The Clerical Error

Neal’s Belch 184 for 22nd Dec 2004

I’ve always found the misuse of language irritating. Just yesterday I saw a Spanish dictionary being used to prop up a leg of a table that was a bit wobbly. Worse still is the use of the symbol @ instead of the word “at”. Everybody knows that @ must only be used for two things; e-mail addresses and price labels on items of fresh produce that are sold by weight.

Pricing items according to how much they weigh is ridiculous. Just because something weighs two pounds, that doesn’t mean that two pounds is an appropriate resale value. Not least because we no longer use the pound here in Ireland. We prefer to use shiny chocolate buttons instead. I’ve always been a great admirer of people who indulge in the chocolate button. It displays a great self-control, to be able to wear that much confectionery on one’s clothes without getting stains all over the place. Not only that, I’m amazed they don’t just eat them when they get hungry.

It can be very difficult, even for the best of us, not to succumb to temptation. The late Mother Teresa said it best, when she said (at an awards ceremony) “The reason why I don’t have very many possessions, is because I ate most of them. By the way, thanks for this engraved thing. Is it edible? It sort looks like it might hurt my teeth”

Dental problems of course, have always been a great problem in the third world. When you get hungry, you’re bound to eat all of the toothpaste. Who wouldn’t? Several years ago I came up with a practical solution to this, which involved making the toothpaste taste less nice.

Sadly, few if any of the manufacturers took it up, and as a result I have had to sell my house to pay back the mortgage that I took out on foot of my expected earnings from the patent.

In the end it was okay though.

There was a clerical error at the bank and they accidentally gave me a new mortgage on the bank building itself. The lobby can be a little cold and uninviting but there’s a porter who opens the door for me and knows me by name, although he tends to get a little less friendly around four pm when he’s trying to empty out the bank so his friends can rob the place.

I’ve always been deeply suspicious of bank porters. They seem to spend half the day smiling maniacally at people, and the other half of the day locking things. If they wanted to do that all day they would have been beter advised to take a job as a canal lock operator. Assuming, that is, that somebody was prepared to offer such a position. What with automated canal staff and ship’s cats nowadays, there are fewer and fewer jobs available in the water industry.

I myself was once part of that industry, when I worked at a bottled water manufacturing plant, and my job was to go out onto the lake and gather up the water in the plastic bottles, ready to be sent to the shops. There were strict quality control measures in place, and I was required to throw back any water that looked dirty or had amoebas swimming around in it.

People are so prejudiced againts ameobas, and with no cause. They are the most modest, simple life form in the universe, apart from their arrogant insistance on having millions of square miles of raging sea to live in, when they’ll never be able to do anyway except float about in it

But that was a great time in my life, bottling fresh water to be shipped to the thirsty in Mother Teresa’s hospital in Calcutta. I felt like I was contributing something important to society, thereby serving out my one hundred hours of community service for robbing the bank that I live in.