The Prime Says

Prime's Last Blog Post

2008-08-17T14:32:00.004-04:00

I have a truly marvelous blog post for this day which blogspot is too narrow to contain...

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
August 17, 2008

I Love The RIAA

2008-06-30T00:54:00.001-04:00

It's true; I love the RIAA. (1)

Whew. It feels good to get that off my chest, to come out of the closet, to reveal our dalliance, to write this loyal canton of clandestine love and sing it loud even in the dead of night, to halloo its name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out 'R-I-A-A!' (2)

Well, maybe I don't love everything about them... nor even most things about them. In fact, when you come right down to it, I think they're largely despicable. Yet, our concurrence on certain bedrock principles assures our continued comity. Whenever gales of contentious particulars threaten to shear our irenic bliss, we can batten down the hatches and ride out the storm in each other's arms by clinging to our shared ethos.

Our bottom line: stealing music is stealing. (3) All is right with the world when the RIAA caresses me with its slimy tentacles, fondles my engorged genitalia, and whispers in my ear, "Recorded music has value. It's the property of its owners. They deserve payment for its use."

If you don't mind, I'm going to abandon the RIAA/relationship metaphor. That tentacle thing was kind of hot, but the rest of it is starting to give me the creeps.

As I was saying, stealing music is stealing. Engaging in unauthorized duplication, denying the owner of a work their due compensation, is stealing. That's all there is to it. The pro-theft (excuse me, that wasn't PC, the pro-"sharing") faction makes all manner of specious arguments, but they all boil down to justifying larceny. It really is that simple. Everything else is rationalization.

Okay, the truth is that nothing is ever that simple. There are dozens of fronts in the intellectual property wars and dozens of skirmishes in each of copyright-related battles, many of which are inter-related and impact each other. Unfortunately, my erstwhile paramour or is on the "wrong" side in many of them. For example:

They support overly lengthy protections. The Constitution grants Congress the authority to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." In the beginning, if an artist registered her work for copyright, she was granted a copyright of 14 years with an optional extension of 14 years. After that, her work entered the public domain. Thanks to incessant lobbying over the years, copyright protections have been extended to 95 years with the likelihood that the term will be extended once more before anything else has the opportunity to lapse into the public domain. This is clearly not the "limited times" envisioned by the founding fathers.

They support overly broad protections. In the old days, to claim copyright you had to register your work with the copyright office. Now, you have to transfix your work into a tangible medium. That's it. There's no more registration and no more renewal; everything is presumptively copywritten. The doodles in a daydreaming junior high schooler's notebook are given 95 years of copyright protection. By contrast, a team of research scientists who spend multiple years and multi-billions of dollars developing a cure for cancer are granted 17 years of patent protection -- if the patent office accepts their petition.

They support disproportional penalties. Illegally downloading a single song from the Internet is a federal felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. By contrast, although there are local variations, stealing a CD that contains 12 songs from a store is a misdemeanor, typically punishable by 90 days in jail and a $1000 fine. In no rational world does that disparity make sense; the theft of a physical object should be punished more severely than an additional copy of a digital file whose existence may lead to the loss of the sale.

Those are just three of the issues involved and they were painted with a very broad stroke. I'm sure that adherents of either side can, with some legitimacy, raise cavils about the finer details I've glossed over.

And that's okay. There's plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree on these issues. The eventual solution will be a compromise that balances the rights of creators with the cultural benefits of a vibrant and growing public domain.

That being said, for now, I will take the nigh heretical position and side with the RIAA. While they're rightfully pilloried for their heavy-handed enforcement tactics, they're still fighting the good fight. No one else is looking out for the artists. Okay, to be fair, the RIAA doesn't care about the artists either; their sole aim is to promote the interests of the major record labels who, almost universally, screw over their artists -- but that's a separate issue. In the end, preventing theft benefits artists and that's a position I'm comfortable with.

How will this fadge? O time! thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me to untie! (4)

I intended to write this missive a few months ago, but I was encouraged to read "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig first. Having done so, let me add my voice to the chorus of people who hail the tome as an important work in the copyright debate. Lessig argues, persuasively, that our copyright system is in need of a major overhaul. I don't agree with everything he says, and I found his solution to music piracy particularly distasteful, but the book is well worth reading.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
June 30th, 2008

(1) The MPAA's pretty cute too, but I saw the RIAA first and I'm a one oligarchy man.

(2) As I'm in the midst of a blog post that glorifies protecting artists from theft, it would be hypocritical not to mention that the last half of this paragraph was essentially stolen from Shakespeare. "Twelfth Night", act I, scene V, to be exact. However, since the play pre-dates copyright laws, I'm free to stea..., uh, "adapt" it as I desire.

(3) Technically, that's closer to the top line, but it's just as true whether it's at the top, the bottom, the side, upside down, backwards, on a Mobius strip or stretched into some bizarre four-dimensional tesseract.

(4) "Twelfth Night" again. Act II scene II, this time.

Hip Hop and Bukkake

2008-05-18T03:02:00.007-04:00

In honor of Hip Hop Appreciation Week - the third week of May - I'm going to revise and extend some remarks I made in the 10/3/2003 edition of The Prime Says:

I saw my first bukkake movie last weekend; it reminded me of hip hop.

And not just because it's degrading to women.

If you're not familiar with bukkake, I'll bring you up to speed. It's a genre of porn that started in Japan in the late 80's and has been enthralling the planet's pervert population ever since. While there are many variations on the theme, all bukkake involves a procession of men ejaculating on someone. In its most typical form, 50-100 guys will stand in front of a woman and masturbate. When one of the men is ready to let loose his lover's lather, he'll step up to the woman and bust a nut on her face. Repeat until all of the guys have blown their loads. No rinsing required. In fact, it's prohibited. The woman's face winds up looking like a glazed donut. But much less appetizing.

While watching the video, "American Bukkake 8", I noted that bukkake was a very egalitarian form of pornography - at least as far as the men were concerned. The guys ranged from emaciated to corpulent, barely legal to senescent, mentulate to microphallic, swarthy to aryan, brobdingnagian to lilliputian and glabrous to hirsute. One of the guys was even in a wheelchair. How often do you see handi-capable people in traditional porn? Bukkake represents the American ideal as envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King - black and white folks living together, judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their testicles.

And their artistry. While it may seem, to the untrained eye, that any jerk off could spray his spurts of spunk in one of these films, that's simply not the case. Such slanders completely devalue the talent and skill involved in creating these cinematic masterpieces. Each of the 50 (or so) bukkake artists has to perform in front of a film crew, surrounded by fellow, naked, masturbating thespians. He has to balance effective masturbatory technique with what looks good on camera. He must time his orgasm; there can't be a long pause after the previous man, yet he mustn't interfere with his predecessor. He has to gauge the strength of his impending orgasm, position himself at an appropriate distance and aim, continually compensating for the ever-weakening spurts. Then there's placement: does he stake out a new area or touch-up a previously "painted" portion? What makes for the most compelling and aesthetically pleasing pud pudding portrait? How does he handle the final dribbles? Does he go for the flick or an artistic smear? There's a lot to it and these men aren't given the credit they deserve. They're modern day Jacksoff Pollocks.

I think bukkake is a brilliant concept. After all, the most important part of any pornographic vignette is the come shot. Guys must espy the sperm as it flies. How else will they know that the congress has been completed satisfactorily? In bukkake, the soporific build up has been eliminated. There's no lame plot, no bad dialogue, no useless foreplay and no interminable intercourse - just money shot after money shot. Or, as Damon and Marlon Wayans might have said, "Mo' money shot! Mo' money shot! Mo' money shot!"

And that's why it's like hip hop. Hip hop was started by Kool DJ Herc in the Bronx in the early 70's. He took the best records, isolated the best parts and extended them by playing them over and over again on two turntables. That's bukkake in a nutshell; they've disposed of the excess verbiage and just repeat the best part ad nauseum.

Now I just need to figure out how to rap over it.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
May 18, 2008

National Masturbation Month

2008-05-01T00:52:00.006-04:00

I was confused when I first heard that May was National Masturbation Month. I was full of questions, such as, "how does one create a national masturbation month?" It couldn't be done by an act of congress. By definition. "What's the point? Don't most people already celebrate year-round?" "Does Hallmark sell cards wishing people `Season's Beatings'?" "Do the festivities require special attire or can you, uh, come as you are?" The answers required a modicum of research.

As it turns out, this "holiday" was started in 1995 by a gaggle of gals from San Francisco - the owners of Good Vibes, a sex toy store. According to their propaganda, they created the holiday to promote masturbation because "it's safe, it's healthy, it's free, it's pleasurable and it helps people to get to know their bodies and their sexual responses." Well, yeah, true dat (as the kids used to say back when I had any clue what the kids said), but I suspect they were mostly trying to make a buck. Which is ok; it's the American way. I can't fault these mercantile mamas for making the most of their Mammon-ry glands. After all, the best way to make money in the Gold Rush wasn't to be the one looking for gold; it was to be the one selling lube and vibrators to the lonely prospectors hoping to strike veins of ore(gasms).

To deflect attention from their obscene profits (1), or as a sop to the socially-conscious, hometown hedonists, the Good Vibes gals added a veneer of altruism to onanism by putting the fun back into fundraising and sponsoring masturbate-a-thons. A masturbate-a-thon is like a walk-a-thon, but you can do it at home (although not required) and you won't get sore feet (unless you're really flexible). If you click on the link, you can download pledge forms that will help you choke it for charity.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of it all, but I plan to spend the rest of the month exploring my feelings.

Before you begin amusing yourself, let me take a whack at it. Wait, that's not what I meant. What I meant to say was, for your Masturbation Month entertainment, here are some relevant limericks from my book, "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel":

Timid Freddy took pics with his celly
Of a busty young hussy named Kelly.
He wished he could bone
The hot chick on his phone
Then wiped his pipe dreams off his belly.

A pud puller paused between passes
And pondered how, "Nothing surpasses
My manual grind.
It would suck going blind,
But I'll stop when I only need glasses."

In his sex ed class, Jed read the slate
Of diseases that kids get on dates.
Said Jed, "What a mess.
I want to have sex
But jacking off's free and it's safe."

Here's a new limerick that will probably be included in a future book (if I do one):

My sweet, philathropical son
Dispenses free hand jobs for fun
To laboring misters
And habited sisters.
He jacks off all trades... and masturbates nuns.

And for those of you who are unaware that I started life as a rapper, check out my paean to pud pulling, pussy probing and pea polishing, "Five on One".

Now that you've been given a heads up about this wonderful occasion, I'll leave the task of figuring out how to get your heads back down in your capable hands. As for me, I'm looking forward to celebrating the cinco de Mayo: thumb, index, middle, ring, and pinky. It'll be great, like a month of Palm Sundays.

Seeya later masturbator,
D.I. Prime
May 1, 2008

(1) "Obscene profits" is a misnomer. If they were really obscene, people would masturbate to them; but that never happens. On the other hand, given US deficits, we may have to resort to enacting sin-come taxes on "big masturbation".

Liar! Liar!

2008-04-30T23:58:00.000-04:00

Five months ago, I told the story of my first rejection. Well, at least the first rejection pertaining to my book, "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel". I had asked S3 -- Safe Sex Store to stock my book and they turned me down. They claimed that their store focused on sexual health and sexual education, not sexual humor. "Fair enough," I thought, "boutique retailers need to know their clientele and focus on their niche with a laser-like intensity." I've read Lynch; I know the dangers of di-worse-ifying. We parted ways amicably. (Meaning, they instantly forgot about me and I was willing come crawling back at some point in the future.)

A few weeks ago, I was walking by and stopped in to see if they had anything new. After all, they rejected me nicely, a local sex toy shop is a local sex toy shop and I'm a sucker for the beauty of reflexivity. And local sex toy shops. Their inventory was largely unchanged from my previous visit, but I did notice one new item. Prominently displayed on one of their bookshelves was "Hustler's Dirtiest Jokes" by Larry Flynt. I tried rubbing the hypocrisy from my eyes and refocusing, but it didn't help. It was still there. S3 turned me down because my book didn't jibe with their "sexual health and education" milieu, yet they were willing to stock a joke book by the world's most infamous peddler of politically incorrect smut. I couldn't help but feel slightly slighted. A touch, I do confess.

To be fair, I didn't read the book. Maybe Mr. Flynt did a bait and switch. Perhaps his "jokes" eschewed humor and used joke-format stories as parables to teach valuable lessons about tenderness, intimacy and safety. Perhaps he completely violated everything the Hustler brand stands for in order to get his book into S3. Perhaps this book represents an entirely new direction for Hustler publishing. Perhaps... but I doubt it. I think they just lied to me.

I didn't mind getting slapped in the face (metaphorically, thankfully) with a rejection, but getting kneed in the nads (also metaphorically and even more thankfully) four months later seems excessive.

It's annoying, but I'll get over it. I won't be spray painting "Liar! Liar!" on their window, but I think be taking my business to Lover's Lane in the future. Oh well, it's an honor to be considered worthy of mendacity.

Salivo ego sum,
D.I. Prime
April 30, 2008

Rejection 2.5

2008-03-16T02:23:00.005-04:00

My name is D.I. Prime and I'm a first-time author.

[That was lame. Look, if you want to be in my support group, you can't just sit there reading quietly. This is the point where it's customary to say, "Hi, D.I. Prime!" Go ahead, I'll wait... well, try to do better next time. This support group is about more than free cocoa, you know.]

As I said, I'm a first-time author with a self-published book, "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel", and this is a story of R+R. Not rock 'n roll. Not rest and relaxation. Not even rejection and reproach. Actually, it is about all those things, but it's mostly a story about Rico and Ronit.

I met Rico at my brother's 12th birthday party back in 1993. We wound up on the same four-on-four basketball squad and we totally housed the other teams. (1) In subsequent years, we (Rico, my brother and I) spent uncounted hours playing rock 'n roll in my parents' basement. Alas, our jam sessions came to an end when "the kids" drifted off to separate colleges. I haven't seen Rico much in the past eight years, but, while he was at his parents' house for some rest and relaxation last December, I sent him a copy of my book. Days later, he sent the following review:

I've read some but not all, and it only confirms what I already suspected, that you may not be too clever for your own good, but you are way too clever for the good of everybody else.

In addition, he mentioned that his girlfriend, Ronit, also enjoyed the book and wanted to know if it would be okay for her to show it to an editor friend of hers at Random House. I quickly replied that she was welcome to show it to anyone she chose, but a Random House editor would be an amazingly awesome choice.

True to her word, she gave my book to her editor friend for evaluation and the editor liked it! However, and you knew there had to be however if you've read the title of this post, the editor passed on publishing it. The exact quote, as it was relayed to me in an elaborate game of "Operator", was, "It's really funny and very clever, but it's way too raunchy for this imprint."

Oh well, a third hand submission begets a third hand rejection and brings my rejection count up to three. And yet, I've dubbed this "Rejection 2.5". It just doesn't feel like a full rejection since it all happened at a remove through the auspices of the dog's letter duo. Perhaps that's why I have no reproach to give. Yeah, rejection sucks, but I'm grateful to R+R for providing the opportunity to be rejected by a major publisher.

So, that's the story of... wait, did I say there was free cocoa? Fuck the stupid book, I'm hitting the beverage table before all the marshmallows are gone.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
Mar 16, 2008

(1) It's a 1993 story. We said "housed" back then. These days, a sufficiently hip youngster might say "pwned". I should also note, in fairness, that our b-ball success was almost exclusively due to the age (read: height) advantage that I brought to our squad, not any intrinsic athletic ability.

Serendipitous Surfing

2008-03-09T21:38:00.012-04:00

Look, up in the blog! It's a meme! It's a trope! It's a frog! (1)

No, it's... it's... a passé paradigm parody:

Computer with web browser: $800
Internet connection: $30/month
Finding old, naked pictures
of your muse on the Internet: Priceless

Some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

Damn, she was hot back in the day. I better tack on $7 for a bottle of Astroglide (2) and $2 for a box of Kleenex. Oops. Make that $1 for a bottle of detergent, $1 for the washer and $1 for the dryer. I suppose I could save some cash and do the load by hand, but that's what got me into this mess. Literally. I'm sorry, was that too much information? I'll try to be more sub-rosa (palms) in the future, but I think I resolved the situation as handily as possible. Moving on:

Youthful indiscretions: Priceless
Naked pictures of my muse: Free
Getting me to give you the link: $19.95

Some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's PayPal.

I feel a modicum of shame for this one. The "Priceless" parody has been done to death. However, doing one is practically de rigueur for the aspiring wits of my generation -- like sampling "Amen, Brother" was for drum-and-bass artists or sampling "Funky Drummer" or "Sing a Simple Song" was for golden age Hip Hop artists.

On the other hand, while one could (justifiably) lament the inherent lack of originality, that's not synonymous with a dearth of creativity. In fact, working within rigid forms can be a spur to creativity. For example, unlike free verse, where one can blather endlessly, the haiku's spare form requires a concision which oft occasions creativity. There's nothing wrong with adding another haiku or limerick (or sonnet or 12 bar blues song or "knock knock" joke...) to the world's oeuvre. After all, there's something be said for the classic forms. But, like any other form, it's only as good as what you fill it in with. (3)

My work is done. Now it's time for Momus to whip his followers into a frenzy of aristarchian animadversion. They will determine if this is a worthy addition to the genre. As for me, I'm off look at those pictures again.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
March 9, 2008

(1) A frog??? [More like a lame reference to "Underdog", if you ask me. And not the 2007 movie, either. I'm referring to the cartoon that was broadcast back in the 70s, the one that my six year old self deemed the most wonderful TV show ever. Which, oddly enough, isn't the same show that's been released on DVD. That show sucks.]

(2) $7 for a bottle of Astroglide? No wonder birth rates for the poor are higher than those of the affluent, only the rich can afford to masturbate at those prices.

(3) For example, if you fill it with something that ends in a preposition, it's crap.

Shiksas

2008-02-22T23:06:00.021-05:00

It will come as a surprise to no one who's read my book (1) that I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. As a result, I learned many valuable life lessons -- even if some tidbits reached me in a somewhat circuitous manner.

Thousands of years ago, the revealed word of G-d (2) was given to Moses who, in turn, wrote the Torah. The Torah was given to G-d's chosen people, the Jews, who studied it with meticulous care. The most sagacious of the ancient scholars ruminated upon it and regurgitated the Talmud, a compilation of the elders' vast discernment on all things within their purview. Throughout the centuries, the best and brightest of the Children of Israel would be called upon to spend years toiling at yeshivot and eventually become rabbis. The rabbis spread out, formed congregations and inculcated succeeding generations of little Jew-lets (3) with the wisdom of antiquity. When I was in middle school, several of my compatriots spent weekends at their synagogues being immersed in those very teachings. On Monday, they would come back to school and dazzle me with their erudition. Foremost among the many locker room admonitions they related to me was the apotropaic axiom, "Shiksas are for practice." (4)

Naturally, I was dubious. After all, doesn't "practice" go both ways? If the shiksas were giving all this practice, wouldn't they likewise be getting substantial amounts of practice and, thereby, be further along the road to perfection? It made no sense. It was like putting a soldier through boot camp and then discharging her. Further, why would mathematical induction fail in this situation? If they were good to date before you started dating them (day 0), and they were presumptively good for n days, how could their suitability precipitously decline, or perhaps vanish, at n+1 days? (5) Alas, the mutually unshrouded glandes of my Kabbalah cabal comrades and I belied an intellectual sodality that was woefully absent and their chary orations remained beyond my ken.

Soon thereafter, I plunged into the world of dating, forewarned but not forearmed. Although I had a lovely dalliance with a Jew-bian Princess (6) in high school, she was the exception. In the succeeding decades, my love life was circumscribed by the Realm of Shiksa Temptresses -- with very satisfying results.

Until recently. After spending the better part of a decade with my muse, a goyish gal if ever a gal was goy, (7) the dangers inherent in dating shiksas were finally made clear in a blinding flash of enlightenment.

A couple weeks ago, a lesion (8) appeared on the back of my left shoulder. It was big and red and annoyingly painful, but these things happen. They go away in time. If they don't, you see a doctor. This particular lesion appears to be fading nicely, thank you very much, but before its disposition became obvious, I was forced into the following conversation with my muse:

Muse:	How's that sore on your shoulder?
Me:	I don't know. I can't see it.
Muse:	[looks, prods] Does that hurt?
Me:	[grimacing] Yes.
Muse:	Maybe you should go to the doctor.
Me:	Bah. It's probably nothing.
Muse:	It could get infected. It probably is infected; I squeezed pus out of it the other night. You seem awfully nonchalant; don't you know you could die from an infection?
Me:	I'm non-cholent because I haven't stewed over it.
Muse:	[no reaction, continues nagging...]

No reaction. I reapeat, no damn reaction! I extemporaneously pulled a cholent pun out of thin air and she didn't even realize I'd done it! The opportunity to pun on cholent comes around, perhaps, once in a lifetime and it was wasted on an uncomprehending and unappreciative shiksa.

I hope my middle school chums don't read this, otherwise I'm in for a flurry of I-told-ya-so's.

Shiksas suck.

Which, by the way, is why they're totally worth dating.

Salivo Ergo Sum,
D.I. Prime
February 22, 2008

(1) Yes, that phrase has no informational value whatsoever. It was only included in a futile attempt to plug my book.

(2) It's a Jew thing. I wouldn't understand. Apparently, the elided form is mandated since there's a rule about not erasing or defacing the name of the deity.

(3) In most places, Jew-lets are wrought but, in the Southern US, they mint Jew-lets.

(4) According to Wikipedia, "shiksa" is a Yiddish word for a "non-Jewish woman" derived from a Hebrew word meaning, variously, "loathsome", "abomination", "unclean", "dirty", "rodent", or "lizard".

(5) What can I say? I was a mathematically precocious middle schooler. I've since regressed below the mean.

(6) What's a Jew-bian? Bitch, you almost made me laugh.

(7) I'm sorry, Wizard of Oz references are beneath me. It wasn't even a good reference. Perhaps the literati who frequent my blog would be more comfortable with, "Andrew Marvell could have written 'To His Goy Mistress' about her."

(8) Don't be fooled by the faux-medical term. I have no idea what my shoulder blemish is, but "lesion" seems more erudite than "Zit of Epic Proportions". Maybe it's an insect bite. Maybe it's a plague being visited upon me for dating a shiksa. I don't know. It's irrelevant to the story.

Rejection Redux

2008-02-17T02:17:00.011-05:00

The third time better be a charm because, let me tell you, the second time wasn't that fucking charming.

Do I sound bitter? I'm sorry, I don't mean to. My dudgeon is neither high nor even sincere... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

As you may recall, I recently published my first book, "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel". As a first-time author, I'm still quite a naïve in the ways of the publishing world. However, through the years, I've noticed that many successful authors sell their books in stores and I thought that attempting to get in on a piece of that action would be a perspicacious and, perhaps, profitable tactic.

On December 1, I was a supplicant at downtown Ann Arbor's S3 - Safe Sex Store, begging them to do my commercial dirty work for me. On December 8, they gave me my first rejection. Undaunted, I walked across town to the Shaman Drum Bookshop and offered them the opportunity to be my first retail outlet. Shaman Drum has been an Ann Arbor institution since 1980. They're an independent bookstore that claims to be community-oriented -- proven, in part, by their willingness to carry the work of local authors. With that in mind, I handed a copy of my book over to one of their buyers for evaluation and started waiting for the verdict.

Two months passed. Reset your mental calendar to February 12.

As a result of inflexible work schedules, my muse and I had to celebrate Valentine's Day (1) two days early. After our dinner and movie date, I checked my answering machine. My lone message was from a woman calling on behalf of Shaman Drum. It said:

This message is for D.I. Prime. We found your book detestable and would never carry this piece of garbage. We could overlook its numerous affronts to aesthetics and morality in the name of profit, but your abuses of meter, rhyme and grammar are unforgivable. Not since the Norman invasion of 1066 has the English language faced such calamitous assault. Not only should you reconsider being an author, you should give your existence on this planet a second thought. Retrieve your offal from our store by close-of-business tomorrow or we shall be forced to burn it.

Okay, I paraphrased slightly. The actual message didn't include any invective or give a reason. It just said, "No. Come get it." (Also paraphrased, but slightly more accurate.) And thus was I handed my second rejection. Apparently, my book was inconsistent with Shaman Drum's website-stated mission of "providing our community with a quality selection of titles to nourish and enrich the spirit."

So it goes. As I said, I'm not bitter. I still managed to fork my Valen-tines. But, since they didn't give a reason for the rejection, I'm not giving them a link; you can Google them if you care to. With that bit of petulance, I've exorcised my pique and I forgive them. It's time to move on to the next store and the next rejection.

After all, the third time's a charm.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
February 17, 2008

(1) Yes, it's a deplorable "Hallmark holiday" but, when celebrated properly, it includes sex and chocolate so I find it nigh impossible to abstain. For what it's worth, I vainly attempt to burnish my iconoclastic stature by heaping scorn and contempt upon Sweetest Day, the corporate contrivance of mid-October.

I Sold Out

2008-01-25T23:38:00.005-05:00

It's true. I'm a sellout.

Let me take a step back and set the scene for you. Troy, Michigan. The Marriott. January 18 and 19th, 2008. A science fiction convention. A veritable Mecca for the geeks and nerds of southeastern Michigan. If you ever wonder what the stereotypical, book-toting, socially maladjusted, Star Trek-obsessed, computer-jockeying, eggheads of your high school days are up to now, ponder no more; they're making a yearly Hajj to ConFusion.

You'll find me there too. Although I have an avowed distaste for SciFi, I still feel at home among the neo-maxi-zoom-dweebies. We're simpatico. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? Gooble gobble. I'm one of them.

After checking in at the registration desk on Friday evening, my first order of business was to check out the huckster room. It was a bazaar of the bizarre, and some of the products were pretty strange too. There were, perhaps, 20 dealers hawking all manner of merchandise: books, games, videos, toys, t-shirts, jewelery, plush creatures and an astounding assortment of knickknacks. There were dozens of tables laden with weird and worthy wares, but the one that caught my eye was the one staffed by the Hamtramck Idea Men: George McVey and Michael Marcus.

My attention wasn't drawn their T-shirts featuring George's excellent artwork (I don't wear white T-shirts), nor their two comic books -- "If X" and "Pulp Dreams" -- featuring George's prodigious writing and illustrating talents (they look great, but they're not my genre), nor even Michael's "Gamer's Dozen" -- a collection of 12 games for $12 (an excellent value but I already have no time to blog, when am I supposed to play games?). No, what caught my attention was Michael's offer to sell my book at their table.

[Yes, this is yet another post pertaining to my book, "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel". Deal with it.]

After some (brief and friendly) dickering over selling price and seller's commission, I went to my car, grabbed a stack of six books and deposited them at the HIM table. By the end of the evening on Friday, the Idea Men had sold one book. By the time I returned Saturday afternoon, another had gone. By the time the huckster room shutdown on Saturday night, they were all gone.

I sold out.

It feels great.

Miscellaneous notes from ConFusion:

I owe a debt of gratitude to the Hamtramck Idea Men. I couldn't have sold those books without their gracious offer of table space. Do check out their site if you can spare a paltry click.

I also owe an apology to the Hamtramck Idea Men and their customers. What passes for acceptable patter when peddling a publication of prurient poetry is, perhaps, too risqué for the comic book crowd.

ConFusion affords an opportunity for networking and I spent some time with fellow author, Christian Klaver. I attempted to convince him that he should self-publish his novels, "The Blood of Egypt" and "Johnny Bass vs.the Kung-Fu Dragon Cult". Alas, my attempts at persuasion fell on deaf ears and he remained insistent on giving them away on his website for free.

Aspiring "genre" DJs should consider what will happen when they wind up spinnig for a "non-genre" crowd. Yes, it was a lame-ass, overplayed pop song in 1980, and it hasn't improved in the intervening 28 years, but the second DJ got more people on the dance floor in the first 30 seconds of his set with Kool & The Gang's "Celebration" than the first DJ got in his entire, three hour set of techno music. Musical integrity and genre purity are wonderful things, but have a plan B if you're going to take gigs outside of "genre" clubs.

Cast whatever aspersions you like upon the denizens of SciFi cons, but I'm going to remain one as long as they continue to attract hot, half-naked chicks in body paint:

(Photo courtesy Russ Van Ness @ TopHat Studios)

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
January 25, 2008

Puerilities

2007-12-31T14:40:00.002-05:00

Let's get the most important thing out of the way first: happy new year. It may not seem like much, but I assure you that your probability of a propitious year plummets without Prime's pronouncement of what, for all practical purposes, presents as a particularly pedestrian benison. Now that I've done all that I can do to ensure your success in 2008, let's get down to business.

For the last three weeks, I've been planning on publishing a posting that pertains to something worldly and weighty, a pressing issue burgeoning with relevance and import, an item ripped from the day's headlines. Alas, that sort of thing requires a great deal of thought and effort. Therefore, after a protracted period of procrastination, I'm postponing that piece of punditry, sticking to my strong suit and putting up a posting about something prurient and puerile.

Yes, dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to talk about immortality. Not true immortality, mind you, only faux immortality. On a metaphysical level, we may be numinous beings of eternal light but, for our brief years of terrestrial relevance, our gloriously radiant souls have been sentenced to roam the physical plane as gloriously mundane sausages. We've been placed on this mud ball with no way to circumvent our inevitable demise. Evanescent transience is the hallmark of our mortal coils. However, while true immortality eludes us, faux immortality is attainable. Though our bodies are ephemeral, we continue to live, in a sense, as long as we're remembered.

Unfortunately, memories belong to other impermanent, soul-encasing bags of meat who are similarly completing their journeys from ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Therefore, it follows that if one wishes to make an indelible mark on this world, and attain true faux immortality, one must leave a mnemonic for posterity: Great Deeds or Great Works.

The path of Great Deeds poses some difficulty. Typically, one is required to kill or conquer great multitudes of people to be etched in the collective memory of the human race. Pop quiz, hotshot, which of these people are you familiar with: Genghis Khan, Chester Arthur, Attila the Hun, Lyman Cutlar, Alexander the Great or David Rice Atchison? Even after you Wikipedia the three Americans, you'll have to concede that their lack of an impressive body count has diminished their stature in history. (1) Unfortunately, it's difficult, and rarely acceptable, to kill the hundreds of thousands of people required to be remembered for Great Deeds, so most consider this path to be fairly impractical.

That leaves the path of Great Works. Although there are many branches to this path, the ones that have, empirically, had the greatest chance at longevity are the ones involving things that can be expressed in writing. We still read Homer's "The Iliad", actors still perform Aristophanes' "Lysistrata", philosophers still study Plato's "The Republic" and, hell, Herodotus's "The Histories" was just turned into a major motion picture called "300". (2) Who were the great, ancient actors and musicians? No clue. They didn't leave a written record.

I've recently taken a stab at immortality by publishing a book called "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel". (Oh, don't give me that look, you knew I was gonna plug it.) While it's premature to speculate on whether my book will ensure me a footnote in the history of the world for time immemorial, it's a good first step. With some luck, perhaps I'll be blessed enough to be a victim of rampant copyright infringement and one of my poems will travel through the eons and delight forthcoming generations. Perhaps people in countries yet unknown, speaking in tongues yet undevised, will be quoting the work of D.I. Prime. In that way, I could live forever. After all, as Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai relates in the Talmud, "If you credit a deceased author when you quote them, their lips move gently in the grave." (3) It's like simultaneously living in this life and the next.

In any event, as I was reading a book called "Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of The Greek Anthology" - research for a potential sequel - I was given some hope in my quest for immortality. Daryl Hine has taken erotic excerpts from 28 ancient Greek poets and translated them into English. Although these perverts have been dead for 2500 years, their work is still being read and enjoyed today. I want to get a piece of that kind of longevity. Sure, as far as Great Works go, a prurient poem has nothing on, say, the Great Pyramid of Giza, but no one knows who designed or built the Great Pyramid, whereas I can now say that I have an appreciation for the work of Scythinus. As the kids say, "Who's immortal now, bitch?"

While I'm rocking the mic, I might as well include a brief review of "Puerilities". There are 258 English translations of Greek epigrams spread out over 60 pages with the original Greek text on facing pages, bringing the page count to around 120. It was a decent read, but I can't unreservedly endorse this book. When viewed through the prism of 21st-century American mores, its contents are problematic. Most of the epigrams deal with grown men lusting after pre- and barely pubescent boys. Ancient Greek society permitted such inter-generational dalliances. Ours doesn't. (Three cheers for us!) Still, this book isn't NAMBLA propaganda. These pedophiles have been dead for 2500 years and are no longer capable of harming anyone. (4) That being the case, I was able to view the epigrams as a window to historical zeitgeist and appreciate them for what they were. Besides, many of the epigrams were kind of funny. I have a much higher tolerance for jokes about pedophilia than actual pedophilia.

If you can't get past, "Gay pedophilia? Ew!", avoid this book at all costs. Otherwise, hey, it's a classic.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
December 31, 2007

(1) Actually, Lyman Cutlar is famous for his body count. However, as it tallied up to precisely one pig, it wasn't impressive.

(2) Yes, I'm aware of Frank Miller's graphic novel, but I regard it with ambivalence. Herodotus is known as "The Father of History", in part, because he was the first to describe human events as human events, rather than placing them in a mythological context. Contrast that to, say, Homer's account of the Trojan war where the Olympian Gods intervened and took an active role in the conflict. I won't say that Miller was disrespectful to the source material, but adding fantastical elements into the mix seems to violate the spirit of the original work.

(3) Actually, R. Yohai was only talking about traditional statements made in the name of deceased Torah scholars, but it's the principle that's important. Normally, I would dismiss Talmudic lore out of hand, but the very next paragraph talks about how many pubic hairs a 20-year-old is required to have before they can be considered an adult. I'm no expert on semiotics, but I take the proximity of a passage on pube enumeration as a sign from the Cosmos that I was meant to pay attention to the preceding section.

(4) Indeed, given the cultural norms of ancient Greece, it's interesting to ponder (though well beyond the scope of this review) whether the boys were actually harmed or not. In a place where pedophilia predominates, perhaps it's the unmolested who are considered to be harmed.

My First Rejection

2007-12-08T01:00:00.002-05:00

I feel like Pinocchio, gleefully jumping up and down and jubilantly exulting, "I'm a real author now!"

After checking the mirror to confirm that my proboscis has retained its pre-exultation dimensions, I would like to reaffirm the veracity of my initial statement.

The more pedantic among you are probably chomping at the metaphorical bit (or perhaps literal bit if you're a pedantic, B&D bottom) and screaming, "Boy! Not author, boy! Pinocchio was excited about being a real boy!" I am too. I love being a boy. Even though I'm well along the path to dotage, I still swell with an enormous enthusiasm for my boyishness -- especially when my boyishness is enthusiastically swelling to enormousness. But that's a story for another day. I'm not here to write "The Penis Monologues", even though I am an author. I took wooden puppet Pinocchio, pulped him up, turned him into paper and printed up a book called "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel". In fact, I printed up many books -- boxes and boxes of them -- and now my mission to divest myself of them.

Although I'm a relative newcomer to the publishing industry, I have noticed, over the years, that books are often sold in stores. Pairing this keen observation with my literary superabundance, and applying deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmesian proportions, I determined that one potential solution to my problem was to get my book into stores. [I know, it seems so obvious once you've heard the answer but, believe you me, it appeared to be a Brobdingnagian quandary whilst I was struggling with it.]

Now, there are some problems with getting my books into stores. First, my book has neither an ISBN number nor a UPC bar code on the back cover. Both of these are impediments to retail success. Second, displaying my book is not conducive to a "family-friendly" retail environment. Although I believe that, given the opportunity, it could be quite successful with a niche audience, it's not the sort of book you can put in the front window or place prominently in end cap display racks.

Unless you're a store that caters to adult audiences. That's why S3 - Safe Sex Store seemed like a perfect fit. In addition to condoms, dildos, vibrators and other assorted sexual paraphernalia, they sell all manner of sex-related books. So, with all of the confidence befitting a clueless, rank amateur, I swaggered into S3 last Friday, confident that I was delivering them the hottest item of the holiday season. I left a copy of my book with the clerk and was told to return in one week for a decision.

Today, I got my answer: "No."

In particular, the owner felt that my book did not fit with the theme of her store: sexual health and education. The Safe Sex Store is a Serious Sex Store, and a book of sexual humor has no place in that milieu. So it goes. Honestly, it was the nicest possible rejection that I could have hoped for; it was delivered courteously, apologetically and for a reason that made sense. I harbor no ill will towards them. I hope you go to their website and check them out if you ever make it to downtown Ann Arbor.

Still, I got my first rejection. I'm paying my dues. I'm becoming a real author.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
December 8, 2007

Book Errata

2007-12-01T16:32:00.003-05:00

The ancient Romans had a saying, "Errare humanum est." It never attained the restroom stall cachet of St. Odon of Cluny's, "Inter faeces et urinam nascimur", but it expresses an equally inarguable truth of the human condition: we fuck up. Despite our best intentions and lofty aspirations to perfection, human endeavors are beset with flaws.

Alas, I am tragically human in this regard. Despite my best efforts, I get things wrong. In the digital world, such as this blog, it is a simple matter to correct any offending glitches post-publication. Not so in the archaic medium of print. Once the ink hits the paper, it is nigh impossible to unfix the blemish from the printed page and right the egregious depredations of misfired neurons and errant fingers.

Which brings us to the point of this post. (1) I wrote a book called "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel" and I have made an error. Probably more than one. Probably many more than one, but only one that I'm aware of today. As the sagacious Grand Admiral Thrawn once opined, "Anyone can make an error; that error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." On the other hand, as Josh Jenkins once said, "To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil you're overdoing it."

In any event, I'm here to issue a mea culpa and correct my error(s).

If you are among the few, the happy few, (or, to be more accurate, the minuscule few) who have read my book, and have noticed an error, please post a correction in a comment. For, as John Locke wrote, "It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of truth." I await, with appropriate dread, the opprobrium that I so richly deserve.

[To keep the errata to a reasonable length, let's agree to excuse questionable punctuation unless you find some comma placement that truly verges on the catastrophic.]

To conclude, as Alexander Pope once said, "To err is human, to forgive divine." I beseech your apotheosis and humbly beg forgiveness for the errors delineated below.

The Catalog of Errors:

On page 62, in limerick 486, an extraneous word crept into the last line while another was, simultaneously, omitted. Here is the corrected version:

Daunting David was hung like a giant
And brandished his rod like a tyrant.
He had the respect
Of the locker room set
But the women were scared and passed by him.
On the back cover, I grievously misspelled the Latin, legal term, "Res ipsa loquitur". As a non-English phrase, I thought my spell-checker was giving me a false positive when it flagged "Res ipso locutor". Google didn't present me with an alternate spelling and it returned a bunch of hits so I thought I had it right. Unfortunately, there are a lot of sloppy spellers out there.
While I'm copping to errors, I should publicly acknowledge a non-printed error. I hand number the books that I sell in person and I mistakenly labelled two 97's and two 98's. I've skipped #105 and #106 to re-align the book count with the numbering.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
December 1, 2007

(1) Wow. Getting to the point by the third paragraph, that might be a new record.

Bibliography

2007-11-10T14:04:00.002-05:00

To be a great writer, you must first be a great reader. Or, at the very least, be a mediocre reader of great writing. I don't know the first thing about producing or evaluating great writing so disregard everything I have to say on the matter. However, it would be appropriate for me to cite some of the books that I read while I was writing "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel".

In the old days, limericks were created by drunkards in British pubs. They would get sloshed and, as the night wore on, they would regale each other with bits of obscene verse, often composed on the spot. This methodology proved unsuitable for me as a) I'm not British, b) I don't drink alcohol and c) I don't have any friends who write limericks. Instead, I tracked down every book of obscene limericks that I could find and used those as a foil for my limerickal pursuits.

Pablo Picasso once said, "Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." I make no claims to art or greatness, but I stole inspiration liberally and deliberately from the books below. As Isaac Newton might've said, these are the giants upon whose shoulders I've stood.

Without further ado, I present to you the bibliography for "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel":

Anderson, C.V.J., "Forbidden Limericks".

Alas, I have to start on a negative note. This 12 page pamphlet of expurgated limericks isn't worth anyone's time but, since I read it, it deserves its place on this list.

Asimov, Isaac and John Ciardi, "Limericks".
Asimov, Isaac, "Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Favorite Jokes, Limericks, and Anecdotes".
Asimov, Isaac, "Lecherous Limericks".
Asimov, Isaac, "More Lecherous Limericks".
Asimov, Isaac, "Still More Lecherous Limericks".

Only a fool would criticize a man who is more prolific, more successful, and probably more intelligent. In truth, it's not that I dislike Isaac Asimov's work, it's just that I'm not nearly so impressed with it as Asimov is. Or was. He's dead now. Actually, if you can divorce his limericks from his perpetual boasting about how witty, urbane and clever he is, they're pretty good. So are John Ciardi's.

Birch, Robert W., "Bawdy Ballads & Lecherous Limericks".
Birch, Robert W., "Improper Limericks: an Original Bawdy Collection".
Birch, Robert W., "Limericks for Lechers: Lascivious Lyrics, Rambling Ruminations & Titillating Trivia".
Birch, Robert W., "Still More Improper Limericks: Writings of a Limericks Addict".
Birch, Robert W., "There Was an Old Woman Named Hinkle: a Brazen Collection of Bawdy Limericks".

I have to give a shout out to Robert Birch. He was kind enough to review and edit 33 of my limericks when they were in a very rough state and his incisive comments helped me whip them into shape. He's also fine limerist in his own right. Many of his books are out of print, but you can still find used copies on Amazon and on his website, poetry-nut.com.

Blynd, Dr. Varius P., "Funktionary".

This massive tome is a cross between a dictionary and an encyclopedia. It covers a broad range of topics including funk, sex, humor, philosophy, finance, religion, politics, and life. Much of the philosophizing soared above my head, while a number of the conspiracy theories had me vigorously shaking it. Still, it's a fascinating book to thumb through and much of the wordplay is excellent.

Chaplin, Albin, "3024 Dirty Limericks".

While Chaplin isn't the most prolific limerick writer on this list, his book is certainly a wonder of fecundity. To natter about repetition or to complain about the diffusion of brilliance would be to miss the point. The man wrote over 3000 limericks and that's quite an accomplishment. What's even more incredible is that someone has surpassed him, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Clapham, Marcus and Rosemary Gray, "A Thousand and One Limericks".

Though small in stature, this is a fine compilation of limericks. While I might recommend other compendiums ahead of this one -- Gershon Legman's books, for example -- this little book is unlikely to disappoint.

Crist, Clifford, "Big Little Book of Playboy Limericks".

The only bad thing I have to say about Playboy's book of limericks is that it doesn't include a centerfold. Otherwise, it's a stellar collection of original work.

Erdoes, Richard, "The Richard Erdoes Illustrated Treasury of Classic Unlaundered Limericks".

Alas, there's nothing exceptional about this collection of limericks. It's a compilation of other people's work and it's quantitatively unspectacular. However, the illustrations by Richard Erdoes are amusing and worth a glance.

Evans, Rod, "Sexicon".

This is an excellent reference work, providing obscure medical terminology for a wide variety of common and quite uncommon sex acts and preferences. You'll often find yourself saying, "I can't believe there's a name for that." Other times, you'll find yourself saying, "I can't believe there's a that."

Fey, (the late) Dr., "Limericks Naughty and Gay".

If you can get past the creepy feeling that some of the men in the drawings appear to be on the jailbait side of legal, this is a fine collection of limericks. While I try not to get overly PC while judging erotic poetry, this book provides a nice contrast to the overtly homophobic pieces found in some of the other books. It'll help you remain "fairy and balanced".

Forberg, Fred, "Manual of Classical Erotology".

A librarian friend passed along this book about the erotic writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. I can't give it high marks, but it did inspire a couple limericks and haiku.

Gutmann, Max, "There Was a Young Girl from Verona".

Guttman wrote a book that summarizes each of the Bard's plays in a limerick. While Guttman's work is (largely) clean, and I'm a devotee of the dirty limerick, I have to give props to anyone who writes Shakespeare-oriented limericks.

Hart, Harold, "Limericks Lewd and Lusty".

Like many limerick books, this one appears to be a compilation of other people's work. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, but other compilers have done it better. Weighing in at under 200 limericks, with no illustrations, there isn't much to recommend this book.

Holland, Vyvyan, "An Explosion of Limericks".

The winner (or loser, depending on how you look at it) in the "Tough Act to Follow" category is Vyvyan Holland. While he's penned a decent book, one might have expected more from the son of Oscar Wilde. As it is, I rate it a half-hearted "so-so".

Knott, Blanche, "Truly Tasteless Jokes".

There's nary a limerick to be found, but I did reinterpret several of the jokes as limericks.

Kracht, Al, "Limericks New and Naughty".

Good limericks, good illustrations, what more could you ask for? Except more.

Lederer, Richard, "The Cunning Linguist".

Although there's a paucity of limericks in this book, it is a fine collection of sexual humor expressed via clever wordplay.

Legman, Gershon, "More Limericks".
Legman, Gershon, "Rationale of the Dirty Joke: an Analysis of Sexual Humor, First Series".
Legman, Gershon, "Rationale of the Dirty Joke: an Analysis of Sexual Humor, Second Series".
Legman, Gershon, "The Limerick".

Gershon Legman edited two amazing compilations of limericks. Between the two of them, there are over 4000 limericks from a wide variety of authors, spanning numerous decades. To those with a nascent interest in limericks, I cannot recommend these two books highly enough.

His books on dirty jokes, on the other hand, are probably best avoided. While I salute his efforts to compile an exhaustive collection of obscene humor, these two tomes are weighted down by his ponderous prose, Freudian psychobabble and judgmental moralizing. I can't deny that I pulled several jokes from these books, but getting through them was torturous.

Partridge, Eric, "Shakespeare's Bawdy".

In all honesty, I didn't read this book. However, I did thumb through it and copied a list of Shakespearean euphemisms for male and female sexual organs. In general, based on my brief perusal, I found Frankie Rubinstein's book to be more comprehensive and more interesting. On the other hand, Rubinstein builds on Partridge's work and it's probably not fair to fault a pioneer for not being as exhaustive as his progeny.

Peterkin, A.D., "The Bald-headed Hermit & the Artichoke".

This erotic thesaurus was essential ordnance in my arsenal of reference works. Granted, there's a superabundance of "cock" and "dick" in my book, but it was nice to have 1400 other options.

Rubinstein, Frankie, "A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Sexual Puns and Their Significance".

Shakespeare and sex, what's not to like? This dictionary goes through every word that Shakespeare used in sexual wordplay, describes its usage, and backs up those claims with quotations from all of the plays where it appears. This is an excellent companion piece to the Shakespeare canon and, while it doesn't make me sympathetic, it does make Dr. Bowdler seem rational. Those plays are filthy!

Slim, John, "Fred First".
Slim, John, "Multiple Buttocks".
Slim, John, "Rather Rottener".
Slim, John, "Saucy Shorts".

In addition to these four volumes of racy verse, that contain about 1000 limericks apiece, Mr. Slim has two further volumes of clean verse. All in all, he claims to have written over 7000 limericks. If Guinness kept track of such things, and they don't, I believe he would be the world record holder as the most prolific limerick writer. As an American, one of the most interesting aspects of these books was seeing which words rhyme to a Brit.

Stanza, Ronald, "1001 Lewdest Limericks".

This book appears to be nothing more than pointless rehash of Legman's first limerick book. And not in the way that my book is pointless rehash of Legman's work, this is out and out plagiarism. At least to the extent you can call copying a work that was itself a compilation of other people's work, plagiarism. Go straight to the source and skip this one.

OEDILF - The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

I don't know who came up with the idea of creating a dictionary where all of the definitions would be in limerick form, but they had a flash of brilliance. There are currently almost 46,000 limerick definitions covering the words from "aa-" to "co-". It may take a decade or more before they finish, but it'll be worth the wait. (Hint: be sure to turn the content filter off in order to get to the "good stuff".)

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
November 10, 2007

Finally! The Prime has come back!

2007-10-26T05:00:00.002-04:00

In the beginning, there was droolingidiots.com.

I'm sorry. That's a lame way to start a book. No good book has ever started with "in the beginning." Well, the Good Book started with "in the beginning", but that's not the same thing. Besides, this is a blog not a book. A book is a much more ambitious undertaking. And I should know, I wrote one. But more on that later.

As I was saying, in the beginning there was droolingidiots.com. It was to be the exclusive home of D.I. Prime and Drooling Idiots on the net. (For those just tuning in, I'm D.I. Prime and Drooling Idiots is my band.) Along with numerous MP3s of execrable "music", one of the main attractions of droolingidiots.com was "The Prime Says", an editorial column featuring the ramblings of yours truly. For a variety of reasons "The Prime Says" went on hiatus for three years starting on October 26th, 2004. During my torpor, technology changed radically. For instance, blogging technology matured along with the advent of Web 2.0. People were no longer satisfied by merely reading editorial ramblings, they wanted to be able to bitch slap the author with their keyboards from the safety and privacy of their homes. Well, far be it from me to deny the public what they want. In order to facilitate my bitch slapping, I've moved "The Prime Says" to Google's Blogger service where any nimrod with a modicum of typing ability can reach through the Internet and excoriate ol' Prime. (Technically, encomium is also welcome, but that appears to be a scarce commodity these days.)

For those of you who remember things from one paragraph to the next, you may have noticed that the previous paragraph contained what may have seemed like an innocuous detail, a mention of a three-year hiatus. You might've thought to yourself, "Self, I bet that's a seed that can blossom into an entire paragraph." Indeed, my astute reader, therein lies a tale. Unfortunately, it's not a very interesting one so I'll summarize.

My three years of not updating droolingidiots.com, not writing "The Prime Says", and not recording new music were mostly filled with the mind-numbingly, dull minutia of quotidian existence. You know, the stuff that most people blog about. However, I'm not here to waste your time with trivial details from the last three years of my life. Oh no, I plan to spend the next three years boring you with trivial details of my life. When we're in retrospective mode we only cover the important stuff and, alas, there's only one clip in my highlight reel.

I wrote my first book: "Anal Sex Haiku, Lascivious Limericks & Other Drivel".

Yes, D.I. Prime the rapper who has, to date, failed to complete an album has written a book. As you may have deduced from the title, it's a collection of obscene poetry. Quantitatively, it contains 335 anal sex haiku, 400 limericks, 1 oddball verse, and 32 miscellaneous haiku, all entirely unsuitable to anyone with the slightest hint of decency or taste about them. Luckily, very few of those people read my blog. [Additionally, our Solomonic solons have issued ukases decreeing that this book is unsuitable for anyone under the age of 18. While I may personally disagree, who am I to argue with legislative fiat? Sorry kids, come back when you can vote.]

In addition to the 758 examples of prurient, puerile poetry, there are 758 endnotes providing obsessive and useless commentary on each poem. Believe you me, although it comes last in the title, the drivel has equal footing with the haiku and the limericks. On the positive side, the monotony of my prose and poesy is occasionally punctuated by six amazing illustrations provided by the ultra-talented Britt Martin. His work is worth the cover price alone! [Yes, that statement really is worth this blog's lone exclamation point. By the way, I don't mean to diminish the prodigious talents of my cover artist, Meagan Costea, but the hideous schlub picked for a cover model ruins it for me.]

"Wait a minute," I hear my devoted Prime Says readers shriek. "Do you mean to tell me that after a three-year absence the best you can do is shill for your stupid book?" Sadly, yes. I know, I know, I'm sorry, I feel like a whore. And if you buy enough copies of my book, I'll be able to afford one. (1)

That's all for now. I'm sure I'll update this blog a few more times before lapsing into another torpor so check back sometime. Or, get involved and leave a comment. That's the beauty of the blogosphere.

Salivo ergo sum,
D.I. Prime
October 26, 2007

PS -- Okay, I'm not done yet. I can't leave without explaining the significance of October 26. droolingidiots.com launched on October 26, 2001. Version 1 of "The Prime Says" ended on October 26, 2004. Version 2 of "The Prime Says" is launching on October 26, 2007. I consider October 26 to be a propitious day to launch (or wind down) projects because it's the birthday of Bootsy Collins. Although he'll probably never see this, happy birthday Bootsy.

(1) That joke was shamelessly stolen from Emo Phillips.