FILL ERUP

There once was a girl named Irene
Who lived on distilled kerosene.
But she started absorbin'
A new hydrocarbon
And since then has never benzene.

What’s so funny about this? We haven’t had a limerick in a long time, and this one’s a doozie. I have a feeling it’s an oldie but it still works as long as you are familiar with the vocabulary of petroleum products. Of course it makes things tougher because the same products have different names depending on which English you speak or are learning. For example, in the US we fill our cars with gasoline while in England they call the stuff “petrol”. In Hungary it’s “benzene.” Kerosene is also known as lamp oil and in England it’s called “paraffin”. Chemically speaking, all petroleum products are hydrocarbons, that is, a combination of carbon and hydrogen. So anyway, in this limerick we hear about the strange practices of Irene who lives on distilled kerosene, the stuff that used to be used to light up houses before electricity was harnessed