On Glass Ceilings and the Monkey Puzzle Blues

Neal’s Belch no. 160 for 10th Sept, 2004

The trend in the elephant world these days appears to be an upward one.

Every aspect of the species, from it’s cholestoral level to the height of the branches that it can reach with it’s long neck, is rising to unprecedented levels. And we all know what’s going to get the  blame, don’t we?

Greenhouse gases. Well let me tell you something. I have a greenhouse in my back yard and there are absolutely no elephants breaking through it’s glass ceiling whatsoever. Except the male ones of course. I’ve tried and  I’ve tried but no matter how many incentives I offer – flexitime, a twenty four hour creche in the garden shed  – I can’t get female elephants to work in my greenhouse.

But enough of my problems. Yesterday I was walking around Dublin Zoo, hoping to steal a banana off one of the monkeys so that I could send it to a monkey who I sponser in the third world, when I noticed that the cats in the zoo are substantially bigger and scarier than my own cats at home.

Obviously it has something to do with diet. So I investigated a little further and found out that wild cats like to eat wilderbeast and reindeer.

So obviously my next stop was Santa’s Grotto.

Sadly, he wasn’t home, and I didn’t want to go taking his reindeer to feed to my cat without asking his permission first. I’m a great believer in manners. You can’t just take sombody’s reindeer to feed to your cat, no matter how important you might think that cat to be, without first at least pretending to show some interest in their feelings on the matter.

I always say please and thank you no matter how ungrateful I am.

Last night I said thank you to my cat for bringing a dead bird into the house. He was very proud because he had shot it down with his new tranquiliser gun. In case you’re worried the bird was unharmed, just a little drowsy. Cats aren’t evil, you know,

They just have urges that have to be catered to and facilitated. I knew a cat once who liked to play Bugs Bunny and burrow under our garden. Unfortunately I had to put a stop to it when he set up an illegal unlicensed subway train service running through the burrows, but if it weren’t for that I would have happily continued to tolerate it.

I mean, who am I to interfere with the life of a cat, who’s happily minding his (or her) own business, just trying to make a living for himself? I think as long as they submit proper accounts under financial reporting legislation, and obey all the relevent rules and procedures, cats should be left to their own devices to carry on wtih whatever it is that they want to do.

I’m sorry to go on about this but sometimes when you feel strongly about something you have to climb up on your high horse, adjust the saddle, straighten the rear view mirror and drive off, headlights dipped in case you blind somebody who’s walking the other way because he fell off what he had thought was a high horse but turned out to be a small camel with a disfigurement that caused his back to be unusually straight, so he didn’t have a give away hump.

Which means of course that it’s perfectly understandable really that he could have been mistaken for a horse. Unless you take into account that they guy who chose him was supposedly a veterinary expert, whose PHD theses was “The.differences between high horses and small malformed camels”.

Anyway on a lighter note, I’ve been practicing writing blues lyrics recently, and I’m glad I did because I came up with some really cool stuff:.

I’ve got the cold piano fingers blues
I’ve got them bad
Been sitting here on this plastic fake leather stool

I’ve got the bananas won’t stay fresh blues
Been sitting here trying to assemble a sandwich with the aforementioned decomposing fruit disappearing before my very eyes
It almost makes me cry
But the moisture would rot the banana more
Wouldn’t it
Dammit

(guitar solo)

(guitar solo continues)

(guitar solo continues)

(short and rather inappropriate drum solo due to an excess of alcohol)

(fades)

(needle skips to track thirteen, “Monkey Puzzle Blues”)

I’ve been trying to assemble baby
This old monkey jigsaw thing
But the head don’t fit
Sorry I mean won’t fit
Mustn’t abandon my standards of grammar
Just cos I got the bad ol’ monkey puzzle blues

Been trying to get into the monopoly business lately
The ol’ get out of jail cards they do attract me
But I gotta finish this damn monkey puzzle first
I hate unfinished business
Like that time when I borrowed some fish off one of good ol’ Jesus’ disciples and forgot to give it back
So he didn’t have enough for the people he was preaching to
Luckily he was able to do some magic
Hence the parable of the loaves and fishes
Anyway this puzzle is pissing me off

(record needle inexplicably skips back to original song)

I’ve got the can’t think of anything to write for a belch at the moment blues
Been sitting here trying to come up with some drivel to write which is why I’ve resorted to this stuff for the second time
Although the first time it was in a newsletter not a belch
Admittedly
Oh woe is me
Although one of my readers was so impressed at the newsletter that he thought they were real Muddy Waters lyrics
Which must mean I’m a genius
So it’s not so bad
I don’t have the blues no more

Dammit the blues were going to be my livelihood man now I’ll have to take up yodelling

Hang on a minute though that makes me blue
So that’s okay after all
Or is it?
Dammit I just don’t know any more
Oh-ohhhhhhhhhhh-Oh yeah

(song abruptly ends as if singer has just realised there’s nobody reading. I mean listening. Nobody listening)