friends of mine
	were sitting around and they gave me four words relating to
	Christmas that they thought would be difficult to rhyme with.
	Those were "camel", "chimney", "Yuletide", and "reindeer".
	This is what I came up with (over a bottle of wine, mind you),
	so be kind.  8^)  What do you think?  And where is your
	"month" entry - do you remember?  Thanks.

	Di


	Santa Claus said to the Mrs.
	"Honey, you know what day _this_ is.
	Time to pack the sleigh and halter
	Up the horse, but he might falter -
	No, perhaps I'll take the camel,
	Or, on second thought, this ram'll
	Do just fine."  She said, "It's plain, dear,
	Better get yourself some reindeer,
	'Cuz you know last time a fool tried
	Lugging all these gifts at Yuletide
	With one beast in front of him he
	Never made it to a chimney.

	And it's too late to take all
	this stuff back."

    Remembering Christmas a couple of years back, when I was 
    travelling around Mexico by bus:
    
    When hanging round by a Yucatan poolside
    After a long and especially cruel ride
    Trying hard with a strained ear
    To catch the laugh of a reindeer
    I could not get the feel of the Yuletide
    
    Hans
    (BTW, in Sweden we hang on to traditions and call Christmas "Jul")

    A whole month
    sans able
    rhyme is unth-
    inkable

    My friend who is so very unth-
    oughtful and also a fool,	
    would at the end of the month
    go out and break every rule.
    
    
    The king, so rudely unth-
    roned, said "I will my jewel hide,
    until sometime next month, 
    maybe I'll reveal it at Yuletide"
    
    Hans

re .18 ...

Yule (Jul) and Christmas are two different things ...

Yuletide is based on the Pagan festivals of winter

Christmas is the Christian Celebration of the birth of Christ

Channukah is a Jewish religious festival celebrated at this time of year

The Feast of St Nickolas is yet another celebration, in part based on
Christmas and part on Yule ...

All of these festivals occured at times from early December (the 6th rings
a bell for the Feast of St. Nickolas in Holland) to the end of December
and all got somewhat intertwined over the years.  Unfortunately in these
days of political correctness, there are many who would have us attempt
to unwind the ravel, rather than accept that a wish of Merry Christmas
can often be taken as a wish for the season ... and is not intended to
insult anyone's religion.

Stuart

    re .21 (and .18):
    
    What I tried to say was that in Sweden and Finland (and I also think this 
    goes for Norway and Denmark), unlike in other countries, no new word
    was invented for the Christian celebration (like "Christmas",
    "Weihnachten"). Rather we kept the word (Jul) which had denoted the pagan
    celebrations, and started using it for the Christian celebration.
    
    So here "Jul" equals Christmas.
    
    And merry one to all of you out there in Notesland!
    
    Hans
    

	Okay, Norm - here's one:

	'Tis the month
	   cards we send
	To the unth-
	   ought of friend.


	Sigh.  This one's too tough.
	8^)
	Diane

    de-da-de-da-de-de-de-orange
    da-de-da-de-da-de-da-doorhinge

    Somewhat contrived and certainly not as good as some precendents, but:
    
    	With a medical bent:
    
    	To soothe your sore throat try an orange,
    	Medicinal, menthol rich lozenge;
    	If you're full of wind then a burp'll
    	Prevent you from turning bright purple;
    	When feverish watch the quicksilver
    	Shoot up like a strong-coursing elver;
    	And lastly he, lisping, says "Onth
    	Isth enough to give blood in sixth monthth".
    
    Many, many apologies for the above but my excuse is that it's Christmas
    Eve and we're all in fancy dress and may have imbibed some small
    quantity of alchoholic beverage.
    
    Jon

    Tennis elbow, athlete's foot, and gym knee --
    That's what comes from going down the chimney.

    Argue 'til your face turns purple
    Then TFSO
    For you never know if SERP'll
    Save you from the blow.

    Limerick author of 2013
    Spied a nice target and thought to corner 'im, s-
    o he wrote a tough one but then as you see
    He chickened out and wrote a rhyme for hornrims.

    Re .28: Thanks for illustrating my worst fears about leaving
    it unrhymed. ;-)
    
    -b

    From: [email protected] (Phil Calvert)
    Subject: Re: month rhyme
    Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 00:27:34 GMT
    
    How about billionth? (or trillionth or millionth)
    
    -Phil Calvert

re .21 by S_Brook:

     I had long associated Christmas with Saturnalia.  A coupla xmasses
ago I took a gander at my encyclopedia's description of Saturnalia. 
Some of the customs overlapped with Christmas, but the dates were off. 
Turns out Christmas is celebrated on Mithra's birthday (the church
having no assigned date for the birth of Yeshua before Mithra's day was
appropriated.  I think the motivation was political, myself.  The
maneuver coincided with the conversion of the Roman empire - the
cult of Mithra was a favorite among high ranking officials and members
of the army).

    .31
    
    Nitpicking time.
    
    It's Mithras, not Mithra.
    
    And the Saturnalia was a festival of several days' duration, commencing
    on the winter solstice.  The Roman calendar was arranged such that the
    solstice fell on December 25; we tend to miss this fact today, as we
    think December is as December was.
    
    The placing of Christmas on December 25 was done to supplant the Roman
    Saturnalia and the Parthian festival of the Birth of the Sun, which was
    also (for obvious reasons) placed on the shortest day of the year.
    
    The fact that Mithras' birthday was also on the 25th of DEcember was an
    accident.  Do you really believe that, after 200+ years of emperors who
    were placed on the throne by their armies, that an emperor, even a very
    devout Christian, would risk deposing Mithras and antagonizing the very
    army that kept him in power?  Without the mantle of the imperial purple
    on his shoulders, his religious reforms would be doomed at the outset.
    
    -dick

re .32:

>    Nitpicking time.

     Always happy to be corrected.  Seems that sometimes the fastest way
to learn is to say something wrong in a notesfile.:-)  On the other
hand, to nitpick your nitpicking:

>                             The Roman calendar was arranged such that the
>    solstice fell on December 25; we tend to miss this fact today, as we
>    think December is as December was.

     Was the 25th the intended date of the solstice or the date that it
happened to fall on when the emperor turned Christian?  If I remember
Mr. Rabinowitz's famous QAR answer correctly, the solstice dates in the
Roman calendar(s) shifted over time because of inaccuracies in the
calendar(s).

>    The fact that Mithras' birthday was also on the 25th of DEcember was an
>    accident.  Do you really believe that, after 200+ years of emperors who
>    were placed on the throne by their armies, that an emperor, even a very
>    devout Christian, would risk deposing Mithras and antagonizing the very
>    army that kept him in power?  Without the mantle of the imperial purple
>    on his shoulders, his religious reforms would be doomed at the outset.

     Sounds quite reasonable - but this implies a certain, ummm,
flexibility on the part of the church that seems to be lacking today.  I
guess my vision is colored by more recent (last millenium or so) events. 
Perhaps this should go to Hastur::Catholic-Theology if it goes any
further down this particular rathole.

    Re .33
    
    > Was the 25th the intended date of the solstice or...?
    
    It was the intended date of the solstice.  The early Romans used an
    agrarian calendar that made no provision for the roughly two months'
    time outside the growing season.  When Julius Caesar reformed the
    calendar, long before Christianity (he was assassinated in -44), he
    deliberately aligned the dates that way.  Things subsequently drifted
    without perfect correction despite the use of leap years; it wasn't
    until +xvi that the inaccuracy was resolved by just dumping 11 days and
    rearranging the calendrical system to omit three out of every four
    centenary leap years.
    
    (The Mayans, on the other hand, were far more accurate, and their
    calendar, drawn up a couple hundred years before Caesar's, is still
    less than a day out of synch.)
    
    > flexibility on the part of the church
    
    The "church" didn't exist as such at that time.  It was Constantine's
    conversion that enabled a formal organization to take root in the
    empire.  And it was a longstanding tradition of Rome not to
    discriminate against other religions; at the time of Caesar, there were
    hundreds of cults in Rome, with their temples and ceremonies.  The idea
    was basically that of religious freedom.  You behave, don't try to
    overthrow the government, and you can worship whatever you like.  It
    would be very difficult, even for the emperor, to overturn that kind of
    tolerance overnight.  Witness how quickly Akhnaten's monotheistic cult
    in Egypt was washed away in a deliberate return to the old religion
    after his death.
    
    -dick

    >(he was assassinated in -44),
    
    Was that really 45 B.C.?  After all, 0 was 1 B.C.
    
    >(The Mayans, on the other hand, were far more accurate,
    
    And they were TFSO'ed for their efforts.
    Warning:  avoid accuracy at all costs.
    
    >> flexibility on the part of the church
    
    In fact, the early church was very flexible.  How do you think
    they flexed God's day of rest from Friday sundown through
    Saturday sundown into Sunday?  But try reminding them now that
    they forgot to flex Genesis to conform to their standards.
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    Re .35
    
    > Was that really 45 B.C.?  After all, 0 was 1 B.C.
    
    In the same way that you were never a baby in your zeroth year, there
    was no year 0.  The first year of the current era was +1, the last year
    of the former era was -1.  Remember this when you calculate dates, for
    example, from the founding of Rome in -753; +1994 is 2747 of the
    founding of the City, not 2748 as it would be had there been a year 0. 
    (This reply is being written, in Roman parlance, KALENDIS NOVEMBRIS
    MMDCCXLVII A.V.C.)
    
    > And [the Mayans] were TFSO'ed for their efforts.
    
    No, actually, that was the Aztecs and Incas.  The Mayan civilization
    had peaked several centuries earlier; the Classic period, when they
    were at their height, is usually considered to have been from +200 to
    +800.  They had already warred themselves pretty well into decline
    before the Spanish ever reached the Americas.
    
    -dick

        (-: Yikes, let's not start an abortion thread in JOYOFLEX!! :-)
    

    G'day,
    
    re-.a_couple
    
    >Saturday sundown into Sunday?  But try reminding them now that
    >they forgot to flex Genesis to conform to their standards.
    
    
    Is that why people now genuflex in church?
    
    djw

    Don't forget about the people who gnuflex in Unix.

    Incidentally, Unix can never cause aborts, right?

    Wrong.  That's one of its core competencies.

      He described the hue of the orange
      as the color of a rusty door hinge.

    If silence will be golden, will ver-
    bosity be silver?

    A man with hair colored silver,
    Said to his doctor, "I'm ill, sir,
    I feel I'm a dunce,
    I've been like this all month,
    And now I feel like an elder."
    
    Above is stretching the rhymes a bit.... :-)
    
    
    A man once enamoured of fruit,
    Was not considered astute,
    He went on a binge,
    eating many an orange,
    His bowels are now irresolute.
    
    Hmm...