WE are bombarded daily with scientists' latest discoveries. The majority of these are less than useful mean, sheep cloning. As if there weren't enough already. What's so great about sheep? If you've ever had a prolonged dialogue with a sheep you'll know just how flibbertygibbet they are about most matters of importance.
Therefore, I have chronicled some of the more indispensable and yet neglected advancements to come from our friends in the white coats.
. 1900: In Vienna, Ernst Gurst, a phalliosinistrist, revolutionises the paper weight industry by inventing those little snow filled glass things. In a press conference Gurst defends himself in the midst of a flurry of attack by stating, "but if you get bored of just keeping the paper still, you can pick up the thing and shake it and pretend you're on holiday. It's nice. Leave me alone."
. 1902: Millicent DuFrond, a hermenutics specialist and rodeo owner from Des Moines, Ohio, patents and manufactures the first verruca acid solution. At first it achieves only mild success in cocktail bars and is then taken up by the chiropodist community.
. 1910: Cheltenham, England. In the early hours of a March Sunday, Aubrey Thorpe, a shepherd, is attacked making his way home from the fields by a school of ferocious hammer head sharks. The attack is lacklustre, the sharks' mobility being hampered by the lack of rainfall, but it scares Thorpe. The urban and field shark cage is born.
. 1911: Father Pender Clarke, an ambitious young Jesuit, amuses himself on holiday in Sneem, Co Kerry, by toying with temperature variations in minerals in church conditions and accidentally creates the confession box thermidor responsible for the purgative chill we all know and love today.
. 1927: Cioa. A small town outside Naples named from the local greeting between cows, Sophia Freglenitti goes home after an argument with her sister. She stubs her toe sharply on the kitchen table. It is an exceptionally humid day. After several hours manipulating her lead and steel worry beads, she finds she has created the prototype of the modern laser rifle.
. 1930: Eamonn and Hector McCraggan are walking past the gate of a neighbour's farm. One of them collapses with an attack of toothache. The local dentist is several minutes away over rough, ditch filled countryside. Hector doesn't fancy the trot so instead, using only twigs and muck, he ingeniously constructs a hand held camera with built in boom microphone. By asking his brother an unending stream of questions about how painful the toothache is, he becomes the father of modern journalism.
. 1931: The son of an Irish official gets drunk at an ambassador's party in New York. He retires to revive himself in his hotel bathroom. There, he falls asleep on the bidet and awakes with a start several hours later. Knowing he will be missed, he hikes his trousers up with such force that bidet pipes and ballcock come away from the wall complete. The world waits no longer for jacuzzi trousers.
. 1939: In Skull, Co Cork, Uri Thung, a Russian Orthodox priest and ferret watcher, resides at Mrs Joyce's boarding house. His life is a misery. Every evening she serves up the same glutinous fish soup and every night he lies abed picking molluscs and crab claws from his three foot beard. While carrying home a bag of annotated pocket bibles, he slips on some seagull vomit, spilling the holy books into a blacksmith's smelting pot. He falls face first into the bag. The following morning he declares his twin patent for bullet proof, shock proof bibles and the universal beard sheath.
The truth must and shall be known. For centuries now, scientists have fobbed us off with piffling entertainments such as relativity and moon landings. But thanks to giants of investigative reporting like myself, these suppressions are being yanked from underneath their lab coats.
When will our basic human needs be met? How soon can we lay our hands on what we have been denied so long? I mean the combined home neurosurgery kit and omelette maker.
I mean the harpsichord cleaning fluid.
I mean the musical fireplaces.
I, for one, intend to be first in the queue when they finally release the tongs for debeaching stranded whales.