Neal’s Belch no. 149 for 6th Aug, 2004

Having recently moved house again, this time right into the centre of the sprawling metropolis of Dublin, Ireland, I’ve been spending a lot of time optimising the arrangement of my cups, plates and saucepans in the cupboards. In the end I went for a big-stuff-at-the-back configuration. I really am a stickler for tradition.

My new home is very close to a McDonald’s, just like the old one. Which is always reassuring in a world gone mad. I can’t tell you the number of times I have woken up at two o’clock in the morning from a nightmare, only to calm down and relax when I remember that there’s a fast food outlet across the street that will be open in five hours time. There are also a couple of Chinese takeaways, a traditional fish and chip shop, and a post office. The post office doesn’t sell fast food, but with the overwhelming preponderment of electronic mail these days, I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before they will have to branch out into new services.

And I welcome that.

Already my local office is selling Fizzy Cola Bottles and tickets for Riverdance’s homecoming. I just wish they wouldn’t be so pushy about it. I went in for some stamps yesterday and the guy behind the counter not only gave me some stamps (the lovely new “Dead Painters painted by living Painters, by kind permission of cemmetary management” series), he also signed me up for a ten k run in aid of cute kittens, converted my bank account to run on Windows, and filled in a gun license application form for me. Now I’ve only got three days left to decide who I want to shoot.

To be perfectly honest, I’d rather not shoot anyone at all. I’m a peaceful, friendly person and I wouldn’t harm a flea. Unless the flea circus was particularly disappointing and they refused to refund the admission fee. Life is too short to watch an underrehearsed or sub-standard flea circus show. That’s what my mother always says, anyway.

Yesterday I took the cats out to see an ordinary circus with humans and elephants and tigers in it. And it was wonderful.

The trapeze artist poked her assistant’s eyes out and the clown turned up disguised as a police officer and arrested her for attempted murder. They’re having a trial next year. It really was so realistic. I love clowns.

Except when they waste valuable items of confectionery by throwing them at each other. Don’t they realise that half the world is starving because they can’t get any custard pies? I think it’s disgusting, and I’m not afraid to say so.

In fact, whenever I’m at a circus I stand up during the clown act, point at the stupidly dressed man or woman in the ring, and say in a loud, clear voice, but not shouting because that’s undignified, “You are an idiot”. I always get a murmer of appreciation from the audience and I can hear them whispering to each other about how impressed they are that somebody has stood up and said out loud what the rest of them are thinking.

I’ve always found that my opinions on most things are representative of the average person in the street. The problem is, there aren’t enough average people around these days, here in Ireland. Most of them emigrated during the recessions of the nineteen eighties. Which means that the average person in Ireland doesn’t live here.

That causes a lot of problems for people who carry out surveys and polls. In order to get a representative sample of the average Irish person, they have to travel all over the world and find them in plastic fake Irish pubs.

I hate fake pubs. Particularly because I never notice that they’re fake until I drink the first sip of Guinness and find out that it’s actually blackcurrant juice with cream floating on top of it. I think this sort of thing should be outlawed.

Anyway, yeah.

Neal’s Belch no. 150 for 9th Aug, 2004

As I lie here on my bed at NewsBurp’s new headquarters in uptown Dublin, I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like if I had never grown a beard.

Well, for one thing, I’d be five Euro poorer every month, thanks to razors and foamy stuff and all that carp. And let’s suppose that in the other parallel universe where I still shave, the other me walked into the shop one day to buy some of those new quintuple-blade shaving sticks that are made by the same people who make swords apparantly.

And let’s suppose that on his way out of the shop, the other me – let’s call him Justin, because that’s my middle name and he probably uses it as his first – trips over the kerb and lands feet up in a particularly shallow well that luckily just happens to have a six foot deep mattress at the bottom of it. So he’s fine.

And let’s suppose Justin lies at the bottom of the well for a while, catching his breath and inadvertently inhaling several tiny flying insects. And he looks up at the night sky and spots a light that wasn’t there before. And the light becomes known as “Justin’s Star”, setting him on a course as a successful astronomer. Even though it was only a guy shining a torch down the well to see what all the noise was about. The astronomy industry are very open minded and they’re not going to ignore a new discovery just because it doesn’t exist.

And thank god for that, because if people weren’t open minded, we’d still all be members of the flat earth society, and several thousand flights to Australia would go missing every year because the pilots just flew horizontally until they disappeared into space never to be seen again.

Anyway the point is, if I hadn’t stopped shaving I could now be a respected astronaut. And frankly I’m glad that didn’t happen because I always wanted to be a fireman instead. Firemen are cool. They rush about in a cool fire engine and light fires for people with their big firesticks which they rub together until they start a spark. It’s a indispensible service, although I can’t say I’ve ever used it, because I’ve got electricity.

I love electricty.

The quality of the electric power in my area has improved immensely since the introduction of competition into the industry. All of my electricity now comes in a lovely shade of red, instead of that boring cold blue that we used to get.

Red is my favourite colour because it reminds me of red chedder cheese, which I hate and always avoid so red reminds of the peanut butter that I have instead. Peanut butter isn’t red, but the cheese is. Well, sort of more browny yellowy orange. But it’s easier to call it red because you can type it with one hand. You use your big finger for the “r”, the second finger for the “e” and “d”, although it just got a lot more complicated when I tried to add quotation marks around each letter.

I had to use the little finger on my right hand to get the “shift” key. Which is a pain in the finger.

I love the fact that each of our fingers has two knees on it. I think that rocks. I can’t for the life of me understand why our legs only have one knee. Unless of course you count the ankles, which I don’t. Ankles don’t bend, they rotate. And they’re full of tiny little bones, which reminds me of one of those cheap unboned fillets of fish that I sometimes have the misfortune to purchase, and nearly end up choking to death on a piece of ankle bone.

Now, before you interrupt me let me just say that I’m well aware that they don’t put real ankle bones into fish fillets. Those are imitation ankle bones, of course.

But that’s not going to make much of a difference when you’re writhing in agony of the floor waiting for somebody to slap you on the back and give you the Heimlick Maneouver, while you’re teling the guy at the end of the tunnel to dip his bloody headlights.

Originally a 2004 Neal’s Belch

Once upon a time there were three enormous tables. One of the tables was a posh, polished mahogany banquet table, the second was a bog standard coffee table with stains all over it, although they could probably have been removed quite easily but obviously the owner didn’t think it was worth the effort. The third table wasn’t a table at all. It was a stool with a folding tray on top of it. The third table is what I’m typing this on right now. It’s also what I eat my dinner off. I’d like to say a special hello to my  landlord who has been promising to get me a table since I moved in at the end of March.

Anyway, I’ve always been a great admirer of the people who make tables. It’s a very difficult skill to learn, you know. First you have to find out the latitude and longitude of the house where the table is going to be. Then you have to calculate the length of each leg of the table so that they match the curvature of of the earth under that house. Otherwise the table is going to be wobbly. A bit like jelly, but you can’t eat it, although you can in theory spread ice cream all over it. But why would you do that? Not that you are required to have a reason. I mean, this is a free country and you’re more than entitled to spread ice cream all over your table if you want to. And I will defend to the hilt your right to do so. I’m just curious as to your reasons,that’s all.

If I were you, I would put the ice cream into a bowl or between a couple of wafers. Or I might just decide to have corn flakes instead. It depends. Is this an afternoon snack we’re talking about, or breakfast? You really need to give me more information because otherwise I’m just guessing.

But I digress. Back to the tables. I once found a lovely old table that was so beautiful that I felt guilty about killing the tree that made it. Not that I killed the tree myself. No. I got a hitman. Or hitwoman. I intentionally avoided learning the identity and sex of the hitperson, although she did have quite a masculine voice so I’m guessing she was a man. Anyway, as I said I felt guilty about using this beautiful tree to make a pointless piece of furniture for me to rest my beer can on. So what I ended up doing was having the wood converted back into a tree. And boy was I surprised at the result.

The “tree” turned out to have been a hideous laurel bush. I hate those. Every time I walk past one it’s leaves are always covered in dew and I get the sleeve of my jacket wet. But I’m not a vengeful person and I decided to give the laurel bush a chance. I gave it a pistol and we had a duel at dawn the next morning. Obviously I won. And before you ask, no I did not cheat. I merely increased my chances by using a water pistol filled with weed killer. The laurel bush got all excited when it saw the water pistol, and stood expectantly, thinking that I was about to make peace with it by giving it a lovely drenching. Two seconds later, it was writhing. It wasn’t writhing in agony – plants don’t feel pain, so don’t worry. But, rather generously I thought, the laurel bush played it’s part and added some dramatics to the occasion by writhing on the ground, as if in agony.

Anyway the upshot of it all was that I’d killed the bush again, and had it turned into a box of matches. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to light some fires.

Neal’s Belch no 148 for 2nd Aug, 2004

Several years ago I was walking along my local canal, treading very carefully in case the ice was weak, when I noticed that one of the popcorn vendors who dot the route had switched over to selling biscuits. I was of course intrigued.

Who wouldn’t be?

So I rushed home and did a little investigating on the electro-internetwork and I found out that popcorn is slowly declining in popularity all over the world, due to the increasing concern over the large quantities of salt that paranoid people suspect are being put into everything.

These are the same people who buy a whole bottle of natural water to drink with their lunch. Don’t they realise that water comes from the sea, which is absolutely jam packed with salt? I myself never drink water. I’ve heard rumours about what they put into that stuff. Apparently there’s two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen in every single drop. Sometimes more.

Of course, there are some elements of the salt industry who should not be trusted. This is the case in every industry, and we must not allow ourselves to be put off. For instance, some salt manufacturers add sugar and flour to the salt, to bulk it up. Similarly, some sugar manufacturers add salt and flour to their product. And some flour makers lace their flour with sugar. And so on.

Anyway later that day I returned to the frozen canal to finish my walk, which I had abandoned in my excitement over the whole thing. And I noticed that the ice in the area around the biscuit (formerly popcorn) stand, was much firmer that the rest of the ice, obviously because of the absence of salt, which prevents ice from forming.

So we can draw from this that several people are dying every year by slipping on ice that was caused by an absence of popcorn vendors spilling salt all over the place. For the sake of our elderly citizens, I urge you to go out now and support your local popcorn distributor, whoever he or she may be.

It’s probably a he.

The popcorn industry has not yet grown used to the idea of women making popcorn. Which is a shame really because instead they waste valuable time making biscuits, which, as I explained earlier, is leading to premature death among our old people.

You don’t have to actually buy any popcorn by the way, but I do encourage you to walk up to your local popcorn retailer and slap him on the back in a friendly, supportive way. Make sure you don’t accidentally hurt him, because then he’ll be in hospital for a few days and that can’t be good.now can it. Unless of course he commits a serious crime while in hospital, gets a job as a popcorn maker in the prison jobs scheme under which paticipants are not allowed to earn more than one Euro per hour, and produces low cost popcorn for the next eight to sixteen years without parole.

By the way I have no idea what “eight to sixteen years without parole” means, but I’ve heard it on American television programmes so I’m sure it’s fine. I’ve also learnt the phrases “You’re going down, buster”, “Here’s Bob with the twelve day Accuweather forecast”, “I’ll stick this goddam gun up your goddam ass” and “What letter did you learn today, Elmo” on American television, which I think is wonderful.

On Irish television I’ve learned the pharase “It’s six o’clock. We pause now for the Angeles”, which probably doesn’t mean much to you foreigners. It doesn’t have anything to do with popcorn though, so let’s leave it at that and not allow ourselves to stray off topic.

I hate when people stray off topic. Yesterday I was sitting on a bus going to my mother’s house because she makes nice jelly on Sundays, when I noticed that the pedestrian overpass near my home town is still crooked, despite repeated letters having been published about it in the local newspaper.

Apparently the architect designed it that way. It’s supposed to dip in the centre, and there’s nothing to worry about, it’s not going to snap if too many people walk on it. But I’m at least sixteen stone and I’m sure as hell not taking any chances thank you. Especially since it doesn’t get salted during icy weather.

I’d have to carry my own popcorn and make sure to accidentally on purpose spill it in a steady stream in front of me as I walk. And there’s a litter warden in the area who, I understand, likes popcorn too, so I’d have to make sure that he doesn’t eat it up before I walk across the part of the bridge where I’ve spilt the popcorn for my own protection.

There’s also a chance that I might get sued for plaguerism, by the great-grandchildren of Hans Christian Anderson, writer of “Hansel and Gretel” unless I succeed in making it absolutely clear that I am not talking about using the popcorn to find my way back home through the forest. Otherwise I’d have to take a few days off to go to Holland or somewhere for the court case.

Live is so bloody complicated. It really is.

Neal’s Belch no. 147 for 23rd Jul, 2004

Ten years ago to this day, the very first ever steam train passed through my home town. It was a momentous day.

We all lined the streets to wave as it made it’s way to the junk yard to get scrapped. And a proud day it was, too. Our scrap yard is one of the best in the world. We destroy things like there’s no tomorrow, reducing them to tiny pellets of dense metal in minutes. Anyway, right next door to the scrap yard, is the canal.

And a while back I was sitting at the canal bank, waiting to speak to somebody about a personal loan, when I noticed that the sign showing the name of the shop across the road was missing three letters.

Obviously I have no idea which letters they were, and the only chance I had of finding out was if I raided the bins at the back of the shop and found some headed stationery belonging to the store, so that I could see what it was called.

Unfortunately the bins are kept in a dark alley to the rear of the building, and  the laneway is shared with a large hotel and bar. While walking along the alley I was startled by the sudden sound of glass being smashed as it was dropped into a recycling bin. I got such a fright that I leapt over a wall and found myself in the back garden of a respected criminologist, who, it transpired, was already investigating the signs thing, and had it all under control.

So my work there was done.

I was superfluous to the situation, no longer needed, cast onto the steaming molehill of life like a badly formed metaphor that should have featured a dunghill intead of a molehill.

With hindsight though, it’s probably all for the best.

I am neither qualified nor sufficiently experienced to competently investigate the disappearance of three letters from a shop sign. The best theory I could come up with was that they were stolen by an ungerground letters agent who sold them on the black market to the producers of Sesame Street. Obviously that theory falls apart immediately when you remember that Sesame street is usually sponsored by two letters and a number, not three letters.

Anyway two cats walk into a bar.

The first cat immediately walks out again and stages a flamboyant, though ultimately unsuccessful demonstration against the stereotyping of cats as habitual bar visitors.

The other cat is a little more chilled out, and takes the longer view of the situation. He realises that by making them pay him regular sums of money to appear in barcat stories, he will, over time, slowly drain the perpretators of all their funds until eventually they have to stop creating barcat stories for good.

The second cat has a lovely night and gets drunk but not too drunk and they all live happily ever after.

Well, he did, anyway.

The other cat spent the rest of his life wishing he had stayed in the pub that night and not put himself up for ridicule and disrespect.in the national newspapers.

The only glimmer of hope he had was that the people who cut his picture out of the papers to hang up on their walls, would notice that the Sunday colour episode of Dilbert, on the other side of the page, was particularly funny that day so they might hang it up the other way around, to brighten up their homes.

Unfortunately that day’s episode was one of the clever but obscure ones about some sort of computer issue, that nobody ever understands. So the cat was out of luck.

Ironically he was a black cat, and on his way home that night he crossed the paths of at least seventeen lucky people and unwittingly changed their lives for the better.

Not that he cared.

All he wanted was a saucer of milk and a ball of string to play with and maybe the company of his friend, the second cat, who was down in the pub enjoying himself. It’s a dog’s life, being a cat.

Neal’s Belch no. 145 for 16th Jul, 2004

Some time ago I went out to buy some butterflies as I normally do when going fly fishing. They make excellent bait and I’ve caugt quite a lot of flies. But this time I decided for a change to go for one of the margarine ones. In my day we used to have raw flies without anything on them, and we were grafeful for it.

But it was always a problem of course because the zip kept opening.

Margarine is supposedly much better for you than butter. But then on the other hand, margarine is, as I believe the young people say, “mank”. Nowadays of course the young hip trendy kids have buttons on their pants instead.of flies.

Anyway, as I was sweeping my hand through the supermarket’s dairy cabinet, trying to catch a Margarine fly, I suddenly got frostbite, which attacked my left hand.

Fortunately I was holding a packet of Findus Fish Fingers at the time, and so my own fingers came to no harm. Admittedly it was my own fault. I had noticed earlier that the motor at the back of the fridge was becoming very warm, and I wanted to prevent a fire so I turned down the temperature on the thermostat.

I often interfere with things that I’m not supposed to.

A while ago I was sitting on an aeroplane going to one of the Americas, and I noticed that the pilot was taking a longer route than I considered neccessary. So I borrowed one of the oars from the emergency dinghy and pushed it out of the window against a nearby cloud, to push the plane slightly to the left.Then I noticed that there was a starboard in the way, and I became worried that I might crash the plane into some stars, causing a tear in the fabric of space-time, which would have caused us to arrive several hours late.

So I quietly lassood the cloud with some toilet paper dragging the aircraft back to it’s original route. Then I made my way gingerly back to seat 7a, where I watched Men in Black. It wasn’t showing on in-flight movie system. It’s just that I have a photographic memory that can store approximatelly eighty five minutes of film, and Men in Black is one of the few movies short enough to fit.

But I digress.

Margarine Flies first arrived here in Ireland in the mid nineteenth century, around the time of the Potatoe Famine.

They were safe here because people didn’t have any potatoes and so they didn’t need margarine. Besides which, everyone who wasn’t dead was emigrating to one of the Americas, as many of you will have learnt from the recent motion picture “Gangs of New York”, directed by Martin Scorsecesece.

Scorseceseccceseeee was of course born and bred in Ireland. That’s why he knows so much about my country. In fact, my mother went to school with him at her local girls’ school in the west of Ireland. “It’s a small world”, as people like to say. It certainly is.

I measured the distance from my computer desk to the front door earlier, and it was only a few feet. Let’s say the earth is twenty times that distance, just for the sake of argument. If that’s the case, then it’s still only half a mile round the equator. That would explain why it’s possible to see the horizon from my bedroom window.

I was watching a programme about one of the Australias the other day, and the horizon was clearly visible from one of their beaches. So that means the Australias are locateds just over the horizon. Bloody hell.

And yet my local travel agent is charging over a thousand euro for a one way ticket.

Anyway, I seem to have got diverted from the subject of the Margarine Fly. I’ll have to come back to it another day.

Neal’s Belch no. 144 for 12th Jul, 2004

Yesterday I was on my way out of a train station when I noticed something that I had never noticed before.

Without exception, every single one of the turnstiles at the exits was set to turn in a clockwise direction. So I did some research and it turns out that all turnstiles and revolving doors in the northern hemisphere turn that way, while everything south of the equator goes counter-clockwise.

Apparently the same is true of the way liquids swirl clockwise or anti-clockwise when you pour them down the sink. For some reason that I can’t quite fathom, the hands on clocks move clockwise no matter what part of the world you are in.

But this got me thinking. What would happen if I started messing with the laws of gravity or magnetism or whatever you call it? Would I get in trouble with the law? I mean, who the hell set up all these scientific laws anyway. Where I come from, if you want to pass a law you must first put yourself up for election to the national parliament, and then convince a majority of your colleagues to vote for your proposed piece of legislation.

But apparently if you’re Isaac Newton or somebody, you can pass a law just by saying stuff that nobody else understands.

As an aside here, I would just like to pay tribute to all of the scientists throughout the ages who have experimented with apples. I myself once ate an apple right through to the core, and on seeing the hard white flesh near the centre, and thinking about it in silence for a few long minutes, came up with an idea for an essay about turnips for my website.

So I can easily see how an apple could provide inspiration for such masterpieces as Newton’s Gravity Yoke, or whatever he came up with. Really if we’re being fair, we should give credit to the apples, not the scientist. But this is a topsy turvy world and for some reason it’s always the human, not the inaminate organic food, that gets thanked.

Anyway, back to the thing about laws of science. Now I, as a private citizen, am not empowered to pass a law, for example, that bans television stations from killing selected viewers who change stations during the commercials.

However, apparently I am completely free to legislate that “What goes up, must spin three times, freeze for a second like a tense moment in a cartoon, then come down”, and call it “Neal’s Law of Going up and Spinning”, Because that’s science. So I’ve decided that I’m going to take advantage of this new-found power by passing some new scientific laws.

I hereby order that cats cannot land on their feet unless they are covered in orange marmalade and humming the theme tune from Frasier.

Okay that’s enough for now. I don’t want to abuse my priviledges. In fact, in the above short paragraph I’ve achieved pretty much everything I set out to achieve when I decided to go into politics, so I’m going to retire now.

I think I can achieve more by quietly campaigning and maybe making a few Euros on the lecture circuit to support myself. You know, when I was a twelve year old I wanted to change the world.

I thought I would become Prime Minister of my country and I would outlaw all crime and remove poverty forever. Then I came to realise that all crime is already outlawed, so I decided to concentrate on a cure for poverty. The solution I came up with was to give everybody a large quantity of money and order them not to spend it. Then nobody would ever be poor ever again and we would all live happily ever after.

Just like in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Although Goldilocks, of course, would never have dreamed of putting orange marmalade on her cat’s paws. And this refusal to conform with the norms or our society would mean she is now guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal under my new “Orange Marmalade Humming Act, 2004”, referred to earlier.

But you shouldn’t take from this that I am a staunch conservative who wants to hang all criminals and then put them in jail after they’re dead. No.

All I’m saying is that it’s fun to make laws that annoy people, especially those who have cats or who refuse to keep a minimum level of marmalade in stock. These are the same people who you see at polling booths, scratching their heads and trying to make a last minute decision about who to vote for. My country now has colour photos on the ballot sheet, so you can pick which candidate has the best hair, and vote for him or her without having to find out who they are or what they stand for.

So it’s not all bad. And I never said it was. I’m not a glass-half-empty person. It’s not empty until I shove the flat, day-old coke from last night down my parched throat at seven o’clock the next morning because I don’t have time to make coffee. 

Then it’s empty. And that brings me nicely back to the hemispheres / clockwise / anticlockwise thing. Because there’s going to be nothing left in the glass to throw down the sink and test which way it swirls as it disappears down the drain.

So now we’ll never know.