Category: Writings

Neal’s Belch no. 135 for 4th Jun, 2004

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about this whole business of the moon’s gravity causing the tides in the sea on earth.

Yesterday I was looking out of the window of my basement flat and I noticed that the moon was lying directly over the sea, and in fact I could see it’s reflection on the water.

Now, as you know, the moon is made of cheese. And it was a very hot night, so obviously the cheese was melting and some of it was dropping into the water, and being lapped up by the fishes and the seagulls. Fishes love cheese.

Seagulls aren’t particularly partial to it. They can take it or leave it. They much prefer marmalade, but since Haley’s Comet only comes round every seventy years or so, they can only dream.

But what would happen if the moon melts so much that it becomes unstable and falls into the sea? Then the sea would go all yellow and gooey, and the poor little fishes would get stuck and have to hitch a ride on the back of a passing Seahorse who can gallop across the cheese at it’s more solid parts. And that’s all fine of course. I mean, I’m not trying to find problems where there aren’t any.

But let’s suppose that tomorrow morning the man in the moon were to resign and take up a new, better paid position at the Sun? What then?

Well, what we’ve got there is boiling water orange juice. And that, as we all know, is a recipe for orangeade. Again, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s only going to be a problem if somebody suddenly takes the top off the bottle and it sprays all over the place. And nobody’s going to be stupid enough to do that.

Let me take this scenario forward a few more steps.

Supposing the fishes start to become addicted to cheese and / or orangeade. And let’s suppose that the seagulls start a black market in orangeade. Now, we all know the dangers of purchasing drugs that have not been sanctioned by a resposible authority, such as a state government or a psychiatry student. The product is likely to be impure or contaminated.

In this case the most likely problem is that the sea orangeade barons will have cut corners by not removing the salt water from the beverage. Which means all of the fishes are just going to become thirstier and thirstier and thirstier and thirstier until they drink the whole sea. And that will be the end of that.

And it’s all because of greed.

People really need to decide what is important in life. Do we want to continue to have a large expanse of water covering most of the earth, or do we all want to become gazillionaires by disguising ourselves as seagulls and selling orangeade cheese on the black market?

Well, I think we can have both.

I say we put the cheese in the atlantic, the orange in the Irish sea, and leave the rest as it is. It’s called compromise, and with a bit of effort and common sense on the part of all of us, we can make this world a better place in which to live.

For a transcript of today’s essay, scroll up and read it again, but this time while humming the theme tune from “The Brady Bunch”. But don’t sing it, hum it. Leave the singing to the people who know what they want to say and know how to put it into song. And don’t come telling me you’ve written your own words and they feel special to you so you want to perform your own version, as practice for your forthcoming series of concerts entitled “Situation Comedy Theme Tunes from the Twentieth Century”.

Because that’s been done before, and it didn’t work. Somebody forgot to tune in the third viola, and half way through “Who’s the Boss”, disaster struck.

But let’s not open up old wounds.

No. Let’s just quietly go home, and think about what we’ve learned here this week. If you’ve missed anything, scroll down now to read Wednesday’s and Monday’s Belches. No point letting them go to waste just because you’ve been too drunk to visit my site all week.

Neal’s Belch no. 133 for 31st May, 2004

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be an elephant. And those of you who are regular readers will know that I am not the type to sit and wonder – instead I go out and do things.

So yesterday I took a little trip to Foto Wildlife Park, in the west of Ireland.

Unfortunately it’s two hundred miles away and I can’t drive, so by the time I got there the place was closed. So instead I walked to the nearest residential area and knocked on every third door until an elephant answered.

And boy was I surprised.

I had always thought that elephants were huge, grey monsters with a trunk and large ears and tusks and legs and things, but apparently not. The elephant who answered the door looked more like a cat than anything else. Not that I’ve ever seen a cat, but I’ve heard about them on tv and and I’ve seen the reconstructions that they make using computer generated models, so I feel that I would recognise a cat if I saw one.

But that’s not the point.

You see, today my bank statement arrived, and the third item from the bottom was a charge on my debit card for a packet of wine gums. So obviously I suspected the elephant. I mean, who wouldn’t?

I don’t mean to generalise, but elephants are thieving bamtards. Everyone knows that. So I went round to the elephant’s house and switched off his television, but I didn’t switch it off at the main power button. Instead I put it into standby, which uses up a small amount of electricity and therefore will result in a small but definite charge on his electricity bill. That’ll teach him.

I don’t like to go over the top when I’m plotting revenge.

Instead I prefer to be subtle, and cause a small amount of pain in a devastingly ineffective way. That way, I have all the satistaction of a Kill Bill style massacre, without any of the disadvantages of the subsequent police investigation, the lengthy court case, and the death sentence commuted to life after I plead insanity.

And, frankly I would also be a little disappointed at how easily the court believed me when they said I was mad.

That’s not to say that I’m not mad. And I don’t mind being mad, if I am. That’s not a problem at all. Where I live, you can get a free television license and monthly butter vouchers if you’re mad, because the government cares deeply about people with disabilities or illnesses. So it would all be fine.

But that’s not the point.

You see, I went to the doctor yesterday to ask for a few empty sugar pills to help cure my insomnia. However I forget to tell the doctor that I didn’t want to know that the pills were empty. The placebo effect doesn’t work if the patient knows that they are placebos. And it sprang to mind that I could have just gotten an elephant to sit on my head until I got bored with not being able to move, and fell asleep. That would have saved me forty euro in doctor’s fees.

So you can see how I am a little bitter about elephants at the moment, can’t you.