Month: March 2005

From Spring 2005, a “MatchstickCats.com Editorial”

Many years have passed since Ronald Reagan stood on the steps of the library in Dallas, Texas , U.S.A, North America and said “Godammit how the hell could he have done it from that angle?”. And still the mystery of JFK’s death goes ignored and it is assumed by all who get listened to, that whathisname who later got shot did it.

Now, I don’t really care about any of that, but it strikes me that public libraries are far from the wonderful places thaT they could be.

In my youth, a library was a place to which you rode your pedal cycle on a Saturday morning, books strapped carefully to your back carrier, and spent hours and hours joyfully browsing the magical scripts within. Nowadays, they are full of computers and videos and lavatories and smartcards and all sorts of modern and hideous apparatus.

If you tried to shoot somebody from a library nowadays, you would no doubt get caught on web cam by some geek who is busy talking online with a friend at the other side of the world who has the same interests. A love of cheese, perhaps. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m sure President Kennedy might have been with us to this very day, had his alleged assassin been instilled by his parents with a healthy interest in dairy by-products of one kind or another, rather than an uncontrollable tendency to get caught up in alleged conspiracies and / or assassinations and things.

But the point is, it is assumed that something old cannot be made interesting unless it is replaced with something new.

It has never occurred to anyone that instead of replacing the book with something modern and fancy like an electro-book that they put on their i-pod, or whatever the hell they do nowadays, you could instead write a more contemporary book that is relevant to the people who you hope will read it.

“The Cat in the Hat”, for example, should be rewritten in the light of the changes to pet owning fashions that happened after the release of the movie Babe, and should feature a pig in a baseball hat, wearing sports garments and footwear that were made in some far flung hellhole by factory workers who are approximately the same age as the reader.

Or it could at least feature a more modern hat.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, I could open up another window here and look at porn sites for a while, and if someone comes into the room I just flick back to that nerdy site with all the articles, and they’re none the wiser.

And you’d be largely right about that. But the point is, any cat that is presented to our young people as a piece that aspires to become popular culture, must be adapted to the fashions of the time. Otherwise the youth of today will just cower in fear behind their hideous home entertainment apparatus and perspiration-soaked running shoes made, rather ironically if you ask me, in sweat shop factories. Just like the one in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, although that was set in the United States , where it’s called candy instead of sweets for some reason. (2024 note: It was not set in the United States, you idiot)

And there were no cats in either the book or the original film adaptation, “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” starring Gene Wilder and that kid who grew up to be, rather ironically I thought given the involvement of teeth-rotting sweets, a dentist. I’m afraid I have not seen the new version, as it has only just been released here, so I cannot vouch for it’s cat contents, or lack thereof. Furthermore, I hear that a newly-found extra chapter of the book has just been published to raise money for charity, and based on my limited information I must assume, until I know better, that there is a fifty: fifty chance of there being a cat in it.

Furthermore, it was with amazement in their eyes that my audience in a local pub a couple of weeks ago heard me reply that I have never seen the movie “Pretty Woman”. I added, although not with any particular relevance to the conversation, that I have also never seen “Bambi”. I will of course keep my eyes peeled in case he turns up though. I’m sure his mom misses him.

From 2005 or thereabouts, probably.

I’ve always been a great believer in the dictum “Esq quilillias acrobat agraphobius”, which of course means “There isn’t enough room in here to swing a cat, and if there was, I would not do so anyway, as I feel it would compromise my position as chairperson of the National Campaign against Catswinging.

Unless of course the room was in another nation. In which case, let’s party. I’ve got some Rice Krispie buns and a bottle of fizzy orange in the fridge”

And this brings me to my point. The number of chemicals that are put into oranges and other fruit these days to make them fizzy is an absolute disgrace.

For one thing, it is thirteen, which everybody knows is an unlucky number and should never be used under any circumstance. For another, it is not divisible by any other number that I know of, unless you’re prepared to lower yourself to the standards of those who would fractionise. I will assume that you are not. Therefore the number thirteen cannot be manipulated mathematically in any way should the need arrive, and if it does, a new number will have to be purchased at great expense.

But apart from that, all over the world monkeys are becoming seriously ill after eating these so-called fizzy oranges, soft-drink-ready lemons and carbonated bananas. And I for one say that it has to stop. Not least because it doesn’t happen, and the phenomenon is nothing more than a weird thought going round in my head like a moth going around dangerously close toyour open mouth at night.

As it happens, I always keep my bedroom brightly lit at night, to keep the bogeyman out. The bogeyman has very sensitive eyes, and cannot stand bright lights, so as a sign of goodwill I leave a jar of soothing eye cream for him at the exit.

I have never hard of eye-cream, and suspect that there may be no such thing, yet somehow I feel it is perfectly legitimate to make references to it in this piece of online journalism. Perhaps it is because I’m hungry, and would quite like some eye cream at the moment. I’m not sure.

I seem to remember the old silent movies had a lot of custard pies, which, strangely enough, were white not yellow, and people used to throw them at each other and it would land all over their faces, including their eyes. Perhaps this is what I mean by eye cream. I don’t know.

Or perhaps it is a simple and rather stupid misspelling of “I Cream”, a little used abbreviation of ice cream. Or perhaps my inner voice is trying to tell me something: “I scream”. A cry of hidden torment and discontentment.

Whatever the answer, I don’t really care.

Neal’s Belch no. 194 for 6th Mar, 2005

The thing that strikes me most about modern television is it’s tendency to scratch easily if you attempt to clean the screen with an abrasive material.

That said, I’ve always held great admiration for those who work in the broadcast industry, particularly camera operators and the guy who created the muppets. I also like the news and The Fall Guy, although that’s not on anymore. It was axed after the guy who plays the fall guy realised that he was getting paid only ordinary acting rates, despite the fact that he was playing the roll of a stunt man.

Although he performed dangerous feats in almost every episode, the production company argued that because he was only pretending to be a stunt man, he was not entitled to the going rate for stunt performers.

Not to make a big deal of it, but I’ve never understood why he was called the “fall” guy, when his job was, by definition, specifically not to fall. Unless it was something to do with the American word for Autumn, which of course would make a little more sense as the ground is much more slippy and hazardous when it is covered in wet leaves.

Autumn is pretty much prime season for Fall guys. That’s how you differentiate between a stuntman and a ten year old child. Unlike fall guys, ten year old children tend to fall a lot and get scrapes and bruises in the height of Summer, when they are not at school and therefore out and about more. I spent much of the summer of the tenth year of my life getting treated for ninety degree burns and missing limbs.

Of course, we all grow out of that eventually, and grow up to be bank managers and road sweepers and prime ministers and church ministers and schoolteachers and assistant state pathologists and bookbinders and writers and philosophers and television camera operators and vets and veterinary veterans and army vets who look after army dogs and ships’ cats, and army vets who used to be soldiers but are not retired, which can be very confusing, especially if you add to the confusion by mentioning an army veterinary officer who specialises in treating animals who used to be in the army, in other words he is a vet’s vet.

When he retires from that he’ll be a vet vet’s vet, which if you abbreviate it to VVV, looks like one and a half “w”s, unless you have good eyesight or use a clear font, and are therefore able to see that it is in fact three “v”s.

But I digress.

I’ve never been a huge fan of scratching televisions. For one thing, that sort of thing has pretty much been conquered by the domestic cat, and they’ve got the whole market covered. Wherever there is a television screen waiting to be scratched, you can be damn sure there is a cat, or one of their agents, on their way to the scene to see what can be done. This of course leaves us in a monopolistic situation, where one species has virtually one hundred percent of the industry. But what are you going to do?

I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.

You’re going to sit down in front of the television for an hour to watch The Simpsons, but just as you’re getting into it your telephone will ring, and although it’s only a five minute conversation you’ll forget what you were doing before they called, and you’ll go lie on the bed and read a pseudo-intellectual book about the fast food industry or globalisation or some such issue. Then before you know it, it’ll be bedtime. But you won’t go to bed. Instead you’ll stay up late watching some crappy DVD, and you’ll be exhausted in the morning.

The reason for this is that you are an idiot. But you probably disagree, and you are perfectly entitled to, but that doesn’t change anything, other than the length of this paragraph which I am typing as mere filler. One more sentence, and that will be enough.