It really is quite a long chore
To sift through the scholarly lore
To find the right facts,
No matter how lax,
To bolster my theory’s core.
—Frank Bop
Ambiguous statements appal,
But Lojban has answered my call.
Its rules are so strict,
It will ne’er contradict,
Since noone can speak it at all.
—Pete Bleackley
Welsh has no analogue of a(n),
But three allomorphs (y, ’r, yn)
Of the definite article.
Why a trio-faced particle
For the when for a(n) you’ve got none?
—Colm Rhaig
Poetry is hard
Hard like reading Derrida
Yet we still do it.
—Col. O. Nihilist
The Clay
Mathematics Institute
Owes Me $1,000,000
Denote any segment in sigma by P,
And let N identify identity.
Then for multiplication,
String concatenation,
And all operations, P is NP.
—Andrew Lamont
Ah definiteness! I have no hope
Of grasping it: I cannot cope
With the range and extension
Of its forms of expression
Which seem fairly indefinite in scope.
—Dev & Nate Ness
“Passive voice, schmassive voice!”
Show some civility.
Not using passives is
Too great an ask.
We’ve had enough of your
Anti-passivity.
Do something positive:
Go and learn Basque!
—“Basquin’ ” Robbins III
When English was younger
(or Saxon was old)
The Brid and the Hross
could be spied on the wold;
Since metathesis late
of their rhotics took hold
Reconstruction adds Dree,
Brea and Shrak to that fold.
—Nee Ogra Merrian
Mission Statement
Philol-linguistics made funny and funner—we
To this end perpetrate semimonthily
Academe grudge-match gunnery,
Anti-Noamian connerie,
And lim’rick-low levels of punnery.
—Pumptilian Perniquity
