Lightning

First Predicament of Perspective

Get the crow-bar, Gloria.


Rock’n’Roll Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Ape

Although Dubliners claim that a Cork man is only a Kerry man in human form,* there is reason to believe that Cork men are the most Irish, and therefore the most subtle, persons on the planet.


* Dubliners also believe, or claim to believe, that the wheelbarrow was invented to teach Kerry men to walk on their hind legs. On the other hand, Kerry people claim that to house the insane of Ireland one would have to build a mental hospital in Belfast, another in Limerick and then put a roof over Dublin.

It was a Cork jury which once voted a defendant, “not guilty, if he promises not to do it in this town again.”

The Town Hall of Cork City has four clocks facing the four quarters. They are all consistently inconsistent, to introduce an appropriately Irish bull. That is, no two of them ever tell the same minute and they usually don’t even agree as to the hour. Locals call them the Four Liars.

A visitor from some heathen and exotic place possibly England — once commented, “How typically Irish even the clocks don’t agree!”

A Cork man, overhearing this, quickly explained, “Well sure now, if all four of them agreed, three of them would be superflous.”

Cork people all believe that Time was invented by the English as a treacherous way of making a man work more than is altogether good for him.

And the only Irish philosophers to have world class status, Erigena and Berkeley, both denied that Time exists at all, at all.

All Irish bulls are pregnant.

— Robert Anton Wilson.

ALL IRISH BULLS ARE PREGNANT.

pregnant (adj.2)

["convincing, weighty, pithy, full of meaning"] late 14c., "cogent, convincing, compelling" (of evidence, an argument, etc.); c. 1400 as "full of meaning;" from Old French preignant "pregnant, pithy, ready capable," which is probably from Latin praegnans "with child, pregnant, full" and thus the same word as pregnant (adj.1).

All uses seem to be derivable from the sense of "with child." But in some sources this English pregnant has been referred to French prenant, present participle of prendre "to take," or to the French present participle of preindre "press, squeeze, stamp, crush," from earlier priembre, from Latin premere "to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress." The two English adjectives are so confused as to be practically one word, if they were not always so.

also from late 14c.