Digital Art and Space Blog
Reflections on Art, Computer Graphics, Photography, Space and Astronomy

I always had a fondness for limericks. I recall reading that Isaac Asimov, one of my favorite science fiction authors, was quite fond of composing limericks on demand. A few months ago I was looking at a photograph of some installation art that seemed to involve hanging an automobile from some ceiling. That image inspired me to write the following limerick which I titled An Artist’s Fate.

An Artist’s Fate

There once was an artist named Roe Tate
with a serious itch to be great
He created some art
using old auto parts
But his art ran him over - that’s fate

Earlier today I rediscovered this limerick in one of my to-do files and wondered if it was short enough to post on my Twitter account. Alas, no - nine characters too long. But the thought of posting a limerick to Twitter was now implanted in my brain and I resolved to write a limerick short enough to post.

After some head scratching, I came up with the following limerick:

Twitter One Four Zero

Twitter’s limit is one four zero
In which to post I am a hero
This brevity with words
Is strictly for the birds
No time to fiddle like Nero

Unfortunately Twitter strips out the carriage returns so my four line limerick becomes a one liner and I didn’t have the characters to spare to insert any sort of separator between lines. If you head over to my Twitter account you can see the limerick in all its glory. End of story.

The Illustration
To illustrate my limerick post I pulled a photograph of a bush that I had taken atop a small mountain in Arizona. Using Photoshop, a variety of filters and adjustment layers, I converted that photograph into the pictured titled Forest Guardian.