Comic 1131 - Math

You might risk incurring the wrath
Of folks on the right-forking path
But if interested in
Knowing who’s gonna win
You may as well just do the math.

Original comic here.

Comic 1130 - Poll Watching

Poll happiness or poll dejection?
The smallest things have a connection,
But to get miles ahead
With your foe left for dead
You’d do worse than win the election.

Original comic here.

Comic 1127 - Congress

Hasn't XKCD been political lately?

This fixation on US politics has been the reason behind my non-posting. Try as I might, I have nothing to say about the history of the US Senate and/or House of Representatives, whether as a limerick, short story, radio play, graphic novel or anything else.

Instead, I'm hoping you can accept a limerick I've written about the current hot-potato political issue that's got us all abuzz here in Britain. With that out of the way and the blockage cleared, I ought then to be able to catch up with the rest of them before too long. So, take it away Nadine.

There was an MP, Nadine Dorries
Who went to eat grubs in the forest.
Her scheme was hare-brained —
She should have remained
London-bound and got grubby with Boris.

Original comic here.

Comic 1122 - Electoral Precedent

In a move reminiscent of Motson
Today’s pundits come up with lots’n
Lots of cute unbroken
Streaks, but by that token
They’re rather less Holmes and more Watson.

Original comic here.

Comic 1118 - Microsoft

When Microsoft got big and scary
We squashed them before things got hairy.
But while they were flat
All these others grew fat —
We could stand to be slightly more wary.

Original comic here.

Comic 1083 - Writing Styles

Your erudite screed on Ron Paul
Doesn’t make you sound grown-up at all
Bt if U wrt N txt spk
I'll swear until next week
You were at the Inaugural Ball.

Original comic here.

Comic 1062 - Budget News

I was at a political talk
Where the lecturer spoke in a squawk
And he seemed (here’s the thing)
To be left- AND right-wing—
He must be a deficit hawk.

Original comic here.

Comic 1044 - Romney Quiz

There once was a poor boy named Charlie
Who barely had two grains of barley
But a sweet lucky dip
Won a factory trip
That was straight out of Salvador Dali.

Original comic here.

Comic 1019 - First Post

If you want to shape people's opinions
In political online dominions
Ignore adland's boasts—
Just make sure the first posts
On each piece are put there by your minions.

Original comic here.

This limerick has an example of what I call a "perfect triple": I only know three words ending in -inions, and I've managed to get them all in the poem, rhyming with each other.

Admittedly there is "pinions" as well, but I don't really know what that means.

Comic 1013 - Wake Up Sheeple

The government's short-changing people
But don't shout it from every steeple.
You'll think what you had
Wasn't really half baaaaad
When we all live in thrall to The Sheeple.

Original comic here.

Comic 1007 - Sustainable

There was a man from Knotty Ash
Who knew what to do with his trash.
He put every piece in
Its own special bin
That sustainable man from Knott' Ash.

Original comic here.

A very old-school limerick for a Monday morning. This one really needs an illustration of the fellow in question, his kitchen floor awash with bins marked "apple cores" and "foil" and "pork bones" and "lint". Perhaps I will draw one; but it will not be very soon, I'm afraid.

Non-comic 1005 - A SOPA protest

If it's censorship that you're protesting
Then don't use satirical jesting.
Steve Bell shocks and appals
With his cocks and his balls
But no comic at all's much the best thing.

I don't know much about SOPA, but if it's true that it will obliterate the entire internet, I am most certainly against it. Sadly I don't have the vote in the USA, so my view counts for very little.

Classic Comic 470 - The End is Not for a While

When protesters blather and babble
I join their unruly rabble
With signs that just say
Things are pretty OK
And would anyone like to play Scrabble?

Original comic here.

Lots of protesting going on at the moment, so it's nice to revisit this one.

Comic 985 - Percentage Points

When a senator loses support
The press tell us less than they ought.
Just what, pray, is meant
By "down twenty per cent"?
Down a fifth? Or from twenty to nought?

Original comic here.

Comic 984 - Space Launch System

You can’t just sit round being artsy
If you want to roll the space-race yahtzee.
You need über-smart guys
And surprise surprise,
That usually means an ex-Nazi.

Original comic here.

I should perhaps stress that I personally am not in favour of recruiting Nazis for technological projects, although I do very much enjoy a game of Yahtzee.

Comic 977- Map Projections

The projection we know as Gall-Peters
Gets everything right in square metres;
It'd be on my wall
If its fans were not all
Peruvian-hatted bean-eaters.

Original comic here.

Comic 966 - Jet Fuel

There once was a man from Dun Laoghaire
Whose paranoid friends made him weary
So he took their daft plots
And tied them in knots
To make one vast conspiracy theory.

Original comic here.

Comic 927 - Standards

We can't say which standard is best
So there's only one thing to suggest:
Make a new, universal
one. Whoops, a reversal -
It just competes with all the rest.

Original comic here.

Please don't be alarmed by the rate of posting. I can assure you that each limerick has had the requisite loving care lavished upon it. And thanks to this deluge, I am now free to work on my other projects until Friday.

Comic 898 - Chain of Command

At the top of all high-level trees
Is a shadowy eminence grise.
Barack is the Pres
But the techie-in-res
Knows, really, that he's the big cheese.

Original comic here.

Classic comic 385 - How it Works

In fields that are often reserved
For just men, when a woman's observed
Not to bring home the bacon,
Mistakes are mistaken
For female flaws - undeserved.

Original comic here.

I am taking some licence here: strictly, three words ending '-served' might not be considered to rhyme. Don't men make terrible poets?