You know the thing. "Thirty days has September," yada yada yada. The thing is, the last two lines of the verse, as I learned it long ago, both ended in the word "year", and even in my days of youth and poor taste I could tell that was a cop-out. Rhyming a word with itself is advertising to the world that you couldn't think of a real rhyme. But, well, it was drilled into my skull, so it was all I had.
Well, some forty years later, I've finally found a new favorite variant. As the post title would indicate, it comes up while you're playing the second Batman game produced by Rocksteady Studios, Arkham City.
One of the incidental villains you stumble across, locked in a cell in the basement of the old courthouse -- apparently even Two-Face found him a bit too creepy to let him roam the prison grounds -- is one Julian Day, or Calendar Man as he was known. Yeah, he's one of the innumerable gimmick villains in the rogues' gallery, basing his crimes on various major and minor holidays and festivals. Mind you, in a recent (and I'll define "recent" as having been printed within the past five to ten years or so; I've been out of the comics loop for quite some time) story arc titled "The Long Halloween," his MO got bumped up from petty larceny to mass murder, with his personality revamped to give off a more Silence-of-the-Lambs vibe. When you visit him on one of twelve specific real-world holidays, he'll recount for you the tale of one of the themed murders which he performed on that day.
So, upon entering the back room of the courthouse, where the steps to the basement are found, you're greeted with this rhyme:
Thirty days has September,
April, June, and November.
All the rest have thirty-one
except February alone,
to which we twenty-eight assign...
...'til leap year brings us twenty-nine.
Which would be fine, except it's delivered like you're having a nursery rhyme recited to you by Hannibal Lecter.
I'm pretty sure that's someone's fetish, anyway.
