Neal’s Belch no. 164 for 5th Oct, 2004

Several years ago I was walking along my local river bank, checking out the security system and making draft plans for an upcoming bank robbery that I might be involved in, when I noticed a funny thing.

A clown was sitting on a large rock just under the bridge, throwing custard pies at his imaginary friend and sounding the horn on his battered old car. Now, you may think that’s a little corny, and I’m inclined to agree, but I burst out laughing nevertheless.

And as a result I was arrested for scaring a small child who was passing at the time. While I was languishing in the police cell an inmate taught me how to pick locks with my toenails, so obviously I decided I was never going to cut them again.

Soon after, I rented a stall for the weekend at my local outdoor market and offered all of my toenail scissors for sale to the general public. I had intended to use the proceeds to pay back a friend who had put up the bail money, but unfortunately I didn’t manage to make a profit. This was mainly due to the exhorbitant and prohibitive cost of primetime television advertising slots here in Ireland.

Not being one to give up, I invested my hundred Euro losses in a consolidation loan. Unfortunately I inadvertently used the same bank that I had been seen acting suspiciously in a few days before, and I somehow ended up in jail again.

This time I decided that if any other inmate offered to teach me a usefull skill, I would immediately jam both of my forefingers in my ears and sing the loud rock part of “Bohemian Rhapsody” at the top of my voice to avoid acquiring any information that could get me into further trouble. Unfortunately this tactic caused me not to hear the screws banging on the door with my meals, and as a result I ended up in hospital being treated for malnutrition.

The hospital staff were lovely, I must say, and I felt very well looked after.

They even cut my toenails and offered to direct me to a store where I could replenage my supply of toe nail clippers and get back to where I was before I made my foolish mistakes. Sadly they didn’t tell me that I would have to pay for these instruments.

So I ended up back in jail for shoplifting. While I was languishing in the police cell an inmate taught me how to pick locks with my toenails, so obviously I decided I was never going to cut them again.

For that reason, I rented a stall for the weekend at my local outdoor market and offered all of my toenail scissors for sale to the general public. I had intended to use the proceeds to pay back a friend who had put up the bail money, but unfortunately I didn’t manage to make a profit.

This was mainly due to the exhorbitant and prohibitive cost of primetime television advertising slots here in Ireland.However, I had such a headache from the stress of going bankrupt that I went to the doctor.

It was nothing serious, I’m glad to say.

But he did say that I had a tendency to get my stories confused and sometimes even repeat things as if they had happened more than once in my life. Apparently it’s a bit like “deja-vu”, except that you don’t know it’s happening until a doctor points it out to you.

Anyway the following day, I went to the doctor, because I had a headache from the enormous stress of having gone out of business. Luckily, it was nothing serious. And he just gave me some pills.

From 2004 or thereabouts

You could do a lot worse than to live your life by the dictum “Es orilles agoraphobia”, which, as you are no doubt aware, means “Drink water until the fishes no longer have a home”.

That said, many of us find sea water to be a little too fizzy for our. tastes. I, for example,  have gone to great lengths to ensure that our home’s water supply comes from an inland source. I decided to have the courage of my convictions, and one day  just rang up the water company and demanded that they connect me to a non salt reservoir.

To my surprise, it turned out that I was pushing on an open door.

Not only did they give in to me without an argument, but the telephone operator promised to disconnect me from all sea water sources at the push of a button, within the hour. I was most impressed.

I’m now seriously considering venturing into the utilities business on my own. My idea is to drill for home heating gas in one of the lakes around here, then become a supplier of water and gas through one single pipe, from the same source. The efficiency savings will be enormous, and not only that, the gas could be used to heat your bath water in the pipes before it even reaches your house.

The other alternative that I have in mind is to go into fish farming. I will specialise in oily fish, but unlike other manufacturers I will heat the oil in the factories, and sell hot cooked sardines in tins to those whose lives are too busy to go around heating fish.

After finishing their sardine meals, customers will then have the option of pouring the oil into their central heating system and, assuming they eat sardines eight times a day, they’ll be saving a fortune on household bills.

I’ve always been baffled at the way the sardine industry works.

They are so set in their ways, and seem determined to carry on their age old practice of picking tiny baby sardines that are so small, they have to put a dozen or more in each tin. Many of them don’t even have a business class section any more, so no matter how far your company’s travel budget is prepared to stretch, you have no choice but to be squashed in with your ten or twelve siblings as you make your way home, without so much as an in-flight movie to keep you entertained.

Smoked Salmon manufacturers, on the other hand, wait until the fishes have grown nice and big and tall, then put them on a diet so that each salmon is tall and wide but very flat, and can be squeezed into an easy-to-transport flat vacuum pack, and brought by rail or road to it’s destination.

In my youth I spent a Summer working as a packer of artificial Christmas trees in a local factory, and if I took anything away from that job, it my ever present awareness of the irony of turning real trees into cardboard boxes, then putting fake trees into the boxes. It really does make you think. It also makes your arms very tired, so I left after a few weeks.

Nowadays of course kids refuse point blank to eat pork,  dolphins or sharks for dinner, thanks to movies like “Babe”, “A Shark’s Tale” and “Free Willy”,

Parents are so desperate to get their offspring to consume something healthy, that they have taken to disguising sardines as Gingerbread Men, just like the one in the fairy story. Let’s hope to hell Disney don’t try to turn that into a cute little movie.

Walt, ironically, had his entire body cryogenically frozen on death, because of his obsessive fear that his corpse might, against his wishes, be fed to pigs after his demise. Pigs of course are renowned for their inability to eat frozen food, and the late animation creator remains intact to this day.

Neal’s Belch no. 162 for 25th Sep, 2004

Yesterday I was walking along, looking up at the clouds as I always do, when I noticed that one of them was leaking.

White fluffy stuff was falling from it and drifting all over the sky, and kids were excitedly trying to catch it and make it into pillow case stuffing, a product for which there is a huge black market in Ireland.

Anyway, the fire brigade turned up of course, and sorted everything out.  But while they were there, I noticed that the hose that they used to spray the cloud and make it float away to another fire brigade’s jurisdiction so that it became somebody else’s problem, was made of rubber.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but rubber is highly toxic and flammable isn’t it? That’s just stupid. What they need to do there, if you ask me, is put a load of holes in the hose, then dip it into a lake so that the lake water will get into the hose and put out the fire that will undoubtedly have been raging inside the hose from the moment it was manufactured.

I’m glad I put my mind to that particular problem. I love coming up with solutions to things. Yesterday a dog with three legs was trying to climb up a tree in my immediate locality, and was clearly having great difficulty doing it. This despite the best efforts of the marvellous people who work in the field of veterinary research. I’m afraid the bandage just wasn’t enough. So I helped the poor little doggy out by chopping down the tree so that it lay horizontal on the ground and he could explore it to his heart’s content.

Anyway back to the clouds.

One of them happened to be shaped like a big gorilla, a phenomenon which scares quite a lot of people, but not me becase I am a gorilla. I took it as an enormous compliment to my species that a few million water droplets chose to unite in a tribute to my kind, before dispersing like a group of ballet dancers readying themselves for the next act. I’ve always been a great admirer of the ballet. Although I must say I find the swans in the  lake at my  local park to be far below the standards set by the genre.

The ducks, on the other hand, are excellent. But that’s probably because they get plenty of incentives from the breadcrumbs that get thrown at them as rewards.

Nobody ever throws bread crumbs at swans because they’re afraid they will choke or something. Swans are just too delicate, I find. I’ve broken several of them through normal day to day use.

Human ballet dancers, on the other hand, take enormous offence if you offer breadcrumbs to them. People really are ungrateful assholes sometimes. Maybe it’s just me, what with being a gorilla and all that, but I have never had a “thank  you” or even a polite smile or a bow from a ballet dancer after I gave them breadcrumbs. Maybe it’s because they’re stale or something, I dunno. Although if that’s the case they could easily cover it up with some moisturising cream.

I’ve never understood why moisturising cream cannot be shipped out to drought-ridden countries to make them wet. Instead, this marvellous creation gets wasted on women’s faces, where it’s not needed.

What is this obsession people have with remaining moist at all times?

In my day, you used to just drink some tap water when your body told you that you needed to. And before you ask, yes I have tried it before passing judgement. And in my humble opinion, moisturising cream tastes like crap. Furthermore, it doesn’t go down well. I had to eat a couple of bags of salted potato crisps just to work up a sufficient thirst to interest me in drinking the stuff.

Personally I prefer a nice glass of home made water. I have a special measuring jug which helps to measure out the hydrogen and oxygen in that vital 2:1 ratio, and it always turns out fine. I drain off some hydrogen from a passing Michelin blimp, and I get the oxygen from my cat, so at last both of those items are making themselves useful to the word.

Insert witty and /or clever closing line here.