I hope no one had too much of a fire in their belly...

Am I being over-sensitive, or has the tone of the Limerick Game taken a slide down a particularly sexist hill this week? Kagome Shuko provided a dreadful first line, so I *ahem* said something. And now I find the next line refers to 'a prude'. I don't think I'm being a prude, but I do like to see standards maintained, and I think there are plenty of alternatives first lines that don't include referring to women with tits like melons. That's not a limerick I would enjoy contributing to. And I'm sure some of the chaps here similarly would avoid contributing to limericks about everyman's small cocks, erectile dysfunction and disappointing conjugal performance - and all the other male foibles and deficiences. The MC community has never felt the need to scrape the bottom of this particular barrel before (although there are plenty of other barrels that everyone enjoys delving deep into), so why now?

By limerick standards our output is exceptionally clean. I think the occasional dive into the depths of depravity is necessary and indeed unavoidable. Citations:

[1.] The lim'rick packs laughs anatomical
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

[2.] Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene, and cites similar opinions by Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw, describing the clean limerick as a periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity.

That said, I don't think an excess of filth, whether or not it's folklorically accurate, is particularly funny either. One, or, perhaps I should say 'the MC community' needs mostly clean stuff to throw the filth into sharper relief. So I think my conclusion is to bring on the odd willy joke, and not to start complaining until we've had several in succession.

[Pen] I was about to agree wholeheartedly (and indeed KS's first line was singularly juvenile), but I went to the game and in fact there aren't any crude limericks currently on the top page. So, although I agree with your sentiment, you may actually be overstating the issue. Actually, I think we went through a dip into the area where saucy starts bordering on filthy a couple of weeks ago and have climbed out again.

Maybe you're influenced by the output on MCiOS - but I wouldn't class any of the currently visible lot as more than saucy.