Perverbs

Today's Oulipo class started off with Didi leading us in a constraint she'd read about for today. According to the Oulipo Compendium, a perverb (created by Oulipian Maxine Groffsky) is "the result obtained by crossing proverbs." For example, "if we join the first part of 'Red sky at night, sailor's delight' to the second part of 'It never rains but it pours,' we obtain the proverb 'Red sky at night, but it pours."

We spent a little time making up a few of our own perverbs, building off of a list of proverbs we brainstormed at the outset. Here's a list of several we came up with, including some extremely twisted (lexically and topically) ones:

Sailor’s delight, horse in the mouth.
It never rains, but houses shouldn’t throw stones.
An apple a day shouldn’t throw stones.
Loose lips gather no moss.
A bird in the hand keeps the doctor away.
Spare the rod and sink ships.
Early to bed, early to rise, sinks ships.
A stitch in time catches worms.
You can lead a horse to water, but he catches the worm.
Spare the red sky rod and at night spoil the child; sailor’s delight.
An apple a day is worth two in the bush.
An ounce of prevention is a penny earned.
An ounce of bird catches the worm.
Keep calm and spoil the child.
Those who live in a penny spoil the child.
Haste makes moss.
Haste makes worms.
Loose lips gather sailors.

The students' task for Monday: write a holorhyme and a snowball.

My task: find a good .txt file full of profanity to use for the homovocalism generator I wrote in Mathematica.

You're welcome.