Neal’s Belch no. 161 for 13th Sep, 2004

Yesterday I was queueing up at my local bank, hoping to get my hands on some leaflets and lodgement forms because I collect them as a hobby, when all of a sudden there was a loud scream of “Help. Help. My Sandwich”.

Needless to say I pushed the onlookers out of the way and made my way to the centre of the crowd, letting everybody know that I was available to assist.

It turned out that the bank porter had solved an “across” clue on his crossword, but in doing so had unfortunately found that an interlinked “down” word was obviously incorrect, because it no longer fitted. Apparently the poor unfortunate man had gambled his luncheon sandwich (corned beef and cheese on dry white toast) on being able to solve the crossword, and the bank manager had now won it off him.

Corned beef is completely unsuitable for toast. You have to put it in a soft bap or a crusty french roll. Nothing else. People really need to be taught sandwich making in schools, maybe as part of a home economics class. We can’t have, in a civilised society, people assembling their sandwiches incorrectly.

Anyway, I’m fine with corned beef if it’s in the right context, but one thing I won’t tolerate at all is an uncarpeted basement stairs. These, as far as I’m concerned, are highly dangerous and should be banned and replaced with ladders. When you climb down a ladder there are no complicated steps in your way, just a few simple narrow rungs. So there is very little chance of you getting confused and forgetting where your feet go or losing sight of the handrail. And If the ladder falls over while you’re on it, you still reach your desired destination. Unless of course you’re on your way upstairs.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand this. I’ve just added a “two cats walk into a bar” story to the end of today’s Belch, which will explain my point in an easy to understand analogy about a cat walking down a stairs to a basement. But that’s all to come later.

As you may have noticed, most of today’s Belch is filler. I’m kind of short of material at the moment, but I’m determined nonetheless to fill up the height of a medium laptop screen and just beyond, as I usually do.

I like to give value for money. After all, you’ve paid a lot for your computer. But rest assured I’ve invested the proceeds wisely. Yesterday I bought a left handed artificial right hand. Those of us who are left handed have to keep up with the latest trends, and right hands that work in a left handed fashion are going to be the “in” thing this Autumn, I’m sure of it.

How are we doing for space? Another paragraph, I think. Two cats walk into a bar.

One of them immediately runs behind the bar counter, because he works there and he doesn’t want to keep the other cat waiting and damage his business After all, it’s taken him years to build up a reputation, and there’s no point throwing it all away just so he can continue talking to the other cat about Itchy and Scratchy.

The other cat asks him for a Guinness. The bar cat says the Guinness keg is empty and it might take a few minutes, to which the other cat replies that that’s fine, he’s not in a hurry anywhere and he’ll wait.

The bar cat then quietly curses under his breath because he doesn’t want to have to go all the way down to the basement, especially since the ladder has been replaced with a carpeted stairs, and he hates those. He finds them so confusing, with their vertical bits and horizontal bits. He never knows which to use. He wants to travel down in a gentle slope, not horizontally or vertically.

Besides, it’s dark down there, and he’s a black cat so nobody will see him if he crosses their path, which means a tonne of precious good luck will go to waste.

Okay, I think thats it.

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)

Neal’s Belch no. 159 for 8th Sept, 2004

Many of you may be aware that I recently changed my favourite colour from red to orange, in order to realign my visual tastes with my food preferences so that my favourite colour is now the same as my favourite flavour.

And I know what you’re thinking. If I ate blood oranges, I could have remained loyal to the colour red while still enjoying orange coloured foodstuffs. The problem is, blood oranges taste like urine. And that happens to be one of my least favourite flavours. I avoid urine flavour ice creams and crisps like the plague.

Although come to think of it that doesn’t entirely make sense. I don’t avoid the plague. I don’t have to, because it has never threatened me or come after me as far as I know. Me and the plague have never crossed swords.

Not that I’m friends with the plague, it’s just that it’s been sensible enough not to start an argument with me, so I’ve had no reason to get upset. No matter how much I may dislike the plague, if I were to start a fight with it today I could quite rightly be described as agressive and a trouble-maker.

Anyway, now that I’ve nailed my colours to the mast as regards colours and flavours, I may as well go the whole hog and reveal my favourite breakfast cereal. It’s Frosties. Known in some countries as Frosted Flakes, but always featuring Tony the Tiger on the box.

Obviously the cat is part of the attraction. But I also love the idea that brave cereal manufacturers traipse out into the street at four o’clock every morning to gather frost and dew with which to coat my corn. It makes a welcome change from the usual mass manufacturing of cereals that goes on in most places. There just aren’t enough hand-made breakfast items in the world today.

Take for example toast.

Now, here in Ireland toast is delivered by the milkman at some ungodly hour, and if you get up too late it’s gone soggy. I’ve got round that problem by ordering dry toast, and adding the butter later when I’m ready to start eating it. But this is a busy world, and I’m only too well aware that many people do not have time to be spreading dairy items on their cooked bread first thing in the morning.

I suppose at this stage I should propose some kind of solution to this problem, but I’m not a paid journalist and I can’t see what’s in it for me.

And frankly, I don’t think this Belch is much good. I suppose I could delete it and start again but these essays are my babies and I’m never going to do that. Instead, I’ll just carry on and hope that my self-deprecating comment here has made the reader warm to me. Actually I’m quite warm myself at the moment. I bought an excellent new electric fire today The second that I touched the match to it the whole room felt like a furnace.

I love that word, “furnace” by the way.

It derives of course from two words, “fur” and “ace”, and first came into common parlance after Dick Whittington’s legendary cat won a game of strip poker and got to keep his fur, thanks to a hidden Ace of Clubs which his owner had very kindly hidden in his cat’s ass. I’m sorry to be vulgar, by the way. I don’t like to talk about putting things up cat’s asses, but no matter how much I thought about it I just couldn’t think of another place on a cat’s body where a playing card could be concealed.

Although I’ve just realised that Dick Whittington’s cat’s “ass” is probably a donkey, not a part of the cat’s anatomy. I hate the way some words have two meanings. It’s so confusing sometimes.

Maybe I should have written about a mixed breed cat who’s mother had mated with a kangaroo and who therefore had a pocket. But I don’t like to be too silly. You lose credibility if you go off on tangents like that, and you start to look less professional.

Then before you know it, you’re a circus clown.

And let me tell you, face paint is very difficult to remove. It gets stuck to fur and and you get fined for animal cruelty and people start to lower their opinion of you. Then you end up having blood oranges for breakfast because the citrus is good for disolving paint, and it’s way too late for that because I’ve already changed my favourite colour by deed-pole, and there’s no turning back.

The point is, when I arrived back into the cinema, I noticed a sign saying “Please do not enter through the emergency exits”. So I immediately went to look for the manager so that I could apologise for any trouble that I may have caused. The man didn’t seem too bothered, but I offered to help out on the popcorn stand for a couple of weeks to make up for it.

The next fortnight was one of the happiest times of my life. All day long I made popcorn and coated it with sugar or salt or artificial sweetener, and listened to the movie goers complaining quietly to each other about the quality of the snacks being sold by some Irish guy who apparently sells popcorn at a stand somewhere near or in the cinema.

I can’t seem to think of anywhere else to go with this story, so lets just say that at the end of the two weeks I went home and discovered that Goldilocks had stolen my corn flakes, and I can’t tell you the rest because it’s the subject of an upcoming court case.

I’ve never been to court myself. Well except that one time when I was a juror in the trial of O.J. Simpson, but apart from that, no.

I brought my teddy bear Bowsy with me and the guy who counts the jury members’ votes accidentally mistook Bowsy’s paw for a juror’s hand, when I lifted it up to wave at OJ. So that might have messed up the vote count a little.

But these things happen. I understand there was a similar incident in Florida a few years ago during a U.S. presidential election. Here in Ireland the last two presidential elections have been won by women, and only one out of the five candidates last time was male. And he didn’t even do well. There was a sixth candidate but he dropped out before polling day, after it was alleged that he was a bear.

The media destroyed him and called him a “damn picnic-basket stealing forest-dweller”, and despite there being very little solid evidence, he was left with no choice but to quit.

Sadly the presidency is not that big a job here. The head of goverment does all the important stuff and the head of state, the president, just does the washing up and stuff and signs bills. A bit like the Queen of England, but without the beheadings and castles and things. Ironically, the president does get to live right next door to Dublin Zoo, which has bears.

So anyway Goldilocks pretty much cleared out my kitchen. And poor Bowsy and Ullysses were left in tears with no porridge, but that’s mainly because they hadn’t bothered to make any. My bears prefer toast. And who wouldn’t? I think we need to do something about the stereotyping of bears as porridge eaters.

It really does nobody any good to make up lies like that just to satisfy our lust for simplicity and goodliness. I think we should counteract all this by starting a rumour that bears enjoy heroine and prostitutes. That’ll balance it all out.

At the very least they’ll be able to sue us and make enough money out of it to compensate for having their houses broken into by Godilocks. In the meantime, lets at least all try to keep an eye on anybody who’s name begins with “G”, and make sure they’re not stealing breakfasts from local forest animals who live in houses.

Anyway, where was I? Well, I was right here, lying on my bed typing. But in a moment I’ll be in the toilet, wishing I could have come up with something better for today. And urinating my life away.

Neal’s Belch no 157 for 3rd Sept, 2004

Two cats walk into a bar. One of them is under the illusion that he’s an ox, so he orders a pint of Oxbow, whatever that is.

As for the other cat, I’m surprised he even went into the bar at all in the first place. He’s one of those cats who has not developed any human-like characteristics, and normally just does ordinary cat things like climbing onto roofs and playing with dead mice. Still, it’s nice to have a surprise every now and then isn’t it.

As it happens, it turns out that the cat was short sighted, and thought it was a “car”, not a “bar”. Being an ordinary no frills cat, not one of those intelligent cats you see in cartoons who walk on two legs and watch the news, he does’t realise that cars generally don’t have a big sign outside them saying “car”

Anyway, he goes ahead up to the bar and after a few minutes he sees his mistake. So he decides to adapt to the situation and have a night out in a bar, instead of his planned evening of napping on a car seat.

Not being used to having a choice of beverage (usually he either gets given a bowl of milk or drinks some water from a sewer outlet), he takes a long, long time to decide what drink he wants.

And he enjoys every minute of it. He’s in cat heaven. Eventually he makes up his mind and orders a pint of semi-skimmed. whereupon the bartender advises him that it’s traditional to order a beer or a whiskey or something like that.

The cat points out that he’s not remotely interested in traditions, and that he is, after all, a mere cat, equipped not with a sophisticated set of tastes and a spoilt pallet, but instead just a few insticts inherited from the jungle and polluted by domestication.

The bartender listens politely and points out that the cat has a very good vocabulary for a “mere” cat. The cat politely thanks him, before bidding him good day and going to the dairy.

All of which brings me to what I wanted to talk to you about today. In my formative years, I lived in a rainforest here in Ireland, and never wanted for monkeys or monkey nuts. Monkey bolts were a problem, as it was illegal to remove trees from the rainforest and so we were not able to clear enough space for a steel mine, but we survived, and we’ve all grown up to be reasonably well adjusted individuals, if I say so myself.

Nowadays, as any environmentalist will tell you, the rainforests are disappearing at a tremendous rate. They’re still there of course, but it’s impossible to see them when your glasses have become steamed up from centuries and centuries of rain.

What we need to do is somehow cause a change to the climate so that this rain stops, and then everything will be okay. My suggestion would be that we all stand up for one minute, at exactly the same time, and lift up our right foot, the one with the scabs all over it, so that the fumes given off cause some sort of atmospheric event That will probably sort it out.

If it doesn’t, we’re going to have to get the hell off this planet.

That’s why I’m not wasting any time. I wasn’t going to tell you this but I have, in my back shed, a half finished ark which I intend to use when the bran cereal hits the ventilator. Hopefully it will be finished by then, but that doesn’t really matter because it’s not going to sink is it? I’ll be sailing through outer space, not a vast wet ocean full of water.

It’s much easier to swim in a vacuum than in water. I’ve seen it done on movies. Remember that man in “2001: A Space Odyssey”? The one who floated off into space, never to be seen again, and presumably dead within hours when his oxygen supply runs out? That’s what I plan to do.

I’ve always admired Noah. He knew what he was doing. He saved all the female animals, then made sure each of them had a male of the same species to keep them occupied so that they wouldn’t distract him while he was trying to steer the ark round the tops of the hills.

He also had very good hair. Long and white and flowing, with a matching beard, just like the fellow in the Harry Potter movies. Except of course without the glasses and much older.

It has, throughout my life, been a mystery to me why our short sighted pets are never given glasses when they are diagnosed as being short sighted, or when they are found to be long sighted and find it difficult to read small print. I suspect it’s a conspiracy to prevent other species from evolving and taking over from us humans as the dominant beings. That’s all very well but they forgot about the computers.

We’ve been warned over and over again by Arnold Schwarzenegger that computers are going to take over the world, but we continue to help them by feeding them information through our keyboards. I’m doing it right now, I admit. By typing these paragraphs I am telling my computer how much I know or don’t know or think I know about it’s plan to take over the world, arming it with information. Yet I continue to type. I really am quite a dinghbat.

Maybe I should try typing false information to confuse it. The moon is made out of a special low-carb cheese that is safe to eat in large quantities and definitely won’t jam your circuits, unless you have jam with it too. The current time is quarter to four in the morning. Judge Judy is our leader.

See what you can make of THAT, you electronic power hungry bamtards.

Neal’s Belch no. 156 for 30th Aug, 2004

Is Cloud 9 being downgraded?

I’ve always been impressed at the willingness of modern scientists to keep up with changing trends in fashion and adapt their research to whatever is the “in” thing at the moment.

A scientist friend of mine is studying the effects of mobile phone signals on the strength and thickness of clouds. He’s discovered that most of the “cloud 9s” have now been reduced to seven and a half or eight, although he admits that the system of measurement is rather arbitrary and involves placing a small dog on top of the cloud and timing how long it takes the dog to fall through the cloud. Obviously there is no way of ensuring that the dog’s weight is exactly the same each time the measurement is taken.

Sadly short sighted dog food industry is not prepared to invest in research to invent a dog food that adds a precise, predicable amount of weight per can, to the dog.

Instead they are wasting their money on genetic research, in an attempt to find a way to ethnically cleanse the one out of every ten cats, who apparently doesn’t show a preference for the Whiskas brand.

Anyway environmentalists have leapt on this latest nugget of information, and most are blaming a fast food chain, which I won’t name because it already has a perfectly good name of it’s own. The fast food chain recently started selling bottled water for the first time in this part of the world. It’s being alleged that the water being removed from the clouds is causing the reduction in strength, although the company has strenuously denied interfering with clouds in any way other than to use them as an inspiration for the foam on some of their rabied dog burgers which they sell in select markets.

Sadly, here in Ireland we have to make do with hamburgers and the occasional sausage. We’ve never had a taste for exotic foods here, although I myself have tried to change this by allowing myself to be seen in St. Stephen’s Green, in central Dublin, eating “Manhattan” chedder cheese flavour popcorn which I’ve sprinkled with a few cubes of chocolate. It tastes lovely and anyone who sees me would instantly develop a craving for that particular dish, but unfortunately they can’t see exactly what I’m eating because the photo on the front of the popcorn packet only shows the cheddar cheese flavoured popcorn, not the chocolate.

That’s because of course the chocolate has been added by me, not the manufacturer. So I’m looking into having some special packaging made so that people can see exactly what I’ve put on top of my popcorn. There may be some patenting issues but I’ll sort it out eventually. I’m determined about that.

You have to do whatever you can to change this world and leave it a little better than it was when you came into it.

At the moment I’m drinking a canned beverage that promotes itself as having zero calories and zero sugar. I think it’s marvellous that we are already nearly into the minus figures in sugar content. I suggest we take things a step further by removing all of the urine and wasp stings that are usually added to these soft drinks to pad them out. I’d be happy to tolerate a slight reduction in taste in the interests of looking after my health.

Health, after all, is everything. There’s no point being rich if your leg is going to fall off and you have to spend all of your money trying to get a better walking stick than whoever the next richest guy is, just to keep up apperances.

People really are so obsessed with fashion these days. And dogs. My dog wants two pairs of very expensive name-brand running shoes at the moment, and I’m damned if I’m going to buy them for him. If he wants shoes he can go and put each of his paws into some wet papier-mache, and mould it into the shape of a shoe. He can use old magazines containing adverts for running shoes if he wants, so that the logos appear on the shoes

But that’s the best I can do. I will not pay a running shoe company to adorn my dog with their logos, and turn him into a walking billboard.

Call me old fashioned.

Neal’s Belch 152 from August 2004

I always like to start the day with a breath of fresh air and a good long stretch of my arms and legs.

I usually use one of those old stretching racks that you find in torture chambers. They’re also excellent for putting your toast on, until it becomes dry and crispy. I love makign toast. I always start by making sure everybody’s standing up around the table and holding their glasses high in the air, so the short-sighted among them can’t see me so I won’t get all embarrassed.

Then I make a small speach. Usually I say something like “God bless all who sail in this group of people who have just buried their sadly missed great great grandfather and are about to embark on a round the world cruise with his money, not realising that it takes months if not years for the proceeds of a will to be distributed. Luckily they have an overdraft facility. Unluckily, they can’t afford it.” I adjust this to suit the occasion.of course.

Then I crack a little joke.

Something like, “Two cats walk into a bar. One of them orders a Guiness, the other is a traditionalist and has a saucer of milk”. I won’t bore you with the punchline, you’ve probably heard it already. That usually breaks the ice, which  has by now become fused together in one solid lump in it’s bag in the freezer, and badly needs to be broken.

My sibling is getting married soon but it’s in America and I’m not familiar with your traditions, so I’ll probably just say something about how lovely everybody is and thank the organisers for the nice tea and biscuits. And besides, I just added this paragraph in as an afterthought because today’s belch was looking a little shorter than usual. So this is just to stretch it out a bit and make it look like you’re getting value for money. Which of course you are, because you haven’t paid me one single penny for this. You cheap bamtard. Dammit now it’s starting to look too long. You’ll start expecting a long belch every time and complain about being short changed when it’s just average length. I am not a hairdresser, for chrissakes

By this time, everybody at the assembly is usually getting a little tired of the inane puns and attempts at cleverness, so I don my coat and go for a walk outside in the cool, late night breeze. I like to sit on a wall and gaze up  at the stars as they make their way into the MTV Awards in a hotel at the top of the hill. I once won an award for my ability to speak the Irish language, when I was eleven years old. I can’t tell you very much about it  because I would have to tell you in English, thereby detracting from the aim of that particular awards scheme. Which would be irresponsible and I wouldn’t do it.

I’ve never been an irresponsible person. I always put my used razor blades inside a bottle or carton before disposing of them. If it’s a glass bottle I make sure to smash it into tiny pieces so that the garbage removers don’t hurt themselves on a huge shard of glass. However I also try to ensure the pieces are just large enough so that they can’t accidentally, or on purpose, be eaten by a baby worm or octopus that might be hiding in the bin.

Adult worms or octupuses, however, will just have to take responsibility for their own diets.and try to avoid ingesting the pieces of glass. I can’t be responsible for the actions of grown adult octoposes.

I must say, though, I admire the ability of those creatures to walk around on eight legs while still maintaining an air of dignity. I have never ever witnessed an octopus looking shabbily dressed or hunched over and walking like a drunken sloth. Not that sloths can help it. I’m not having a go at sloths here, I’m just using them as an example. Get off my back, for chrissakes.

I’m not even wearing a saddle.