"And the wise man did say when asked about the principle of self-sufficiency:
'Give a man a
porn mag and he can wank for a week, give a man broadband access to the internet and he can masturbate for a lifetime.'"
"Never trust a duck with a match"
The origin of this ancient proverb, like so many others, has been lost to the mists of time; recent archaeological findings, however, seem to support the predication that the provenance of the
precept lies in 1st Century Rome, where the Great
Duck of Saxony (later chronicled by Tacitus as the Surreptitious Duck of Saxony) - under the direction of Ambiorix, Prince of
Germania - managed to infiltrate Rome and set alight the South-Eastern quadrant of the Circus Maximus, causing fire to disperse vociferously through the densely populated districts of Rome, leaving the city engulfed in flames for the next five days.
The eponymous Duck, having assimilated himself into the backdrop of the Aventine under the pretence of being a duck, obtained a match; from when and where he acquired the fateful match is unknown (eye-witnesses who survived the blaze claim to have overheard a person suffering from a duck-like affliction asking for a match to light his cigarette), but what he then proceeded to do with it is unequivocal. Observing that the fire was spreading quicker than he had anticipated, the Duck flew to the safety of the
Imperial Palace where he was accosted by the Emperor Nero, who - entranced by
the Duck's ebullience and
duckish charisma - was inveigled into playing the lute as a celebration of the Duck and all duck-kind; all the while the Duck had perched itself on one of the
Doric columns to gleefully gaze down below to the sight of a carbonic miasma emanating from the fire consuming the streets and the
tenebrous clouds of smoke piercing the
crepuscular skies as the Great Duck watched Rome burn.