Neal’s Belch no. 137 for 15th Jun, 2004
I’ve always prided myself on keeping up with the latest fashions and trends. And in that vein, I’ve recently bought myself a pointy green hat with a three inch long flap of elastic at the front to cover my eyebrows (which of course are no longer fashionable) and a free-range eggshell glued to the top, rather like a bobble. I’m not telling you this just to show off by the way. I do have a point – it’s just that the eggshell thing fits snuggly over it so it’s not visible.
I prefer things to be rounded rather than pointy. A well-rounded person can’t hurt you by pointing the top of his or head at you and stabbing you with it. And I’ve always found that very reassuring in a world gone mad. I myself am round rather than pointy, except for my toenails, which are long and mighty.
That’s one part of my masculininty that I am not prepared to sacrifice. A man’s toenails should be maintained at a length at least long enough to be able, in theory, to turn them into noodle sticks. Don’t eat them, obviously, because you’ll hurt your back, but you can always put them on display on top of the microwave as a momento of the day when you decided you were going to be a man, and not cut your toenails
In some cultures, microwaves and other household appliances are themselves considered (mistakenly, in my opinion) to be signs of masculinity. In China, for example, a four-slice toaster means you sweat a lot. But that’s bound to happen anyway if you have your head over a toaster all day. The English prefer to make toast under the grill, and I’ve always found that to be a marvellously civilised way of doing things. You can’t get sweaty in front of a grill, unless you open the door very wide and poke your head in to see whether the toast is ready. But that shouldn’t be necessary if you have a suitably-converted egg timer, to which you have attached some sort of toast adaptor, so that it can time the toast. But you know all this already.
The point is, round things are better. Allow me to demonstrate. Take a look at the following diagrams.
So anyway, back to the toast. I prefer mine with marmalade and sunflower margarine, rather than peanut butter. But I’m prepared to tolerate differing tastes. Within limits of course.
There’s no excuse for putting cheese on anything at breakfast. Hello everybody in the USA if you’re listening. Cheese is not a breakfast food, okay? Although I can see how you would get confused, what with other dairy items, such as milk, being very widely used in morning eating sessions. But cheese is different from milk, in ways that are too subtle to explain properly here. But you’ll understand, some day. Then you’ll thank me for putting you straight. Until then, take my word for it. Cheese into breakfast doesn’t go. Ditto ham.
Personally, I prefer cereal in ice cold milk. But I always take the milk cubes out just before I eat it. Ice is re-usable, and I don’t like to put anything to waste, so I put the used milk cubes back in the freezer for later. We all must do our best to preserve the world’s precious natural resources, you know, and ice is one of those. There are polar bears who would kill for an milk cube right now. Or a Fox’s Glacier Mint. Whichever is cheaper. It’s mainly a homesickness thing. They’d probably be able to get over it and become happier if they weren’t being kept in the Sahara Desert Zoo.