The 1876 Christmas Day ‘O'Shannessy’s Wake Speech’: Cultivate or Perish.

“Cultivate or perish!”

      With those resounding words Abe Leprachaun, clay pipe clenched firmly between his teeth, began his famous 1876 Christmas Day ‘O'Shannessy’s Wake Speech’.
      The rest, as we all know, is history.
      But what most of us don't know is, that two weeks later, on the 16th March, in a totally unrelated incident, the infamous Great Irish Potato Chip Plague began in a small fish and chip shop in the South of France.
      Spread quickly by word of mouth, the Great Irish Potato Chip Plague (THGICP) effected all the nations of the world, ravaging fish and chip shops from Argentina to Alaska, from Tobruk to Tasmania, from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan.
     An unmitigated disaster, not only did THGICP callously shrivel potato chips into small black soggy things, it increased their calories by 15 percent.
     Result?
     Millions of fat bottomed potato chip addicts waddling the streets of Cairo, London and Paris, searching hopelessly for some way to hide their newly aquired "assets".
     Over the next ten years many cures were tried - among them the ‘bum girdle’, the ‘cross dresser’ and the “mooch cradle” .
     All failed.
    Then, in January 1877, a hitherto unknown doctor named Dr Iva Turnipass appeared. And with him, an extraordinary invention, an invention that would, not only shave millions of tons of cellulite from bottoms all over the world, but also result in a miraculous cure for facial cracks, ugliness , chin hair, love handles, intumescence, loftiness, magniloquence, meretriciousness, orotundity, ostentation - and unsightly ‘snow-flake’ dandruff.
    This invention, of course, was known as (cont: page 87)

 
 

Authors' Note:

Is it safe  to stick out my nose out yet? :)

Of course, being a night loving Marsupial, I read the Illustration Friday prompt as "Cultivated" not 'Cultivate'. And so my little St. Patrick's Day Leprechaun chaps are highly cultivated in appearence, with their fancy pipes, flash clothes - and really silly beards.

And thankyou to all those visitors, old and new, who commented on my last two posts. I'm looking forward to visiting your blogs in the next few days.

As an aside, I noticed that both Shirley and Amalia are donating their amazing work or parts thereof to help the victims of the Japanese Tsunami. So please check out their sites if y ou get a chance.

You might also like to check this piece by The Labrat, who is a great artist but very slack.

Thank you very much for looking at this.