Neal’s Belch no. 140 for 21st Jun 2004
Recently I was sitting in a waiting room, patiently waiting for the sands of time to drain out of my shoes after my long morning walk along the beach. And I noticed a fly walking up the curtain.
Not flying.
Walking.
There is a proliferation of laziness in he insect community these days. When I was younger I used to walk up the curtain three times a day to harvest the latest product of the salt spider who had a web in the corner of the ceiling just above my bedroom window.
Nowadays of course, salt is frowned upon by those who are obsessed with good health. Yet these same people think nothing of going into the sea and swimming around in millions of gallons of salt water. Absolute shamelss hypocricy.
In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that salt water is the cause, not only of hypocricy, but of almost every other crime, sin or unpleasantness in the world today. Take a look at your atlas.
Almost every country that was involved in World War II is located within a few thousand miles of some salt water. Personally, I live in a land that’s completely surrounded by the sea on all sides, and you don’t need to look at a map to tell you that. Just take a walk down the main shopping thoroughfares here in Dublin, Ireland, and you’ll see what I mean. People are walking along gazing into their cellphones and not looking where they’re going.
If you ask them why, as I always do, they’ll tell you they are using their phones to communicate with somebody, or spreading a bit of happiness by saying hello to a neighbour or friend. But they’re not spreading happiness toward me. Instead, they’re bumping into me and not saying “sorry”. And I’m made to look like the bad guy because I’m the one who has to point out the errors of their ways, and tell them to look where they’re goddam going.
And they growl at me. They always growl. Then their owner calls them and tugs on the lead and waves a dog biscuit at them and they invariably disappear.
That’s another thing. Everybody is suddenly obsessed with dog biscuits. Everywhere I look in this stupid country, people are eating snacks that are meant for their pets. And the dogs are going hungry.
Everywhere I look now there’s a dog who’s so thin that you can see his skeleton through his skin, assuming you have a portable x-ray machine of some sort – which most people do nowadays – and there are flyies buzzing around their heads looking for salt but not getting any because a hungry dog is not a source of salt. So the flies go hungry too.
At least the flies don’t get thirsty any more. Because, for a change, they’re not eating salt all day. So yes, there are pluses and minuses; swings and roundabouts involved in all this.
But I still don’t think it’s right.
I mean, you don’t see people eating water-buffalo when they’re walking down the street. Because everybody knows that water-buffalo can only be eaten moist. And in this all-work, no-play world in which we live, people just don’t have time to sit down and drink a glass of water with their luncheon meat. And they have even less time to pour a jug of water onto the buffalo before killing it, which is, strictly speaking, the correct preperation method for that particular food, according to the Food Safety Board of Ireland. So, quite rightly, everybody avoids water-buffalo sandwiches and instead chooses a sandwich that can be consumed without water.
So why can’t they do the same with these infernal portable telephones?