Month: September 2004

Neal’s Belch no. 162 for 25th Sep, 2004

Yesterday I was walking along, looking up at the clouds as I always do, when I noticed that one of them was leaking.

White fluffy stuff was falling from it and drifting all over the sky, and kids were excitedly trying to catch it and make it into pillow case stuffing, a product for which there is a huge black market in Ireland.

Anyway, the fire brigade turned up of course, and sorted everything out.  But while they were there, I noticed that the hose that they used to spray the cloud and make it float away to another fire brigade’s jurisdiction so that it became somebody else’s problem, was made of rubber.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but rubber is highly toxic and flammable isn’t it? That’s just stupid. What they need to do there, if you ask me, is put a load of holes in the hose, then dip it into a lake so that the lake water will get into the hose and put out the fire that will undoubtedly have been raging inside the hose from the moment it was manufactured.

I’m glad I put my mind to that particular problem. I love coming up with solutions to things. Yesterday a dog with three legs was trying to climb up a tree in my immediate locality, and was clearly having great difficulty doing it. This despite the best efforts of the marvellous people who work in the field of veterinary research. I’m afraid the bandage just wasn’t enough. So I helped the poor little doggy out by chopping down the tree so that it lay horizontal on the ground and he could explore it to his heart’s content.

Anyway back to the clouds.

One of them happened to be shaped like a big gorilla, a phenomenon which scares quite a lot of people, but not me becase I am a gorilla. I took it as an enormous compliment to my species that a few million water droplets chose to unite in a tribute to my kind, before dispersing like a group of ballet dancers readying themselves for the next act. I’ve always been a great admirer of the ballet. Although I must say I find the swans in the  lake at my  local park to be far below the standards set by the genre.

The ducks, on the other hand, are excellent. But that’s probably because they get plenty of incentives from the breadcrumbs that get thrown at them as rewards.

Nobody ever throws bread crumbs at swans because they’re afraid they will choke or something. Swans are just too delicate, I find. I’ve broken several of them through normal day to day use.

Human ballet dancers, on the other hand, take enormous offence if you offer breadcrumbs to them. People really are ungrateful assholes sometimes. Maybe it’s just me, what with being a gorilla and all that, but I have never had a “thank  you” or even a polite smile or a bow from a ballet dancer after I gave them breadcrumbs. Maybe it’s because they’re stale or something, I dunno. Although if that’s the case they could easily cover it up with some moisturising cream.

I’ve never understood why moisturising cream cannot be shipped out to drought-ridden countries to make them wet. Instead, this marvellous creation gets wasted on women’s faces, where it’s not needed.

What is this obsession people have with remaining moist at all times?

In my day, you used to just drink some tap water when your body told you that you needed to. And before you ask, yes I have tried it before passing judgement. And in my humble opinion, moisturising cream tastes like crap. Furthermore, it doesn’t go down well. I had to eat a couple of bags of salted potato crisps just to work up a sufficient thirst to interest me in drinking the stuff.

Personally I prefer a nice glass of home made water. I have a special measuring jug which helps to measure out the hydrogen and oxygen in that vital 2:1 ratio, and it always turns out fine. I drain off some hydrogen from a passing Michelin blimp, and I get the oxygen from my cat, so at last both of those items are making themselves useful to the word.

Insert witty and /or clever closing line here.

Neal’s Belch no. 161 for 13th Sep, 2004

Yesterday I was queueing up at my local bank, hoping to get my hands on some leaflets and lodgement forms because I collect them as a hobby, when all of a sudden there was a loud scream of “Help. Help. My Sandwich”.

Needless to say I pushed the onlookers out of the way and made my way to the centre of the crowd, letting everybody know that I was available to assist.

It turned out that the bank porter had solved an “across” clue on his crossword, but in doing so had unfortunately found that an interlinked “down” word was obviously incorrect, because it no longer fitted. Apparently the poor unfortunate man had gambled his luncheon sandwich (corned beef and cheese on dry white toast) on being able to solve the crossword, and the bank manager had now won it off him.

Corned beef is completely unsuitable for toast. You have to put it in a soft bap or a crusty french roll. Nothing else. People really need to be taught sandwich making in schools, maybe as part of a home economics class. We can’t have, in a civilised society, people assembling their sandwiches incorrectly.

Anyway, I’m fine with corned beef if it’s in the right context, but one thing I won’t tolerate at all is an uncarpeted basement stairs. These, as far as I’m concerned, are highly dangerous and should be banned and replaced with ladders. When you climb down a ladder there are no complicated steps in your way, just a few simple narrow rungs. So there is very little chance of you getting confused and forgetting where your feet go or losing sight of the handrail. And If the ladder falls over while you’re on it, you still reach your desired destination. Unless of course you’re on your way upstairs.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand this. I’ve just added a “two cats walk into a bar” story to the end of today’s Belch, which will explain my point in an easy to understand analogy about a cat walking down a stairs to a basement. But that’s all to come later.

As you may have noticed, most of today’s Belch is filler. I’m kind of short of material at the moment, but I’m determined nonetheless to fill up the height of a medium laptop screen and just beyond, as I usually do.

I like to give value for money. After all, you’ve paid a lot for your computer. But rest assured I’ve invested the proceeds wisely. Yesterday I bought a left handed artificial right hand. Those of us who are left handed have to keep up with the latest trends, and right hands that work in a left handed fashion are going to be the “in” thing this Autumn, I’m sure of it.

How are we doing for space? Another paragraph, I think. Two cats walk into a bar.

One of them immediately runs behind the bar counter, because he works there and he doesn’t want to keep the other cat waiting and damage his business After all, it’s taken him years to build up a reputation, and there’s no point throwing it all away just so he can continue talking to the other cat about Itchy and Scratchy.

The other cat asks him for a Guinness. The bar cat says the Guinness keg is empty and it might take a few minutes, to which the other cat replies that that’s fine, he’s not in a hurry anywhere and he’ll wait.

The bar cat then quietly curses under his breath because he doesn’t want to have to go all the way down to the basement, especially since the ladder has been replaced with a carpeted stairs, and he hates those. He finds them so confusing, with their vertical bits and horizontal bits. He never knows which to use. He wants to travel down in a gentle slope, not horizontally or vertically.

Besides, it’s dark down there, and he’s a black cat so nobody will see him if he crosses their path, which means a tonne of precious good luck will go to waste.

Okay, I think thats it.