UPDATE: This post will float at the top until Monday. New content is below.

Hey everyone!

It’s time for the Second Annual Clerihew Contest! Last year’s was just so much fun I decided to make it an annual event. This year’s winner will receive a signed copy of Miss Conduct’s Mind over Manners.

July 10 is Clerihew Day, celebrating the poetic invention of Edmund Clerihew Bentley. These are the rules for a Clerihew poem:

1. They are about a person, and the first line is (usually) the name of that person.
2. There are four lines.
3. The rhyme scheme is AABB; the first two lines and the second two lines rhyme.
4. There is no meter; that is, the lines can be as long or short as you want.

Here is the winning entry from last year:

Tim Berners-Lee
Invented HTTP
Thus the World Wide Web was born
For Nigerian Diplomats and porn.

And the four runners-up:

Bill Gates
Has left the giant software company everyone hates.
“Hey, Mistah?
Are *you* gonna use Vista?”

William S. Burroughs
Had a brow filled with wrinkles and furrows
(Which were probably exacerbated, of course,
By his addiction to horse).

Thomas Edison
Invented a type of electricity that we have mostly had to jettison.
The clear advantages of direct over alternating current
Weren’t.

Edmund C. Bentley
Wrote intently,
But would now be anonymous
Were it not for the verse form for which his middle name is eponymous.

Get the idea?

The rules of the Second Annual Miss Conduct Clerihew contest:

1. Leave your clerihews in comments (on this blog or the other one, it doesn’t matter).
2. Follow the proper clerihew form.
3. No clerihews about me, Mr. Improbable, or Milo (if you want to post or e-mail me some, we’d be delighted, but clerihews about the judge, her spouse, or beloved dog can’t be considered for the contest for reasons of objectivity).
4. Clerihews containing sexual or political material will be disallowed.
5. You can enter as many clerihews as you like.
6. Clerihews will be judged on wit, accuracy, psychological perspecuity, and linguistic ingenuity.

Entries will be accepted until midnight on Sunday. On Monday, July 6, I will post the top 5 clerihews. Then you can vote on the winners, right here on this blog. Voting will be open until noon on Friday, July 10–CLERIHEW DAY!–at which point the winner will be posted, and may begin a wild weekend of celebration.