Coincidance - Principia Discordia

I
244 COINCIDANCE
(British) invasion of Ireland, which began on 23 August 1170. Oddly it was
on another 23 August, in 1921, that Joyce had his celebrated experience of
discussing synchronicities when a large black rat suddenly ran across the
floor, scaring the blue Jesus out of him, by Christ. (It was also on an August
23, in 1985, that I gave a seminar on these isomorphisms at Esalen Institute.)
Strongbow was Earl of Pembroke, and another Earl of Pembroke, nearly 500
years later, became associated with Shakespeare and is considered the
possibly homosexual companion in the sonnets, Mr. W.H. That Earl of
Pembroke was named William Herbert, not Willie Hughes, as in Wilde's
more extravagent theory. It is odd, though, that the seven colors bring us to
two different theories about the identity of Mr. W.H., isn't it?
The next of Joyce's major system functions, abbreviated 0, first appears
on FW page 6 as "workingstacks at twelvepins a dozen." Workingstacks
seems to combine smokestacks with working stiffs (Irish slang for
workingmen); but "twelvepins a dozen" sounds like twelve pence a dozen—
a typical price for cheap vegetables or eggs in Joyce's day. However, the
Twelve Pins is also a mountain range in the part of Connacht called The Joyce
Country, where Our Man's ancestral tribe long held power. (Hewbrew ben
means son and these twelve often appear as Freud's hypothetical band of
brothers killing the primal father.)
But when the 0 appear the second time, they are neither mountains nor
coins (nor sons) but twelve mourners at Finnegan's wake further down on
page 6
prostrated in their consternation and their duodismally
profuse plethora of ululation
That is, they are dour and dismal but also duodecimal, like the traditional
coinage system from Babylon until fairly recently in history (until a few
years ago in Ireland and England). Later the 0 become the 12 signs of the
Zodiac, the 12 apostles of Jesus, the 12 months of the year, and every other
12-fold function Joyce can think of, but most often they are the 12 jurors
who continually pry into Earwicker's sexual offenses, always with the -ation
clangs (already beginning in the passage cited above from page 6) growing
longer and more suggestive. Here they are on page 142:
those component partners of our societate, the doorboy, the cleaner, the
sojer, the crook, the squeezer, the lounger, the curman, the tourabout, the
mussroomsniffer, the bleakablue tramp, the funpowtherplother, the
christymanboxer ... latecomers all the year's round by anticipation... the
porters of the passions in virtue of retroratiocination ... contributting
their confligent controversies of differentiation ... crunch the crusts of
comfort due to depredation, drain the mead of misery to incur intoxication,
condone every evil by practical justification and condam any good to its
own gratification