Cause

Rhymes with

paws
caws
applause
maws
pause
laws
claws
in-laws
clause
und boss (in Rhajhanhikhantha-sprache)

Definition: Cause is the amorphous undefinable inchoate doohickey that can be conveniently, completely, caustically and confidently blamed for anything that can be assumed to be an 'event'.

This makes it a very convenient tool for use in the higher echelons of corporate ivory towers.

Pretending to be attempting to unravel the mechanisms of such a doohickey becomes a convenient justification for funding universities and 'research'.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the same doohickey is also a superb excuse to mobilise opinion, organise resistance, agitate, make noise, shout slogans, damage public property, commit arson, and if one is the right sort of mood after breakfast, to kill and maim.

Quite a versatile operative this doohickey called cause. It symbolises the peculiarities of the sole surviving sub-species of bipedal primates that inhabit the wild nooks and cranies on earth - which is to say every scrap of dry land there is. Peculiarity is a severe understatement, though, given as, this particular animal's behaviour is characterised by what can only be described as an outright obsession with etiology on a great many occasions. Few other animals devote quite so much time to anything that is not concerned with eating and procreating.

Most absurdly of all, in an ultimately fruitless autorecurssive exercise, large herds of this animal are from time to time pre-occupied with substituting the doohickey for the event and trying to identify another doohickey that can be blamed for this doohickey and so and on so as to determine the ultimate doohickey of them all. Even more puzzling is that even without identifying this ultimate doohickey, they blithely posit numerous variants for it and congregate in astronomical numbers for no other reason than adore it.

I can only attribute such behaviour as a deliberate and utterly malicious attempt to confound the most learned and dedicated ethologist as would dare to try and study this species.

Whew!