Today’s contest is a little harder than the others have been. But – that means you’ll have less competition for the prizes! We’re asking you to write, and send us, a double dactyl.
What’s a double dactyl? Here’s the definition, plus a few examples. To be clear, we’re asking for the 8-line poem, not just two dactyls in a row. Here are a few more examples, though I’d take issue with the third one. There are many others online too, you don’t have to look hard to find them.
They don’t have to be about handhelds, mobile, or any kind of tech – we’re adding no restrictions to the ones imposed by the form. Just write a double dactyl following the rules (8 lines in the correct meter, 2 rhyming verses, one proper name, one single-word line).
It’s not really as hard as it sounds, once you get started. I gave people here a few days to work on theirs, and at least some of us had a hard time stopping.
We’ll judge and announce winners on Monday, so you can have all weekend to work on them.
Good luck!
This is the last contest in our week-long 11 year anniversary celebration. We’ll give away one $121 Amazon gift certificates for the best and funniest entry, and runner-up prizes of a complete package of our software and swag to many others. Enter as many times as you like, by sending your entry as a reply to this post. Employees and friends of Ilium Software aren’t eligible to win the prizes, but are welcome (and encouraged) to participate anyway. Today’s contest closes at 9:00 a.m. eastern time Monday morning.
Here’s mine:
Sneakity snakitly
Salazar Slytherin
Founded his house back when
Hogwarts was new
Students who lived there, quite
Sociopathically
Fought on the side of the
Dread You-Know-Who
A few words to help you get started:
hyperactivity
dipsomaniacal
undiplomatically
antiobjectively
anthropomorphically
inconsequentially
uncategorically
antiintuitively
unergonomically
nonsuperficially
anthrophomorphically
unpreposessingly
verisimilitude
unsympathetically
extrasarcastically
unapathetically
extragenerically
While thinking about this quote…
Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.’”
(http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9110/)
… I came up with this tribute to Palm CEO Ed Colligan:
Lumpity, Bumpity
CEO Colligan
thought that the iPhone would
not be a threat
Stock market analysts
incontrovertibly
say Palm stock buying is
not a good bet.
Lickity Splickity
Rex Racer/Racer X
Hard to believe it but
No one suspects.
Isn’t it obvious
semi-moronical
“Speed Racer” guys that ReX
Racer is “X”?
(note: in the movie Speed suspects almost immediately but in the original cartoon it takes him many episodes to work it out)
One more. I can quit at any time.
Dedicated to our product manager, Marc:
Starwarsy, Starwarsy
Marc Tassin, Marc Tassin
Star Wars’s biggest fan
equalled nowhere
Stressed from defending the
prequels from haters he
melodramatically
tore out his hair
Ok, I think I have to admit I actually can’t stop. They tell me that’s the first step to realizing you have a problem.
Kevin (our QA guy) says: “why isn’t the next release of eWallet out yet?” “Our programmer was writing poems instead.”
Wappity Bappity
Ilium Software, Inc
Had a new contest to
Make up a rhyme
Postponed is next release
‘Cause on this contest I’m
Inconsequentially
Wasting my time.
Snickerty Snackerty
Candidate Hillary
Swears up and down that she’s
still in the race
Points at statistics and
Shouts that they prove her right
Uncategorically
Tries to save face
Palmity Malmity
Foleo notebooky
“Changing the way that you
use your device!”
Hawkins loved it so much
Sold his Palm stock at lunch
Undisputatiously
Actions speak twice
Boolean Doolean
Ilium programmers
Slave away on software
Till their heads spin
Then Marc comes tumbling by
“Change this and that,” he cries
Uncompromisingly
They start again
Shinily binily
Mirror of Erised
shows a reflection of
What you want most
Used as protection, it’s
Verisimilitude
Left little Harry
Completely engrossed
In Memoriam
Grumpity-Bumpity
Dell’s Axim Fifty Vee
Had a life shorter than
Fruit flies on speed.
Proved that their managers’
Techno-myopia
Couldn’t make hay with their
Geeks’ wondrous seed.
tribute
bo diddley bo diddley
strumming and shuffling, i
can’t stop my foot tapping,
four to the bar.
rock’n'roll pioneer,
here’s to your sound and your
incontrovertible
rhythm guitar.
Rilium Dilium
Ilium Software is
Having a geek contest.
Who wins the race?
Of the employees, it’s
unobfuscatingly
clear it’s a big 9-way
tie for first place.
This one is not for me.
I don’t understand the descriptions on Wikipedia and looking at some of the examples I don’t suddenly get enlightend. The long words scare me as well.
Ellen said that it’s not as hard as it sounds. However, when it’s too hard for me to understand then it IS as hard as it sounds.
Good luck to the others in this contest!
kthxbai.
Lest We Forget
Mastardly-Dastardly
Ilium’s eWallet
Snarfed all my passwords
And stuffed them in code.
Memory’s passé now:
Antediluvian!
Keep all your secrets in
Virtu’l abode.
A Slip (or alter-Ilium)
Raspily-graspily
Sigmund Freud’s Grandmother
Cautioned the lad to lay
Off of his sex.
Couldn’t stop fondling his
Genital-alia
Leaving him membered like
Tiny T-Rex.
I can’t think!
I can’t think!
I can’t think!
This is hard.
What the hay,
I really say,
does this rhyme
mean anyway?
Palm-edy, trauma-dy
far ahead years ago,
paradigm shifter that
was my Treo
Monday brings iPhone 2
bye to 650 now
only thing I will miss
is dear List Pro
The Doc’s Stocks
Hackery-Quackery
Sigmund Freud, Esquire
Swollen-head, inner-itched,
Hungry for fox.
Diagnosed fin’lly as
Egomaniacal,
Hypochondriacal,
Outside the box.
OK, OK, I’m hooked:
Ad Verbs
Safe-ishly, rafe-ishly
eWalletitis pro-
vides all a means for a
Homeland Secure.
Keeps e’en your name in a
Lockbox innoculate:
Memorizational
Passwordal cure.
A Curly Tale
Piggly, Wiggly
Purveyor of chow
Load your cart with Twinkies
chips and beer
Go through express lane
forty items plus
Complete snackage
Because the dip’s already here
NewsBreak
Rikkity, Tikkity
This just in
News of an RSS reader
Robust yet sublime.
Load it up with feeds
Infotainment galore
Second mortgage
pays for air time.
Once a contest
Now A sonnet test
I’m glad I dont have to
Eat others Text
NewsBreak
Tappity, tappity
This just in
Countless feeds
From ridiculous to sublime.
Can’t have too many headlines
Miss my deadlines
Second mortgage
To pay for airtime.
Pocketa pocketa
Steve Jobs
Spied a smartphone for
Cows who say Moo
Thus he tested the iPhone
Aerodynamically
Releasing a smartphone for
Pigeons who say Coo
This is a tough contest and I hope that my entries are getting it right. I spent lots of time Googling around to try to get the feel for the way the words need to work together in this rigid format.
Here is my first entry titled: The HTC Touch Diamond (a device I am reviewing right now)
Bombastic bamboozle
Horace Luke Peter Chou
Inventors of mobiles
Fantastic pair
Working to provide us
Shiny bright Diamonds
Incontrovertibly
Gaining your stare
Shopping List
Grocery-Prosery
Martha O’Stewartus
Helps us to name what we
Lust for and need.
ListPro then aids us, we
Pleasure-bent hedonists,
Anthropomorphizing
Milk, meat, and seed.
Nightmare
Spookily-wookily
EWalletiasis
Sickens our minds with its
Paranoid woe.
Fin’lly it cures all our
Neuropathology.
Saving with passwords our
Fear of Big Bro’.
(Please help me stop!)
A Racecar Named Desire
Gassily-Passily
Corvette by Chevrolet
Drove a young man to a
Car-based wet dream.
As a result of this
Auto-erotica
He has matured as a
Speedster extreme.
A Good Time Was Had by All
Slammity-Bammity
Ilium Software Inc.
Played with our psyches and
Launched this damn test.
Now we have learned well that,
Self-referentially,
Doubledactylicly,
Silence is best.
Higgledy Piggledy
Albert A Michelson
Did his experiment,
Came away miffed.
“Need a more accurate
Interferometer!
Back to the drawing board –
Can’t get the drift.”
Yo-tweedle, no-needle,
Doctor Van Shotz.
“A medical checkup?
I feel quite fit!”
Menacing M.D. says
ever so eerily,
“Trypanophobia?
Won’t hurt a bit!”
My Wicked Hero
Plashedly bashedly
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Dashed off his poetry
Just as he spoke.
Would that I could do just
as the bard did, moving
extrasarcastically,
from bad to verse.
(My humor isn’t meant for just anyone …)
Artzilly fartzilly
Frederic Remington
Reads in McCalls mag that
Claire Booth is Luce
Switches to oils which are
Biodegradable
Only to find that Lau
Trec is Toulouse
My Wicked Hero Once Again, or Never write at 2 a.m.
Plashedly bashedly
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Dashed off his poetry
Just as he spoke.
Would that I could do just
as the bard did, moving
extrasarcastically,
bad to verse poke.
How Much is that Doggerel in the Window?
Sparkily-Warkily
Odgen Nash Trashery
Goldenly celebrates
Rhyme as the king.
Doubledactylishness’
Diff’rently celebrates
Sesquipedalian
Rhythm’s bright bling.