Testing Out Some Theories

Magnifico Thwonk spent his teen years testing out this theory:

You can punch all of the people some of the time,

And some of the people all of the time,

But you can’t punch all of the people all of the time.

It led to several spells in the Young Offenders’ Institute (like the Women’s Institute, only not) and, eventually, prison.

            “I think that this theory is wrong,” concluded Magnifico. “I may have misheard it.”

Thus it was that Magnifico Thwonk spent his twenties testing out this theory:

You can paint all of the people some of the time,

And some of the people all of the time,

But you can’t paint all of the people all of the time.

Lack of foresight and paper led Thwonk to use the walls in his environs to test out this theory.

            Over a decade and 3,489 hours of Community Service later, Mr Thwonk realized that this pithy little maxim also contained untruth.

            “Maybe I just wasn’t listening hard enough?” Using powers of deduction which he borrowed from an out-of-date bus time-table, Magnifico Thwonk formulated yet another hypothesis:

You can save all of the people some of the time,

And some of the people all of the time,

But you can’t save all of the people all of the time.

Having enrolled in the Midlands’ Finest Fire Brigade, Officer Thwonk spent the next dozen or so years putting this theory to the test.

            “Confounded damnations!” he observed drily in his diary. “That one’s a load of tripe and all. Maybe I should seek the advice of a wise man. I am, after all, in my forties now.” (For those of you who needed it pointing out; what with your rusted, little dyscalculic brains.)

Thus, Magnifico Thwonk spent ten years searching on all the world’s mountain tops for a wise man, but he couldn’t find one, not even om (geddit?) a mountaintop.

And so it was that, sitting on the last mountain top on Earth, Magnifico Thwonk inadvertently discovered a truth:

Trying to boil down the whole of existence into a handful of pithy little maxims is a futile endeavour. Furthermore, you won’t find many wise men sitting on (or om) mountain tops.

But it was the hypothermia which did for him as he experienced this epiphany.