Untainted

I was pondering the urge to cause offense, as well as my general irritation with (and personal prejudices about) the bluenose crowd, when the notion came to me of a song with limerick lyrics that increasingly pushed an audience member beyond their breaking point.

So this song is what happened when I took seeds of well-known limericks and went to town.

I know that the line between humor and harm is controversial, and important. I tend to make my in-groupness clear when it exists, so as not to inadvertently seem to give license to abuse (when I make or report certain comments). That said, the notion behind a limerick is not to indict all men from Nantucket, for example, or all members of all acrobat troupes (or all barracudae). I am not from Cape Cod; it has just been a traditional location for limericks because it conveniently rhymed with the likes of “sod” back in the day when many of these poems were written by authors on the East Coast of America. Limericks aren’t intended to harm, and I would enjoy limericks written about people from the city of Eugene in that same spirit of affection.

(And yes, the title “Utainted Love” did occur to me.)