Red Chedder cheese and the Heimlick Maneouver

Neal’s Belch no. 150 for 9th Aug, 2004

As I lie here on my bed at NewsBurp’s new headquarters in uptown Dublin, I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like if I had never grown a beard.

Well, for one thing, I’d be five Euro poorer every month, thanks to razors and foamy stuff and all that carp. And let’s suppose that in the other parallel universe where I still shave, the other me walked into the shop one day to buy some of those new quintuple-blade shaving sticks that are made by the same people who make swords apparantly.

And let’s suppose that on his way out of the shop, the other me – let’s call him Justin, because that’s my middle name and he probably uses it as his first – trips over the kerb and lands feet up in a particularly shallow well that luckily just happens to have a six foot deep mattress at the bottom of it. So he’s fine.

And let’s suppose Justin lies at the bottom of the well for a while, catching his breath and inadvertently inhaling several tiny flying insects. And he looks up at the night sky and spots a light that wasn’t there before. And the light becomes known as “Justin’s Star”, setting him on a course as a successful astronomer. Even though it was only a guy shining a torch down the well to see what all the noise was about. The astronomy industry are very open minded and they’re not going to ignore a new discovery just because it doesn’t exist.

And thank god for that, because if people weren’t open minded, we’d still all be members of the flat earth society, and several thousand flights to Australia would go missing every year because the pilots just flew horizontally until they disappeared into space never to be seen again.

Anyway the point is, if I hadn’t stopped shaving I could now be a respected astronaut. And frankly I’m glad that didn’t happen because I always wanted to be a fireman instead. Firemen are cool. They rush about in a cool fire engine and light fires for people with their big firesticks which they rub together until they start a spark. It’s a indispensible service, although I can’t say I’ve ever used it, because I’ve got electricity.

I love electricty.

The quality of the electric power in my area has improved immensely since the introduction of competition into the industry. All of my electricity now comes in a lovely shade of red, instead of that boring cold blue that we used to get.

Red is my favourite colour because it reminds me of red chedder cheese, which I hate and always avoid so red reminds of the peanut butter that I have instead. Peanut butter isn’t red, but the cheese is. Well, sort of more browny yellowy orange. But it’s easier to call it red because you can type it with one hand. You use your big finger for the “r”, the second finger for the “e” and “d”, although it just got a lot more complicated when I tried to add quotation marks around each letter.

I had to use the little finger on my right hand to get the “shift” key. Which is a pain in the finger.

I love the fact that each of our fingers has two knees on it. I think that rocks. I can’t for the life of me understand why our legs only have one knee. Unless of course you count the ankles, which I don’t. Ankles don’t bend, they rotate. And they’re full of tiny little bones, which reminds me of one of those cheap unboned fillets of fish that I sometimes have the misfortune to purchase, and nearly end up choking to death on a piece of ankle bone.

Now, before you interrupt me let me just say that I’m well aware that they don’t put real ankle bones into fish fillets. Those are imitation ankle bones, of course.

But that’s not going to make much of a difference when you’re writhing in agony of the floor waiting for somebody to slap you on the back and give you the Heimlick Maneouver, while you’re teling the guy at the end of the tunnel to dip his bloody headlights.