Neal’s Belch no. 195 for 12th Mar, 2005
I’ve always held a strong objection to the amount of wastage involved in the spelling of the word “queue” That said, it is, I must admit, rather attractive when seen in it’s written form, and I have spent many a rainy day writing it down for future generations to enjoy millennia from now, long after those of us who are intelligent enough to recognise it’s subtle beauties, have perished, and the entity that you have come to know as “Neal’s Belch”, is long forgotten.
Another word of which I am undeniably fond is paraquat.
I am unsure as to it’s meaning but I am led to understand that it’s use is of a horticultural nature. This is unfortunate, since horticultural is an ugly and unpleasant word. Ironically, it also reminds me of pigs, which are non-horticultural. Not that I have anything against pigs, you understand.
It’s just that they are disgusting, vile creatures who bathe in their own vomit and kill small children. Where I come from, that sort of thing is frowned upon. Nevertheless, I am prepared to tolerate the presence of pigs within our society, provided that they are pigs in the privacy of their own homes and don’t harm anyone else with their foul and unnatural deviation from the norm. For example, they must ensure that their use of towels in public lavatories does not result in a risk to public health.
I’ve always had a greater than average amount of trouble with drying my hands in public lavatories. Perhaps it is something to do with my waste obsession. I never like to hit the button on the hand dryer a second time if I’m not completely dry yet, as I end up using only half of the second cycle, then walking away, leaving at least three cubic milicentres of hot hair air to blow into the Ethernet, never to be used by anyone except perhaps a passing firefly who needs a top-up.
I have the same problem with towels.
I’m only going to use about two feet of the cloth, and leave the rest of the roll (around fifty feet) untouched, so there seems little point in causing a whole role to be sent to the laundry just so that I can selfishly dry my hands and go away looking all content, like a cheese obsessive who’s just won a trip to the moon and who is under the misapprehension that it is made of cheese, and is also under the mistaken belief than he can eat the ground beneath his feet, under zero gravity, zero atmosphere conditions, without any serious consequences for his safety and well being.
That said, I’ve always wanted to live in zero gravity conditions. What with ground rents being so high here in Ireland , and the sheer amount of empty space that seems to be available above us, it makes sense from a purely logical point of view.
Also it looked cool in that dream I had last night. Which reminds me, I wrote a poem. Some time ago. I can’t remember what it was about or anything but it was an enriching experience and I would highly recommend it to those of you who are as talented as me. Those of you who are not, should consider a career in carpentry.
With a bit of luck and God on your side, you’ll turn out to be the second coming of Christ, which hopefully is not quite as vulgar as the phrase appears to suggest. Of course, there was no censorship in the days when the Bible was written, so you could get away with that sort of stuff, so long as you wrote it carefully and neatly on expensive parchment in fancy writing, such as Times Roman Numeral. After all, appearance is everything when most of the world have not yet learned to read.
Personally, although I consider myself a practicing Christian, I have never been a great believer in the whole Christ / going to church / believing in god / loving thy neighbour / being good / not killing people / trying to leave this world a better place than it was when you came into it, thing.
It just all seems a little far fetched for me, and I find that the only things I need to live my life are Santa Claus and the Internet, that wonderful technology which for the last seventeen months has allowed me to bring my thoughts to, at it’s peak, an audience of five people per week.
Internet, of course, is short for International Network, a phrase meaning an interconnected system of nets which can catch radio waves and convert them into web pages, just like this one, visible to the naked eye, if not those which are partially dressed. I still remember with fondness my first night at Web Design class, where I was introduced to the wonders of HTML coding and how to deal with stalkers who would stop at nothing to get into your computer and draw a silly moustache on your photo on the Writers’ page. Thankfully, none of this happened to me, and besides I’ve seen several episodes of Matlock, and therefore have an intimate knowledge of the legal framework involved.
Anyway, two cats walk into a bar.
One of the cats is Jewish, but to avoid stereotyping he portrays an atheist cat. The other (female) cat is Woody Allen in drag, and not two minutes into the scene he realises that it is extremely difficult to balance one’s glasses on a cat’s nose. He fears that he will look like one of those scary middle aged men who always come into your workplace as customers, with their glasses slid right down to the bottom of their noses, so that they can peer at you over the frames in an intimidating authoritative fashion.
So he decides to hand the role over to Leonardo DeCaprio. This despite his being thirty years younger than the cat who he is supposed to play.
In the midst of all of this hullabaloo, it never occurs to anyone to point out that the other cat is a Siamese, and could play both characters if anyone thought to ask one or both of his heads.
And therein, as always, lies a lesson.
Anyway, another two cats walk into another bar. Why the hell not. One of the cats is actually a pig dressed as a cat, and the other is a cat dressed as a pig dressed as a cat. This leads to terrible confusion for the bartender, who is prejudiced against pigs. In the ends, both cats are asked to remove their clothing. They both do so, for the hell of it, and the first cat’s true identity as a pig is revealed.
However the second cat, who you’ll remember is a cat dressed as a pig dressed as a cat, just removes his outer cat disguise, revealing his fake pig identity.
of the cats get removed from the bar, and the police are called. Just as they arrive, the second cats shouts “Who the hell called the pigs?”, and it becomes obvious that he is really a cat dressed as a pig (and previously a cat dressed as a pig dressed as a cat). Luckily, the cops turn out to be cats dresses up as policemen / pigs, and they all have a good laugh about it in the end, with the exception of the bartender who is prosecuted under section seven, subsection two of the Discrimination Act,1955.
And quite rightly too. There’s far too much of that sort of thing going on, if you ask me.
Archival Note: This was the final Neal’s Belch. Shortly after a completely different and unrelated series began, called Neal’s Issues, as well as another callecd MatchstickCats.com Editorials.