Most inane couplet

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,Guest: JWB
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 06:02 PM

We missed this lump of coal from Neil Diamond:

"I am," I cried to no one there,
And no one heard at all, not even the chair.

Blechh!

Jerry

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: johnross
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 09:28 PM

From "The State of Elanoy":

Away up in the northward, right on the borderline
A great commercial city, Chicago, you will find.
Her men are all like Abelard, her women like Heloise
All honest virtuous people, for they live in Illinois.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Nick
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 08:00 PM

>>And what about a rhyme for "month"?

Jutht cos my friends have had lithps for a month
Doeth'nt give you the right to treat them like conth

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 07:45 PM

There see, that shut you up didn't it!

Thanks to Oliver for that, Good Morning Starshine.

LTS

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 11:27 AM

Well if that's your attitude...

Glibby glup gloopy,
Nibby nabby noopy la la la lo lo
Sabba sibby sabba.

LTS

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 11:23 AM

Not a couplet, but well inane

O Shenanikey Da
He play da guitar
Outside da bazaar, bazaar, bazaar
As he play da guitar
He smoke a cigar
And he laugh a da ha ha ha ha ha.

I'll shall procure my hard weather gear . . .

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Gene Burton
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 05:59 PM

"Ar dee do, ar dee do dar day
Ar dee do, ar dee day dee
He whistled and he sang as the green woods rang
And he won the heart of a lady"

They don't write 'em like that any more- thank f***!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 12:03 PM

Someone's knockin' at the door
Someone's ringing a bell
Someone's knockin' at the door
Open the door, let 'em in.         
            Paul McCartney (on one of his less creative days)

Arlo Guthrie once commented the only rhyme he could find for "orange" was "door hinge."

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,Betjemin fan
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 04:22 AM

The Master once wrote:

I rather think that I would like
To be the saddle of a ladies bike.

I reckon that would win a few prizes (and a listing on the Sex Offenders register) these days.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,vieve
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 03:59 AM

Hate to bring attention to a moment of dodginess in someone I love and admire, but Patty Griffin's "One Big Love" (covered by Emmylou Harris) has some shockers from such a good songwriter...

"everybody's gone to the movies
everybody's gone and it's groovy"

"everybody do like a monkey
if you wanna go and be funky"

I just don't know.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: bill kennedy
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 09:00 PM

Gordon was his name, with a Lightfoot he came,
and he sang of seafaring disaster,
and it drives me mad, ya' know, when I hear the radio
while my heads on the antimacasser


this has got to be the winner, start anywhere, it just gets worse and worse

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitchigumi
The lady, it's said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.

With a load of iron ore - 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go it was bigger than most
With a crew and the Captain well seasoned.

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ships bell rang
Could it be the North Wind they'd been feeling.

The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound
When the wave broke over the whaling
And every man knew, as the Captain did, too,
'Twas the witch of November come stealing.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashing
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of a hurricane West Wind

When supper time came the old cook came on deck
Saying fellows it's too rough to feed ya
At 7PM the main hatchway gave in
He said fellas it's been good to know ya.

The Captain wired in he had water coming in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the words turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd fifteen more miles behind her.

They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have gulfed deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion
Ole Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
The iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitchigumi
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 04:54 PM

Hey Netcaster, that must have been after the Great Mail Train robbery!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: theleveller
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 03:16 PM

And she sipped on a julep,
Her shoulders were bare,
And I tried not to stare,
When I looked at her two lips.

Bobby Goldsboro - Summer - The first Time

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,Guest AMC
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 02:03 PM

Poor rhyming line in a good song:

And as he died in my arms I cursed God, as I do to this day
So when I'm called to meet him, He damn better pray


From song "Black Cove" on album "Waterbound" by The Slipstream
(Good bluegrass album, though)

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 12:17 PM

where the bee sucks, there suck I

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: LeTenebreux
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 09:33 AM

I really hate this line from Billy Joel's Piano Man:

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sitting next to me, making love to his tonic and gin

Who the #$%^^&%*&^%*&^%*&^#%$##^%$3 says "tonic and gin"???
It's gin and tonic!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Splott Man
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 07:43 AM

The craic may be 90 in the Isle of Man,
But in Brideswell the craic was 100.

Ithangyou!

I wrote that.


100!!!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Splott Man
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 07:41 AM

In the marquee, the band played on
The bodhrans and dancing feet thundered...

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: alanabit
Date: 13 Jan 08 - 04:01 AM

You could well be right Michael, but then again, we could both be. Dylan revises and improvises lyrics all the time, so we could well both have an authoritative source, which is different. The version I knew best (haven't heard it for ages), was the opening song of the "Renaldo and Claire" fiasco, although that bit of footage was not without charm. (Dylan seemed to be giggling all the way through).
I think I got the lyrics I learned from a songbook.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: michaelr
Date: 12 Jan 08 - 07:17 PM

Alan, is that what Dylan wrote? I have it as

I left Rome and landed in Brussels
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried
There were clergymen in uniform and young girls pulling mussels
All there to greet me when I stepped inside

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: alanabit
Date: 12 Jan 08 - 07:00 PM

"Didn't Men At Work do that tune with a couple of lines that rhymed "Brussels" and "muscles"? "

I wonder if Little Hawk recalls a song with the lines:

"I left Rome and landed in Brussels
With a picture of a tall oak tree by the side
There was clergymen in uniform and young girls pulling muscles
Everybody was there but nobody tried to hide..."

Colin Hay was not the first to use that rhyme!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Canberra Chris
Date: 12 Jan 08 - 06:30 PM

The fruit that the English call 'orange'
They first, from the Spanish, called 'norange'.

I have read that the Spanish 'naranja' was first transferred into English as 'a norange', and like some other words with initial 'n' had elided in oral transmission into 'an orange'. My smallish dictionary doesn't say so, but does give the derivation as from Arabic 'naranj', which would have come through the Spanish, also from the Old French 'norenge', which adds plausibility. After all we didn't go with 'oconuts, 'ananas, 'omatoes or 'otatoes. Why would we go with 'orange?

Doesn't help with the rhyme, except for the above.

There are commoner rhyme traps too, I ended a song line with 'have' ...

From memory, a most unfortunate if not inane couplet from Drink To Me Only (he sends his love a rose - now read on):

'But thou thereon didst only breathe, and and send'st it back to me
Where now I swear it looks and smells not of itself but thee'

Impossible to sing now with a straight face, especially as 'smells' is a melodic highlight.

BTW re Gundagai above, I'll leave confirmation to the more knowledgable Oz tradition keepers, but as with the many collected English folk songs gentrified for publication, I understand that the dog originally 'shat' on the tuckerbox, as only fits properly the 'final straw' sense of the lines, and the humour and language of the times.

Chris

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 12 Jan 08 - 03:53 PM

I said, "Pretty fair maid I'm out for my fun!
If to Chelsea you'll follow I'll buy you a bun!"

Traditional folk music...can't be beat!

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 12 Jan 08 - 09:20 AM

From one of my own:
Napoli should be abandoned,
Get her men all back on land......and

Napoli was heavy laden,
With containers she was weighed down.

And another (song for my Dad!);
Before much longer he became a Branch Manager
And travelled round the winding lanes of sunny East Anglia.

By the way, Robbie W, in Scotland they tend to say "sangwich" instead of sandwich, which does rhyme quite well with "language".

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,No Friend of Dorothy's
Date: 11 Jan 08 - 10:15 AM

"I've measured it from side to side;
'Twas four feet long, and two feet wide"

W Wordsworth, "The Thorn"



"Now, of my three score years and ten
Twenty will not come again;
And take from seventy years a score,
It only leaves me fifty more"

Housman.


As Byron said of the one, and might have done of the other, he

"both by precept and example shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose"

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Mooh
Date: 11 Jan 08 - 08:00 AM

"Sometimes when we touch
The honesty's too much" (Dan Hill maybe)

We used to do a parody of it as a breakup sex song,

"Sometimes when we fuck
I feel like such a schmuck",

but audiences didn't always appreciate the humour.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Schantieman
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 02:34 PM

And what about a rhyme for "month"?

I have two.....


How many weeks in a month?
Four, as the swift moon runn'th.

(C Rosetti)



Amongst our many English rhymes
They say there's none for 'month'.
I tried and failed a hundered times

.


.



.



.



But I got it the hundred and oneth!


(Don't blame me.   Blame Johnathan Always.)


Steve

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Schantieman
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 02:30 PM

W S Gilbert made so many of these rhymes they're described as 'Gilbertian' and so did Tom Lehrer. Mostly, however for comic effect, so inanity may be a positive boon.

Ring the merry bells on board-ship,
Rend the air with warbling wild,
For the union of his/my lordship
With a humble captain's child!

Pretty daughter of mine,
                   I insist upon knowing
                   Where you may be going
               With these sons of the brine,
                   For my excellent crew,
               Though foes they could thump any,
               Are scarcely fit company,
                   My daughter, for you.



I'm sorry to be
               Of your pleasure a diminutioner.
                   They'll vow their pact
                         Extremely soon,
                   In point of fact
                         This afternoon.
                         Her honeymoon
                         With that buffoon
               At seven commences, so you shun her


The pluck of Lord Nelson on board of the Victory—
                        Genius of Bismarck devising a plan—
                The humour of Fielding (which sounds contradictory)—
                        Coolness of Paget about to trepan—
                The science of Jullien, the eminent musico—
                        Wit of Macaulay, who wrote of Queen Anne—
                The pathos of Paddy, as rendered by Boucicault—
                        Style of the Bishop of Sodor and Man—
                The dash of a D'Orsay, divested of quackery—
                Narrative powers of Dickens and Thackeray—
                Victor Emmanuel — peak-haunting Peveril—
                Thomas Aquinas, and Doctor Sacheverell—
                        Tupper and Tennyson — Daniel Defoe—
                        Anthony Trollope and Mister Guizot! Ah


...and from the pen of Dr Lehrer, I suggest...

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard
And there may be many others but they haven't been discarvard.


Discuss.


Steve

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,acorn4
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 01:48 PM

The of course there's the Rod Stewart classic:-

He took her up to his high rise apartment,
And there he told her exactly what his heart meant.

Accompanied, of course, by that famous "sitting on a French toilet" pose.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,acorn4
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 10:08 AM

What about:-

"There was music there
In the Derry Air."

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 10:06 AM

Not really a couplet but from a song by Devandra Banhart who is not Chinese:
      If I lived in China I'd have Chinese children
      If I lived in Japan I'd still have Chinese children
   Speaking of epitaphs:
                Here lies Lester Moore
                Shot to death with a 44
                No Les
                No Moore
   Or how about almost every Hallmark card ever written.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Splott Man
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 09:37 AM

Robbie...

It was Dean Friedman, he could only sing at one volume setting.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,HughM
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 08:21 AM

Just walking in the rain,
Getting soaking wet.

B'fhea\rr leam fhin gum beireadh an t-e/ile,
Ma\ireach dhe na h-eireagan...
(I wish the other pullet would lay an egg tomorrow.)

What was that about foreign GERMANIUMS? Different isotopes from the usual kind?

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 08:09 AM

Here comes the Wapiti
Hippity-hoppity

is not by Ogden Nash but by the New Zealand poet Denis Glover. Wapiti were the biggest animal introduced to NZ by the Europeans. I have no idea why.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: RobbieWilson
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 06:51 AM

you talk to me in sign language
while I'm eatinga sandwich...
( Sign language sung by eric clapton, mid 70's)


She's always looking as if
she's always wandering off a cliff

(Thank the stars we're not as smart as we like to think we are, forget who sang this in the 70's)

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Joe_F
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 08:30 PM

All on the southbound odyssey,
The train pulls out of Kankakee,

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: JennieG
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 07:14 PM

What about Hallejula by Leonard Cohen....

'Had it coming to ya' rhyming with 'hallejula'

I really dislike that song, I shudder every time I hear it.

Cheers
JennieG....pedant, and proud of it!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 05:56 PM

Do I win then?

:D

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 02:30 PM

What No mention yet of the Turtles?

I really think you're groovy
Let's go out to a movie

Your lips intixciate me
Even though your folks hate me

Surely it doesn't get any better than this!

:D

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Midchuck
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 02:21 PM

Some of Kipling's best (from the Rhyme of the Three Captains).

I turn to them when I'm really mad at someone:

Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;
I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,
I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side,
and tasselled his beard i' the mesh,
And spitted his crew on the live bamboo
that grows through the gangrened flesh;
I had hove him down by the mangroves brown,
where the mud-reef sucks and draws,
Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws!

Peter

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Peace
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 02:14 PM

I want to enter the competition.

"My heart's beating like a tympani
In a symphony of love"

Took me seven hours to come up with that one and when I got it I put it in a song.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Brendy
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 01:57 PM

... sorry..., that 2nd line should read.... 'peephole'

B.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Brendy
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 01:56 PM

"Stranger approach this grave with gravity
Charles Grey has filled his last cavity"

Spike Milligan on his show "Muses With Milligan" way back in the '60's devoted part of his programmes to these kind of rhymes.

'A baby Sardine saw his first submarine
He was scared, and watched through a peepholr
"Oh, come, come, come," said the Sardine's mum
"It's only a tinful of people'

B.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,squeezeme
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 08:53 AM

Some pretty inane ones on grave stones too....

"Here lies dentist Rafferty
Filling his last cavity"

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 11:38 PM

Oh, my! He really hits the heights of almost MacGonagalesque glory on the last 2 lines, doesn't he?

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 07:03 PM

I would like to quote Cumberland Clark[a second rate McGonagle]here he is on:
Spain.
In the south west of Europes the Kingdom of Spain,
where good southern blood permeates every vein.
The people are passionate,loving and warm:
and impromptu affections considered good form.
All the dear pretty girls carry on so
and im sorry theyve turned down Alfonso.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 01:35 PM

Yeah, you shouldn't criticize a deliberately goofy comedy song for having a goofy lyric...

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 12:52 PM

Someone at least impliedly criticized

I don't want a pickle, just wanna ride my motor-sickle'
'And I don't wanna die! Just wanna ride my motorcy------cle

It's a comic song, fergoonessake! In that context, that "die"-rhyming line is pure genius! I keep listening to the song, impatiently listening for that wonderful line!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: cptsnapper
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 04:25 PM

I've just been listening to an album called Tuesday, April 19th recorded by a group called The Unspoken Word & in my opinion the whole thing is inane. I feel that it's a shame that the people concerned didn't think about the inherent implication of the their chosen name. But that's only my opinion - feel free to disagree, I won't take it personally!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Brendy
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 04:23 PM

Jazus Bonnie, how's it goin'?
Lerner & Loewe... leenia's is from 'My Fair Lady', I think.
A rhyme is a rhyme, I suppose, if you get away with it... :-)

B.