To clarify: it wouldn't necessarily be everyone at the same time.
Personally, I think "I want to get this shit down before you kick the bucket" would be just fine, but I can understand how your grandparents might not agree. How about letting them know about StoryCorps and telling them that you'd like to do something similar?
Either that, or you can say that you're just trying to provide future historians with primary sources.
It depends entirely on the nature of your relationship with each of them, of course.
My mom's death made me realize that family stories are incredibly important to everybody, desperately important. Maybe frame it in terms of -- and this may or may not be a lie on your part -- your finally growing up enough to realize how important everyone is to you, and you want to talk more to them than you have, and can you get together with them ...?
Then go from there? It may be that they'll object to the seeming artificiality of being recorded (eventually; I'd take that slowly). That's their choice, and if you wind up listening to stories you can't record, you're just then the keeper of the stories.
If you're serious about this, I wouldn't focus heavily on the recording part. Focus on the communication. Maybe other family members want to take part.
"Ancestor, would you kindly speak some of your ancient wisdom into this magic box?"
I think you could frame this request in terms of your own interest and wanting to hear the stories, and not concentrate on the "recording it before you die" aspect.
Whenever I teach comp, I have my students write a paper based on an interview, and a lot of them choose to interview their parents or grandparents or elderly neighbors about what kinds of crazy shit they got into when they were young, and it seems to be really rewarding for everyone. The old people are terribly flattered for the young person to show an interest, and they tell extra-salacious versions of their best stories. It makes everyone feel close and happy. My students, at least, have the excuse of having to do a paper for my class (in which the point is to get them used to incorporating quotations in an essay). But I think you could just say how much you want to have those stories because they'd be meaningful for you, or because you want to be able to pass them on to your kids or whatever, I think they'll understand.
Reviewing the post, it seems the recording part is important to you, so I guess then I'd go with Josh's suggestion in 2 about telling them about StoryCorps.
You don't have to bring the whole "dying soon" thing into it, necessarily. Just talk about wanting to get some of the family stories recorded in a relatively permanent form, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do.
By the way, make sure to take care of the recordings once you get them. Tapes don't last forever.
I have no idea, but I really wish I had done something like this with my one dead grandfather. He was a Pacific bomber pilot in World War II (moral problems our specialty!), and I'm sure would have narrated for me however I phrased it: he once went into great detail about his missions over the phone, but I was young and it put me to sleep.
Of my other two grandfathers, one probably has some amazing stories but never, ever talks about the war (he keeps concentration-camp photos in his wallet), and the other was an airplane mechanic after being drafted in '45.
Of course, looking over the above, I could just stop fetishizing the war (FFS) and seek out different stories.
Because "Um, you're probably gonna die sooner than I will, and I really wish we could get some of your zany fucking stories [ed. note: there are zany fucking stories, I assure you] on record before you shuffle off" seems, well, uncouth.
When I contacted an elderly cousin who had lived with my great-grandparents as a boy, he wrote back (by email, he was amazingly computer-literate) that he would be happy to answer any questions I had and etc, and then added "Don't wait too long, I'm 86 years old."
I get the awkwardness, but: it's not news to your grandparents that you'll probably outlive them, and in fact, that's exactly what they want you to do (nobody's keen to die, of course, but nobody wants to survive their own children and grandchildren either). Also, most people like to know that their memories/stories/reminiscences are of interest to others (though they may start off by telling you they don't remember much).
I think you could simply tell them that you wanted to know more about their lives, their childhoods, how they met their spouses, etc, etc.
Definitely use StoryCorps as your foot in the door. That's a great idea. Make it clear that you're not going to be shipping these off to go into some archive, though, to make sure they tell the versions they might be willing to tell you but no one else.
My mother did something similar when I was in jr high. She got my father's mother and those of my great-aunts who were alive at the time all in one place and cooked a big meal and got them talking. She did it for purposes of edutainment but sold it to them as "I haven't gotten to spend time with all of you at once in years and I'd be really honored if you would be guests in our home." Whatever way you can approach them and use flattery is probably the way to go.
My grandmother's response to a similar suggestion - no recording, but possible writing - was that she hadn't done anything special. We didn't press.
Either that, or you can say that you're just trying to provide future historians with primary sources.
Posterity has to condescend to someone - why not you?
Good advice so far. I think the "get family stories down" type approach.
This, from teo:
By the way, make sure to take care of the recordings once you get them. Tapes don't last forever.
is especially poignant. I have a good friend in local public radio that would no doubt supply the MD recorder, so I think I'm okay on the "how to record" front, but I might be missing something.
Do you really think they'll need you to justify your interest? They might jump at the chance to share their stories, and they're likely keenly aware of their mortality, so that issue doesn't need to be raised.
It's a great idea; I wish I'd done it myself, but all of my third-generation relatives were gone before I was 20. The family lore has loads of fascinating fragments and unanswered questions. So by all means, do it.
You need to be able to get them into transferable formats. Unless you plan to preserve the recorder/players too (as they've done with the Nixon tapes, among other archived audio). Although sometimes there are workarounds.
9: and then added "Don't wait too long, I'm 86 years old."
Oh yes. The last time I saw my great-aunt (now 92), she said before parting, "I hope I see you again, but if I don't, I want you know that I've always thought you were a lovely girl."
Made me tear up. These people are not stupid just because they're old.
Alternatively, you could introduce them to Unfogged and have them share their stories on comment threads, or as background to "Ask the Mineshaft" questions.
I think you could simply tell them that you wanted to know more about their lives, their childhoods, how they met their spouses, etc, etc.
Yes. Yes. And yes. It's my paternal grandpa who would be the hold-out. Questions like these open him up. Thanks!
My grandparents are dead (although their stories live on through my parents and me and my brother). But someday I anticipate telling grandchildren about a mysterious and distant time with no computers, rotary-dial phones, and only four channels of television.
When my mom's dad died, my mom's mom was put on a pretty heavy course of anti-anxiety meds. It makes her really annoying to talk to because she's so loopy a lot of the time, but it also made her open up in all these weird ways. "Oh, you live in Brooklyn? Did I ever tell you about the time I lived in Brooklyn for six months in the winter of '44?" Crazy shit, man. She was a country girl from Alabama, and no one could understand her, but this hotel piano player fell horribly in love with her and chased her back to Alabama, tracked her down to propose to her, but she had already eloped with my grandfather. It was pretty confused and weird in the re-telling, but a great story nonetheless.
Questions like these open him up.
Specific, fact-based questions are good. Not "tell me about your childhood" or "what was it like when you were a boy?" but "So you lived on Maple St when you were a kid?" or "I understand your father was a police officer?" This gets people talking, jogs their memories, can lead to interesting stories, and so on.
Old photographs can get people talking or so I've heard.
MC is smart. I only found out recently that one of the reasons my great-aunt and my mother were so close was that my great-aunt, who was a nurse, paid for my mother's nursing school. I did not know any of that! Asking my great-aunt about her nursing days would be a great start were I to start a project like this with her (other family members who live closer to her are doing that).
My father did this with my grandfather, except he then transcribed the recordings. Fascinating stuff.
Also, it's "harebrained", not "hair-brained".
Never thought I'd see the day when someone solicited advice to get elderly people to start talking, LOL. Seriously, though, it seems to me that as humans age the desire to tell their story grows. So be upfront and frank and go already!
I wish I'd been able to do something similar. My paternal grandfather died when I was about 14, but the year before he died he stayed with us for a week or so while my grandmother went to Lourdes and it was a week in which I at least got the chance to hear something about his life, which was a pretty amazing life.
This was a man who'd spent the late 1920s in remote watchtowers in the Hindu Kush, journeyed into Tibet and Nepal, spent WWII fighting across North Africa and Italy, spent the years immediately after WWII in the Indian Army, and spoke about 6 languages, all while being a working class guy born in a Victorian slum in Glasgow. We have his photo albums, but no record of the stories that go with them. I'd bet he'd have loved the chance to record them.
My other grandfather is now 95, and still pretty hale and hearty, and, I don't doubt he has many amazing stories too -- he worked in a Lancashire cotton mill as a boy, spent WWII in the RAF, was in Palestine during the Israeli war for independence, and kept working long enough to work on Concorde, etc. But, I think, he's much less of the story-telling type.
Is it possible to extend the project to younger relatives (your parents generation)? Then it may have less of the "I am collecting you in order of shortest remaining lifespan" feeling about it and more "be part of this intergenerational project". Maybe they'd like to have your stories on tape too, for that matter.
The flipside to all of the stories of people who wish they'd done this (and that includes me, I have one living grandparent, down from 4 at age 20) is my husband's grandfather, who kept a diary religiously to pass down to his sons and grandsons, and apparently comes across as a really dislikeable man. Maybe the older generation should wait to be approached sometimes.
5.1 is right, also 21.
Just being genuinely interested in people is the best way to get them talking. The last time I saw my GMiL, she was telling me about being taken to watch Michael Collins' funeral ("The music was awful dull"), because I was there and listening to her.
Beyond that, IMlimitedE, if they're the sort of old people who do that sort of thing, get them drunk. Not too drunk - a couple of martinis or so - and they'll sing like a canary. On the question of recording, just because they're old doesn't mean they're necessarily technophobic. Offer them some easy to use kit that you can pretend is state of the art, and if they're that kind of person (I'm thinking of an aunt of mine who live to 98), they'll be hooked. If they're not, of course, they won't be, but try it.
Recently my dad wrote down what amounts to the beginning of a memoir - about his childhood during WWII, his time at Oxford (he met C. S. Lewis! and J.R.R. Tolkien! - which I'd always known, because he used to look at the books I'd read with their names on the cover and say politely "You have no idea how strange it is to me that you think of them as fantasy writers" but it was still cool to read how it happened - and his time in India when he was doing his conscientious-objection-to-national-service. It's rather formal, because he was writing it rather than recounting it, but it's still fascinating, and it came out of my sister asking him once "so what did you do during the war?" half-joking, because she knew that when the war ended he was just 18, but still wanting to know.
So yes. Tell them you want to pass on their stories to your children (even if you're not planning to have any...) because you want future generations to have a sense of where their family comes from.
I've been doing an occasional presentation at the park on trading posts in the area, including the one where my father and grandmother grew up, and as part of researching it I looked at a collection of oral history interviews we have on file in the park library. There was an interview with my grandparents, of course, and I read the whole thing. They both died when I was still too young to remember them, and since my grandmother was the main keeper of the family lore an awful lot of knowledge died with them. It was fascinating to read the interview and see the stuff they were talking about, some of which I knew (from my dad and the book about my family that the interviewer later wrote) and some of which I didn't. It's always good to document that stuff.
After my grandparents died my parents made a video where they took my grandmother's two surviving sisters around the old store and house and taped them reminiscing and talking about their childhood. Just a few years ago we had the tape put onto DVD and gave copies to the whole family, and it was a good thing we did; last year we were watching some old home videos and they had deteriorated noticeably since the last time we had watched them and were nearly inaudible.
My mom's grandfather wrote a memoir in the 1940s, which I have published in blog form. Makes sharing a lot easier.
I've just this week been visiting my mom's 92 year old second cousin here in DC. We trade story for story.
This is a great idea; both of my grandfathers were dead before I was ten (one just before I was born), so I never got a chance to hear much from them. Of my grandmothers, one was too frightening to interact with, which is a shame, because she lived and was as coherent as she'd ever been until I was thirty, but the other one started having strokes that killed her memory when I was about thirteen. There was one summer while she was still coherent, and I was old enough to talk to like a person rather than a small child, where I heard some great stories, but there was only one two-week visit where that happened.
I wouldn't worry about being tactful about the "because of your impending death" aspect. No need to bring it up explicitly, but the sort of person who'd tend to be realistic about it will think it's a sensible idea for that reason, and for someone who might be offended, I don't think there's going to be a tactful approach that will help much.
My grandfather is currently writing his second memoir, this one dealing with the town he grew up in and his childhood, after writing a more formal one about his life and career a few years ago. We encourage him to write it-he likes to write, and while he's going to need a lot of editing I suppose that's what my role will be. So the question of how to approach is one I can't really conceptualize, given that it's hard to imagine my grandfather ever not wanting to tell his stories.
That said, it seems to me that displaying an interest is likely to do the trick with any person who'd be remotely interested in telling their story; after all, you're their grandchild. I suspect a lot of people think that no one would ever be interested in what they have to say, and are accordingly quiet; once encourage, I think most people are more than happy to talk about themselves.
I suspect "I've become more interested in our family history recently, and I'm interested to hear the stories of what it was like growing up" would be fine. I wish I had done something like this with my grandmother. I have great stories from her, but they're all snapshots of her life (rollerskating to school, getting caught painting her nails in class and being told to wash it off by the teacher), not a narrative.
Shorter Stanley: Hai Gais I came up with this really really awesome idea tell me I'm awesome kthxbye.
Um, I mean, I have this problem...
My Dad did this with my grandparents. Got some fascinating stories. One thing that I think helped smooth things over is that he did it as part of a larger genealogical project, so he started out by asking them for their memories of their parents and grandparents. Those were some fascinating stories, since they encompassed the Great Depression and WWI, not to mention Irish independence.
Sadly, my Dad died before getting down any of his own stories, which would have included Peace Corps service, travels in Africa and India, development projects in in the early post-colonial period, and similar interesting stuff.
It may be that they'll object to the seeming artificiality of being recorded
My grandmother loved to tell stories about her life, but she declined to let me record her stories when I asked to near the end of her life. I think she was a little weirded-out by the idea that what she said would be so permanent. I don't know, really. I dropped the subject at the time, intending to bring it up again later, but within a year she was gone.
Early in his career, in the fifties, my father was involved with some of the USAF balloon reconnaissance missions and I sort of interviewed him about those events on a few occasions. We'd talked about doing some video or recorded audio interviews at some point, but we put it off, and then it was too late.
About five years ago, Mom, Grandma and I went on this mega-road-trip together, so Mom and I tried to do this with Grandma. She actually sabotaged the whole thing, which runs bizarrely counter to her whole motivation as a character. Usually Grandma is extremely interested in: 1) long boring lectures which dominate conversation, and 2) establishing her immortality in any way possible, (ie every gift must be inscribed with a long paragraph about how she came to acquire the knick-knack she got from her downstairs neighbor.)
So we pitched the idea to her, and she was on board, but then when the tape recorder was actually out, all the stories dried up and she would only deliver an extremely dry date-by-date abbreviated version of her life, which was done in about 20 minutes. We could not coax the lectures and stories out of her. (My theory is that this was some sort of passive-aggressive axe to grind against my mom.) It was weird.
I'm keeping a tediously detailed blog so that my own grandchildren won't face this angst.
last xmas my grandparents put together a book of pictures, stories, etc from their lives, where they grew up, my mom and aunt from when they were kids, stuff like that.
they joke about kicking off pretty soon though, how they won't need to buy a new stove ever again, things like that. seniors might be more ok with their mortality generally, i'd guess.
39: As long as you remember to friend them.
27.2: This reminds me that we have all the letters my dad's dad sent from WWII, where he was stationed in France. They are all as mean as you can imagine, all about how he teased his homesick bunkmates until they cried, etc. He was a nasty man. When it came down to it, he saved a bunch of those guys' lives and won a silver star and a purple heart for it. He was just a total asshole.
My grandmother died around the time I was born, but wrote an awesome memoir. Published and everything.
43: I don't know, vicious mockery and then saving your life seems like a decent tradeoff to me.
Heroes are often pricks in everyday life.
The mass of evidence suggests that your grandma is a genius of passive aggression, I must say.
Just being genuinely interested in people is the best way to get them talking.
Definitely. My mother has a real talent for drawing people out, getting their life story, almost without their realizing that she's asking who they are, where they come from, who their father was, and so on. I think it's that's she's genuinely curious (some might say "nosey") about people. And also that has a small-town sense of place (with "place" referring not only to geography but also, if not more so, to family).
Huh. This is actually a tiny bit depressing. One grandparent died when I was less than two, and another two were basically out of their minds, forgive the bluntness, from when I was sixish until they died about five years later. (The one grandparent who survived to see me in high school, my mother's mother, gave me a bizarre view of old people. She played tennis until the week she died, did her neighbor's taxes as a hobby, and was more computer-literate than people her childrens' age.) Had this post been written a month ago I'd think of my great-uncle, but apparently his relationship the rest of the family is strained; I found out recently that he's been involved with another woman since soon after or even before his wife died. I'm inclined to be understanding but I really don't want to get in the middle of that, not until his own family sorts it out.
So, basically, I have no elderly relatives to milk for memories. Chances missed, etc. I regret the loss a bit, and it bothers me that I don't regret it more.
But anyways, as for interviewing techniques: play dumb. Ask questions you already know the answer to. Say you've forgotten a story, even; you'll get more detail if it's being told anew, or by a different grandparent.
I did this with one of my grandparents--at least, I wrote down notes while she told me stories about the family past. It really wasn't a big deal to ask: I just said, "hey, Grandma, would you tell me some of the family history so I can record it?" and she agreed.
I mean, it's not like they think they're going to live forever. You don't have to mention the death part.
I did this with my maternal grandmother, who is my last surviving grandparent and dates from 1905. Actually, it was her doing; she was very into the family's past and recorded interviews with several of her relations when she was younger. Unfortunately by the time I started talking with her her memory was not very good and we mostly covered the same ground over and over. But it was a good experience nevertheless.
She was quite aware that her death impended, though.
And when your grandparents are gone, try your cousins. They'll have gotten some different versions of the stories, and some different stories altogether. Some of it might even be true.
My family's particular brand of Mormonism, which places tremendous emphasis on keeping up appearances at all times, keeps a lot of the interesting stories untold. One of my uncles did an oral history project with my grandfather, edited the transcripts, and self-published the results, and it basically reads like a series of inspirational nuggets. Parts of his life that don't fit the Wise & Faithful Patriarch template are pretty much glossed over: his rambunctious youth in southern Utah before he served a mission, working in shipyards in Washington State during the war. My other grandfather would hitch rides to a mining town in southern New Mexico when he was a teenager and play piano in dance halls to earn money; you could tell there were a bunch of stories there, too, but we never got to hear them. My mom never talks about her two engagements before she married my dad. Everything that makes it down to me and my siblings is boring.
This is why I'm keeping a detailed sex diary.
You don't keep track of the simple sex?
||
Can someone bump the Chicago meetup post back to the front page? I'd be much obliged...
|>
56: I bet yours isn't in limericks though. (I haven't updated it in years, but it is pretty good.)
I bet yours isn't in limericks though.
This diary is useless without samples.
57: Mine are in the form of potential band names/album titles. Perhaps it'd be different if my first time was with a man from Nantucket.
Go ahead and tell me "Whiskey Dick Humiliation" isn't an awesome band name, I dare ya.
58: Some things are just for me.
Okay, you can't just mention that and... look, sorry in advance, okay?
AWB's diary excerpt (totally not for real!):
Met a man in this bar on Atlantic
He pawed at me, seeming quite frantic
"Shame 'bout my dong,"
He said, "'s not very long."
So I sent him on home to Weewantic.
Recent entry:
Another suitor, alleged quick
and known to have left his man-hedge thick
Was shot down by me, Bear
Who could truthfully swear
"I'm still mourning Kosofsky Sedgwick"
(In penance, I just took Dialogue on Love out the library.)
Peach blossoms settled
as she suckled the chrome off
my bumper. Splurt. Splurt.
max
['...laydeez.']
I don't think it's a diary of encounters that never happened. And that heavy spondee in the third line—AWB would never descend to it.
Spondees aren't good for dimeter, especially when prevailingly anapestic. But I still think it's lovely, WS. Let me know what you think of DoL!
I got a spam message this morning whose subject line was "Give her five peaks a night !! Of intellectual !!".
(Line 3 reads more to me like two bacchic feet, though.)
On their own, lines 3 and 4 work as anapests -- it's just coming off the unstressed at the end of 2 that mucks it up.
(Line 3 reads more to me like two bacchic feet, though.)
The point is that two ending long stresses muck it up.
You know, neb, instead of being critical you could be writing limericks about AWB's sex life. Don't you think that'd be a more productive use of your time?
71: SRSLY. I'll offer a prize to the person who writes the best limerick about this past Saturday night, on which, if you recall, it turns out I had sex with the girlfriend who brought me home from a party and I don't remember anything because tequila works as an amnesiac on me, so your guess about what happened is as good as mine. I also promise to include it, with attribution, in my sexual history limerick diary.
A picture holds me captive: that of a limerick rhyming "tequila" and "Sheila".
73: I am told it did! I don't remember!
Oh, and it was Friday, which scans better anyhow.
What Saturday didn't forfend
I think involved me and my friend?
We def did some shots
and I think got the hots?
Thus _____ like ______ 'til _______ end
At a party on Friday, they say,
I was frolicsome, frisky and gay:
Drunk on tequila,
I got with a sheila,
And forgot it the following day.
I agree. It's an odd limerick all around, really.
I drank departmental tequila
Got home with assistance from Sheila
I remember us kissing
But not why I'm missing
My panties. Did we seal the deal-a?
She brought me back me home quite content
Which led to some Sapphic event
But consuming tequila
has induced some amnesia
On how Being and Time there was spent.
A limerick is no place for experimentation with enjambment.
82's even better, but the last line isn't quite right.
84: Suck it, W-lfs-n. It's a nice enjambment.
82 leads to speculation about dialects in which tequila rhymes with amnesia.
"induced in me amnesia" would be better for the penultimate line of mine
but the last line isn't quite right.
I was trying feebly for some joke about both one's being and time being spent, nudge, nudge, but i couldn't quite get there.
82 leads to speculation about dialects in which tequila rhymes with amnesia.
In tequila-rich dialects, everything rhymes with everything.
My idiolect has to have drunk quite a bit of tequila to rhyme it with amnesia.
Dear girlfriend who walked by my side,
my thanks to you sadly elide
the scale of your favor
for friendship I savor
but say, did you give me a ride?
84: Suck it, Wolfson. It's a nice enjambment.
Eh, I think the last line's kind of thrown off-kilter both by it and by the internal rhyme.
I'm not sure what happened to me,
Last Friday. My petit amie,
When asked what went on,
Once the party was gone,
Smirks lewdly, and giggles "Tee hee!"
91 isn't all there, is it? Oh well.
Perfection, of the traditional sort:
O, problem, solution--Hornitos!
handmaiden of girl-on-girly throes
A foot, slipped from stocking
climbed leg, commenced shocking
My love! I dub thee Hornitos.
In my weak defense, I was taught that the ideal Limerick should contains an internal rhyme that is also a self-contained joke or pun, but I guess this isn't canonical for the form.
96: See, that sounds too hard. (I'm also not quite sure what it means -- 'internal rhyme' in this context is throwing me.)
96: if I were you, I'd assert authority over the canonical form, based purely on prior geographic proximity.
She says I was oddly romantic
For a girl who's more often pedantic
I kissed with a vigor
While she pulled the trigger
My hangover, though, was gigantic
Tequila, thou frightful bewitcher
Ambrosia and Lethe's admixture
Before your hexed whirl ends
make lovers of girlfriends
and don't even leave them a picture
Hey, Limerick's the nearest city to the 1/8th of a peat bog my mother's been cheated out of by her second cousin. Which would suggest that by geographical proximity/inheritance the first two lines of my 93 should scan much better than they do.
82, revised:
She brought be back home quite content
Which led to some Sapphic Er-eignis
But consuming tequila
Has led to the forgetting of Being
The cleavage is the unfolding unto itself of the intimacy of be-ing.
104 would be better in the original German.
Teguila has stolen from me
The plot of a fine reverie
When she brought me back
And we jumped in the sack
I'm told that we both got quite lucky.
The internal rhyme isn't absolutely required. But it's a feature of a lot of Irish drinking songs, so maybe it was imported from there. E.g., here's one about a political scandal that will mean nothing to you:
Larry sold Saddam beef in a deal
Stamped "Inspected by Al" on the seal
But Baghdad send the boat
Straight back home with a note:
"Your pal Al's not Hal-Al we feel".
Or:
A scholar at sea off Kinsale
Encountered a bilingual whale
He spoke English most fine
Whilst submerged in the brine
But was, when caught blowing, a Gael.
Ooh, can I mess with 106 to make it Frenchier?
Teguila has stolen, cherie,
The plot of a fine reverie,
When she brought me back
And we jumped in le sack
I'm told that we both got luckie.
Bring, bring it on, bring it motherfuckin' on!
I rhyme and I scan like a fuckin' leprechaun!
My girl lick-lick-licks Jose
Cuervo from her friends pus-say
And forgets it all by motherfuckin' dawn!
You're right, "quite" is too long. I forget why we're being French?
108: frenchier, eh?
I recall some Patrón induced games
Just some fun among two friendly dames
But then I hear more
About some kind of score
Like Renee, did I go down in flames?
110: Mostly just to sharpen the reverie/lucky rhyme. If it's cherie/reverie/luckie it cleans up the stresses a bit.
SRSLY. I'll offer a prize to the person who writes the best limerick about this past Saturday night, ... I also promise to include it, with attribution, in my sexual history limerick diary.
Three thoughts:
1) That is a seriously gutsy (or crazy) challenge to the mineshaft.
2) The quoted statement appears to imply that inclusion in the sexual history diary is in addition to some other prize. It would be irresponsible to not speculate.
3) Now this is the sort of topic drift that made unfogged famous.
I'm sure I liked what we did that night
I'm sure she touched me exactly right
I can't know for sure
If we were impure
The drink took away all my hindsight.
Damn. Why does that extra syllable in the last line sound good until I post it? Easily removed, but it sounded OK ten seconds ago.
The tequila I drank was too much
I've forgotten the details and such
But some girl brought me home
And when she had me alone
I suspect it involved the bad touch.
In the morning my phone blinked a three
And I thought, well, who could that be?
"I'm here for my wife,
In the car with a knife."
The other two said, "Ma cherie!"
120: well those are certainly interesting additional details....
Recipe for comity ATM: cast humorous aspersions of date rape over a consensual same-sex encounter.
122: Well, there was a message from her husband waiting in the car to pick her up and two from her, but they were all nice messages.
I admit, by the end I was soused;
Someone ripped my tequila-soaked blouse.
Was the crapulous night
Full of fleshly delight?
I forget -- though I could ask her spouse.
124: I was confused about "blinked a three" and so I read "other two" as describing girls, not messages.
126: It was poorly executed on my part.
Tequila, thou frightful bewitcher
Ambrosia and Lethe's admixture
Ambrosia from Lethe's own pitcher?
I'm incapable of composing a limerick, but why should that stop me from improving other peoples'?
127: Yay! I look forward to receiving my prize!
125: Very nice, particularly the use of 'crapulous'.
129: That's what makes it 'folk'.
I like limerick competitions. We haven't had one here in a while.
I'd drunk six shots of Sauza discreetly
And soon had blacked out quite completely
My girl kissed on my head
And dragged me to bed
I guess it weren't rape 'cause it pleased me
Apologies, apologies.
132: No, that's what makes it folk girls.
Oh, 134's nice, too. And accurate! Although I think it was just one shot, after other drinks. Tequila is very bad for my mind. I am told I remained quite alert and charming, such that it did not seem to be rape. I managed to organize a group cab ride and split the fare. I blew off a guy who's been semi-stalking me. I held entire conversations. I remember none of this. It's as if I'm hearing something that happened to someone else. This has happened two other times with even small amounts of tequila in combination with even one or two other drinks.
Thus, I think tequila needs to go the way of marijuana in my life, into the category of never, ever, ever, because the results are predictably stupid.
I awoke with a girl in my bed
Hungover and feeling half-dead
I wondered in time
If her husband would mind
But for now I just wanted more head.
I think this may be moving away from AWB's original story...
Stupid phone--that's supposed to say "125", not "weed".
Nice to see that Brock uses StonerApp (tm) for the IPhone.
And 125 is the best.
125 unimprovable, but since it takes two to tango:
I admit, by the end she was soused;
So I ripped her tequila-soaked blouse.
Was that crapulous night
Full of fleshly delight?
You bet -- though I shan't tell my spouse.
Oh Tequila, how you vex me!
With your aid, my friend did sex me
It must not have been bad
For once I'd been had
She decided kindly to text me.
Now this is the sort of topic drift that made unfogged famous.
Unfogged is famous?
A nice sentence from Annette Baier: "Styles flourish where methods are unnecessary."
Dos Amigos, Hornitos, Cuestión,
Milagro, Dos Manos, Corazón,
She told me we did it
(from her spouse she then hid it)
Porfidio! I blame the Patrón.
It took only a tequila shot
To convince me my friend was quite hot.
We boogied till dawn
without any clothes on,
And then the whole thing I promptly forgot.
These things are hard to write!
lol AWB pls rd this txt
u & me2 got all sexd
hubby's like wha
wuz like "tequila!"
shud rtfa b4 nxt
A White Bear would kiss and tell
If she remember'd the details well
But she doesn't at all,
Not the sex, not the call
Nor coming home with her married bombshell.
The night that I'll never remember
Did ignite in tequila-soaked ember
the tumble, the panting
were no less enchanting
for lacking the usual member
No love for 146? It's actually kind of clever.
146 and 148 both made me laugh. Very nicely done.
Distilled agave
Amnesiac sapphism
Typical Friday
Higgledy Piggledy
Ursus maritimus
Drunk on tequila, she
took home a dame
"Hangovers? Husbands? I
care not a whit for your
heteronormative
systems of shame!"
old tequila
bear jumps in
sound of women snogging
There once was a tequila-soaked orgy,
That's right, I said 'tequila-soaked orgy',
She drank night and day,
And then had her way,
Oh and guess what, it was AWB.
A White Bear
Took a shot on a dare.
Later, having become quite intoxicated,
She was taken home by another woman and the copulated.
Forgive me
she was delicious
so naked
and so drunk
On Friday, the textual critics
Slipped away from the old and arthritic,
Donned some drunk glasses,
Made several passes,
And emended at length their enclitics.
I have slept with
yhe bear
yhat was on
our couch
And whom
you were probably
just
doing a favor
[165 incorporated by reference]
Where is the double dactyl I'm overlooking?
If I forgot how good you were in bed,
And cannot say how tenderly we touched,
I still know that I kissed your lips so much
You took me by the hand and gently led
Me to undress myself, but what I said
That offered you my body, love, and such
Escaped my mind. Why did you clutch
My thighs to push them, make them slowly spread?
And if I pleaded that you spend the night
(Your husband calling, wondering where you were)
And if I held you close against my chest
(Not knowing what is wrong and what is right)
And if I cannot say what did occur
I only know tequila knows what's best.
(Fuck you, clown.)
And THEY copulated.
And THEN copulated.
No?
156 is the double-dactyl. Very cute.
"n" is not the letter I didn't type. The letter I didn't type was "y".
Ah, so it is. Silly me, thinking 160 must be referring to something hiding in 159.
174: I made my students read like 9000 Petrarchan sonnets this semester. I feel like I could crank out a shitty sonnet about almost anything now.
I thought "love" in the sixth line was direct address, which made the "such" somewhat disorienting: yeah, my body and such. Oddly having a second item in the list nullifies the effect.
178: I agree. I also think it sounds shitty with so few metrical substitutions. Soooo 20th-century.
Also, I should have used a couplet at the end. Even within the Petrarchan form, it would have been more appropriate for the development of a secondary turn.
I don't know what "metrical substitutions" means, but if by their absence you mean to indicate that it's straight iambs through and through, then you indicate something that is surely not the case.
Which is part of the reason why I'm not sure what you mean by it.
182: I didn't say there were no substitutions; they're just few and not particularly indicative of rhetorical shifts.
She's his wife. I was drunk when we snogged.
The both spouses texted, I blogged.
Though I cannot recall
Fleshly pleasures at all
At least I made fun for unfogged.
Reader, I married her, then blanked her memory with my ray gun.
On the night AWB hit the sauce
Sheila's husband would not give a toss
a bear won her attention
but hey, did she mention
the frolicking memory loss?
When this White Bear gets Ursa Major,
meaning starry-eyed drunk, you can wager
that she'll fuck like a comet
and then likely vomit
And promptly forget the whole rager.
Holy Mother of Crap these are hilarious, too many to name.
Lines three and four of 166 should be "downed several glasses / then made thorough passes" (through the mss., that is).
These all seem like they would be good fodder for a new edition of Exercises in Style.
On Gotham's sultry vernal eventides,
Midst grey stone canyons sweltering and grim,
Two hearts o'er whom Lady Venus presides,
Meet, and now lose themselves to Cupid's whim.
A lonesome scholar's bookish cell, so dim,
Became again a bower of delight,
As we, careless, entwined our every limb,
In drunken Sapphic revels of the night.
Our eyes were fervid, gazes burning bright,
The juice of blue agave wet our lips,
Our tangled bodies blurring in my sight,
Sens'd only with our probing fingertips.
This hymn I sing to thee, o tequila,
Come dawn I had to cry oh! Oh Sheila!
Thank you! It's just doggerel, but, you know, it amuses me.