Paul the Psychic Octopus

Paul the Psychic Octopus

(Tune: Puff the Magic Dragon)

Paul the Psychic Octopus lived in a jar,
He would have liked a life at sea, but he never got that far;
He tried to join a football team, but they wouldn’t let him play:
They said he had too many legs, and made him go away.

He would have loved a little Octopussy friend, you bet,
Or a dog shark or a catfish – but he had no pet to pet.
He dreamed he’d do Le Tour de France, and lead the peloton,
But he didn’t have octobike, nor an endoskeleton.

So Paul was left belonely, he had nothing much to do:
He beat the best computer chess, got bored with sudoku;
With no navel there to contemplate, he sucked his sucker-toes:
With eight legs each with twenty-nine, he had a lot of those.

Now Humans have two arms, ten fingers, two legs and ten toes,
So we’re digital and base-ten-based, as everybody knows;
But there was Paul left all alone – alone, to meditate
29 toes on 8 legs, (so, 29 X 8.)

Like Stephen Hawking in his chair, so Paul was in his jar:
A Mollusc like a garden snail, but cleverer by far;
Like many a brilliant genius with time to think to thank,
Paul had lots of thinking time to think in his think-tank.

Folk called Paul’s arm-legs ten-tacles, though Paul had only 8:
To digitals and decimals poor Paul could not relate;
He had to rethink Mathematics, that alone he knew,
With 8 times 29 as base, comes to two-thirty-two.

His ink filled many pages, he was thinking all the time,
It took him simply ages, cost him blood and sweat and slime;
He solved Octocalculus and Octorelativity,
But failed to find his Holy Grail, infallibility!

His sucker-toes grew flaccid; his slime in gollops oozed;
He skin like calamari, ’cos he’d turned to dope and booze:
But things just went from bad to worse, his eyes grew dry and dull;
He looked around his universe, and saw that it was null.

They thought poor Paul was finished: that he’d never find his Grail;
It seemed a sorry ending to a sad and lonely tale -
But! – Some dopey bimbo rinsed her [electric whatsit] in his jar! -
240 volts! Poor Paul convulsed! - Then squirted out, AHHH-HAAAAA!

240 volts was perfect! (See, Eight plus Two-Thirty-Two!)
It booted up his circuitry, and suddenly he KNEW!
He shrieked aloud, EUREKA! (but in Octopussinese),
Displaying symbols on his skin, which glowed like L.E.D’s!

In seconds he solved mysteries of space and life and time,
Of gravity and energy, wrote poetry and rhyme;
He had no need of keyboards, he made printouts with his toes,
Remember, he had two hundred and thirty-two of those!

Paul yearned to save the Earth, and end the miseries of Man;
Working for all he was worth to plan the perfect plan;
As Guest Speaker at the UN, he had only just begun
To tell them how to do it all when - it all came undone! -

The humans who controlled him made him turn his mighty brain
To forecast soccer, like who’d win ’tween Netherlands and Spain:
For Paul was omniprescient, his estimates exact,
So any team he picked would be the team those *’s backed!

Of course he never failed them, ’cos he was always right,
And no-one thought at all of Paul the Octopus’s plight:
Like making Einstein do your tax, or Phar Lap pull a cart,
Making Paul predict the soccer broke his octoheart.

Now Paul has gone forever – He could have saved the world!
They’re tanning him like leather, eight ten-tacles cutely curled;
But next time you have calamari, just remember, Friend,
The Ectoplasmic Octopus will get you in the end!