Neal’s Belch no. 142 for 2nd Jul, 2004
I’ve noticed that recently my fingernails have been becoming longer and longer. I assume it’s because I’m evolving in some way or other, and that part of this process involves growing a shell.
This couldn’t have come at a better time, because house prices here in Ireland are soaring and I can’t get a decent apartment on my salary. I suppose I could grow a house if I really needed too, but it’s so stressfull waiting for the seeds to germinate and wondering whether it’s going to be a boy house or a girl house. Not that it matters, but you really need to know where the main entrance is going to be, if the house is going to line up with your garden path properly.
Anyway, the reason why all this came up is that I was in Dublin Zoo a few weeks ago and I noticed that some of the staff who work in the primates section had devolved into monkeys. Not only that, it became apparent after a few minutes of exploring that one of the giraffes had mated with a monkey and there was a guy with a really long neck walking around busily trying to evolve so that he could re-integrate himself into modern society.
When I was around six years old I asked Santa Claus to give me a monkey for Christmas. My parents called Santa on their rather primitive early nineteen eighties cellphone, and made sure that he had received my letter which I had sent by telex from my bedroom the previous evening.
Now, I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but what I received on Christmas day was not the cute little black furry creature that I had expected. It was a tall yellow duck with an orange beak and, for some reason, a striped t-shirt which was sewn onto it’s torso. Duckegg (such was the name that I gave him) fell apart after a couple of years. They don’t make stuffed toy ducks like they used to. His head started to become seperated from his body at the back within weeks, and it wasn’t long before my bedroom floor became strewn with lost stuffing. Although technically it wasn’t lost because I knew where it was.
It was right there. On the floor.
Anyway, for some reason Duckegg had two legs and two arms. And this confused me, as a child. What was I supposed to think? That ducks have arms and stand upright? Well, I suppose they do stand upright but I’m pretty sure ducks aren’t supposed to have arms. It’s just not the done thing.
Then I realised.
It became mindbogglingly obvious to me. The toy companies were conspiring to hasten the evolution of children so that they would demand more sophisticated and challenging toys from Santa Claus. They were doing this by making incorrectly limbed toy ducks which would force the children to use every ounce of brain power that they had, to try to figure out what the hell was going on. This would cause their brains to grow and that was exactly the type of evolution that the toy manufacturers wanted. So that’s what happened.
But I’m sure you’re wondering, where did it all end.
Well, I dunno.
I really can’t be bothered today. I should have just written something about cats, because that’s so much easier. But no, I had to pick an unbeaten path as usual, and discuss a topic about which there exists very little solid research to rely on.
I probably told myself something about needing to excercise my mind, or some such carp. You know, when I was in school we used to be told to take our pencil for a walk, meaning draw a neverending line and keep drawing until the page was covered in shapes.
We were then given some pencils and told to colour the shapes with the crayons. You could always tell when the teacher had a hangover and wanted an easy day.
And that’s pretty much what I’m going to do now.
Here’s your crayons. Knock yourself out. Just try not to eat them because I’m not completely sure they aren’t toxic. And besides you shouldn’t ruin your appetite between meals. If you must, have a piece of fruit or a serving of vegetables instead. I always find that a carrot is excellent for drawing orange things. You would think an orange would do it better, but there’s too much liquid in an orange. So it’s only good for watercolours. Although the peel is excellent for making marmalade.
I’ve deleted a paragraph here at the end, because it wasn’t terribly exciting. In case you’re wondering, it was a brief discussion about the problems involved in carrying out time and-motion studies in marmalade factories. But you knew that already. I’m becoming so predictable these days.