porcinality (and synchronicity)

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:05 PM -0400 10/5/09, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>In February, Bill Palmer wrote:
>>So do swine have "porcinality"
>
>Rattling around loosely in my occasionally empty brain pan, off and
>on ever since I realized that the C should be soft (not that of
>"pork"!), has been something about a song.  I finally decided to tie
>it down.  I assume Bill had in mind "Porcinality" (lyrics by Lloyd
>Price), which I nominate for Miss Piggy's anthem. Its refrain is (one
>site tells me):
>
>'Cause you got porcinality,
>Walk, porcinality
>Talk, porcinality
>Smile, porcinality
>
>Charm, porcinality
>Love, porcinality
>And of Cause you've got
>A great big heart.
>
>I hope I've finally rid myself of this "Punch, brothers, punch"!
>
A weird instance of synchronicity, although no piggies are directly involved:

I had sent out a message earlier in the day to a colleague noting
that I had beaten him to the punch, and I was sitting around in my
office trying to figure out if the original allusion was to the
fist-punch or to the punchbowl, both of which sort of make sense so
that either version could plausibly have arisen as a reanalysis of
the other.  Then my new e-mail popped up and I got this e-mail sent
out at 12:57--

==========
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 12:57:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Unitarian Society of New Haven <info at usnh.org>
Subject: The Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile at USNH

...
On Tuesday Oct. 13 at 7:00 PM, come and hear the Punch Brothers
featuring Chris Thile. This innovative blue-grassy quintet is
generating a lot of buzz all around the world. Led by Grammy winning
mandolinist Chris Thile, they are opening new musical frontiers,
where bluegrass meets chamber music. Here are a couple of clips of
the band:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pES8PYtn50>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pES8PYtn50

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubBukAFx7kU>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubBukAFx7kU

...
We're expecting a big crowd, so buy tickets early.
===========

--followed immediately by Joel's sent out at 1:05.  I had never heard
of the Punch Brothers (or Chris Thile) and nor did I know to what
Joel's "Punch, brothers, punch" alludes (evidently a Mark Twain
description of the earworm phenomenon*), but I figure it's all a
matter of the cosmic vibes.  And I still don't know where "beat to
the punch" comes from.  The OED suggests under PUNCH n. 2 that I "See
also to beat a person to the punch at BEAT v.1", but nothing as far
as I can see within the former entry references the phrase in
question, although I gather that the boxing allusion is the real one,
not the drinking one. (The only "Punch" at BEAT v. 1 appears to be
the magazine.)

LH

*Which I learned from googling "Punch, brothers, punch", and seeing
the first hit (to the eponymous Twain story), followed by the second
(to the almost-eponymous bluegrass band).

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