I find myself noticing scansion

[simont]

Somewhere in my head is a very specialised pattern-recognition neuron, which seems to fire whenever I encounter – or, even more so, inadvertently write – any phrase or sentence that would scan perfectly as the first line of a limerick.

It's a very persistent and attention-grabbing neuron, for some reason. Every time it fires, I have to spend the next half hour vigorously resisting the urge to try to come up with the rest of the limerick. Even if the triggering phrase is something utterly, tediously mundane, as for example the one that emerged from my fingers just now as a hasty commit message: ‘A cleanup I noticed in passing’.

Comments

[kaberett]

... I feel compelled to ask: would it be faster to just write the limerick?

[simont]

Even easier to post the first line here and let the Lazyweb (or rather, the Lazy LJ in this case) do it for me :-)

[mtbc]

I'm hoping that it's not infectious. (-: (Personally I instead try not to notice double entendres.)

[mtbc]

But the habit is then reinforced!

[azurelunatic]

A cleanup I noticed in passing
Just a small error in classing
I repacked the packets
And tidied the brackets
Then grammar-corrected some sassing.

[sunflowerinrain]

I notice the scansion, but fortunately the urge to write the rest of a limerick is very rare!

Happy birthday xx

[simont]

Thank you :-) *hug*

[deborah_c]

Wouldn't it just be easier to write your commit comments in the form of limericks?

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

A cleanup I noticed in passing
to prevent the bugs from amassing
In a library of code
for a JavaScript Node
Merely led to some pointless subclassing.

[simont]

I'm not sure easier is the word I'd choose :-) That could have the potential to be even more of a time-sink than the time I read Paradise Lost and a few days later found myself having to write a large collection of error messages at work, and my hindbrain insisted on trying to put them all in iambic pentameter.

[deborah_c]

... still not seeing the problem ;-)

[gjm11.livejournal.com]

#define LAST_LINE() syllable LAST_LINE() LAST_LINE()

I find myself noticing scansion
While pondering macro-expansion.
Like the Bard of Japan
My macros don't scan
LAST_LINE()

(Note 1. The only other not-terribly-obscure -ansion word is "mansion". Note 2. No, macro-expansion doesn't actually work that way in the C preprocessor. Note 3. But if it did, I promise that any time the expansion terminates it does so with -ansion at the end. Note 4. I am aware of the grammatical infelicity in lines 3-4.)

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

I've never noticed that (but now I will, gee thanks) but I do notice headlines that fit to Camptown Races ever since someone on Facebook pointed it out. From today's BBC News: "Livingstone stands by Savile jibe (doo dah, doo dah)"