AS Stormont's deadlock boils down - or more accurately, is being boiled down - to the nature of an Irish language act, a chicken and egg question emerges over delivery.
If there can be no Stormont without legislation, as Sinn Féin insists, how much detail can be guaranteed without a legislature?
Agreeing legislation and restoring Stormont simultaneously, as the DUP proposes, does not solve this problem either.
Even the simplest bill rarely emerges unscathed from the legislative process - in fact, that is the entire point of the process.
A complex, controversial bill from a delicate coalition, passing through multiple readings in a fractious multi-party assembly, where the former and latter have options to outvote and block each other, is going to turn out other than planned.
Then what?
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A clown car of DUP representatives has been careening around social media, with Ian Paisley Jnr, Edwin Poots and Sammy Wilson all tweeting words to the effect of: direct rule - bring it on.
Sinn Féin national chair Declan Kearney is among those to have asked if this is either a DUP split or a DUP psychological operation.
Only the control freaks of the republican movement could see no other possibilities.
The truth is that Paisley and Poots are from factions hostile to the leadership, Wilson is a law unto himself, all three say whatever they like when they mood takes them while Paisley, in addition, just likes winding people up for a laugh.
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The DUP-Tory deal is quite specific about where its promised £1 billion over two years will go, breaking it down essentially by Stormont department - and often in more detail than that.
The deal also mentions a "coordination committee" of DUP and Conservative ministers but only to "support" the voting agreement between both parties at Westminster.
Secretary of state James Brokenshire is to be excluded from this committee and it is all set out in a separate document from the Stormont funding, to emphasise the cross-channel distinction.
Yet now both parties have said the committee will allocate the £1bn if an executive is not formed by October, when the secretary of state will also set a budget.
In a newspaper interview, Brokenshire apparently confirmed the deal money will at this point be added to his general pot.
Would that not make the committee a de facto executive, at least in the budgetary period? Would Brokenshire not be its finance minister, regardless of his supposed exclusion?
And why is any of this necessary when a budget will not break down the extra spending in any more detail than the deal?
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All non-unionist assembly parties have joined Sinn Féin to support an Irish language act, giving unionists the excuse they need to get stuck into the real enemy - Alliance.
The Sinn Féin and DUP surges of this year have obscured a remarkable fact about March's assembly election.
Alliance added 24,000 votes to its total from the year before, mainly it seems from normally non-voting Protestants.
June's high-stakes Westminster contest only squeezed this by 8,000, despite Alliance being a wasted vote in almost every constituency. Unionists cannot assume the centrist menace is neutralised.
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When Newry, Mourne and Down Council introduced a language policy in 2015, it specified not only that Irish and English be of equal prominence on signage but that Irish be placed first.
This has proved of unexpected help to loyalist vandals. They had been painting over the Irish on signs at the entrance to unionist-majority towns but now they have realised they can simply slice the top off with a blowtorch, circumventing the council's anti-graffiti paint and leaving the English neatly unscathed.
Worse still, this would rarely work with the London in Londonderry, because slicing a sign in half that way would just make it fall over.
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The Giant's Causeway has been named the world's most overrated and underwhelming tourist attraction in a survey by the Irish Times.
Causeway Coast and Glens councillors are furious, with the UUP's Normal Hillis declaring himself "absolutely outraged".
Referring to visitor numbers, he said: "Can a million people be wrong?" - a dangerous question for any unionist to ask.
Another question that must be asked is how many tourists are being turned off by the tawdry avarice of the National Trust, with its coy insistence that everyone pays into its pricey car park and visitor's centre.
A large council car park by the nearest public right of way would soon put manners on it.
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The Boyne Bridge across the railway lines into Belfast's Great Victoria Street station is to be demolished to build Translink's new transport hub.
Campaigners against this claim the bridge, built in 1936, contains Harland and Wolff rivets that are "probably the closest link we have with the Titanic" - unlike the rivets in an actual Titanic hull section at the Ulster Transport Museum, apparently.
Campaigners also claim the bridge incorporates two arches of a 17th century predecessor that King William "probably" crossed en route to the Battle of the Boyne. Could he not just have taken the train?
newton@irishnews.com
