Neal’s Belch no. 139 for 18th Jun, 2004

I’ve been doing some research recently into the early days of architectural design, specifically the design and implemetation of catflaps in front doors in the mid to late eighteenth century.

In those days, of course, cats had not yet become domesticated to the extent to which they have today. So we’re pretty much talking about tigers here. Tigers took many hundreds of years to adapt to the cultural change between, on the one hand, eating a zebra which they had hunted down and killed with their teeth, and, on the other hand, sitting on a kitchen floor looking cute while somebody empties a tin of tuna onto a saucer.

Tigers were always baffled, in the early days, as to why they were made to eat off saucers. Saucers, they thought, are what you put a under a cup to catch spills. Surely plates are for eating off, not saucers. Unless they’re having milk, in which case you would have thought, surely, that the aforementioned dairy beverage would be served in a glass. Or maybe in a mug if it’s warm. But apparently not.

Then there was the ball of string thing. In their natual habitat, tigers used to make their own string by catching wild sheep, shaving them, stretching the wool on the branches of a nearby cocunut tree, dying the wool in a subsidiary of the Nile, and then selling the wool on the black market to raise enough money to buy a ball of string.

Nowadays they’re just handed a ball of string by their owners. It’s gotten far too easy. Young cats don’t know how good they’ve got it. They spend all day lying around purring and watching cartoons.

No wonder dogs get confused and are sometimes seen chasing their tails as if flattening some grass to lie on in the jungle. I think we need to do something about all this over domestication of animals. They’ve become too cocky, these cats and dogs. They’ve discovered that they can get anything they want just by being cute.

Well, I suggest we show them who’s boss. I’m going to borrow a couple of tigers and put them beside a cute little domesticated kitten, and see which one thinks he’s more believable in his role as “cat”.

Anyway, the problem with early catflaps was that tigers are bigger than humans sometimes. so instead of a cat flap in a human door, they had a human flap in the middle of a tiger door.

And it all worked perfectly fine, until humans became tired of playing second fiddle to an animal that wasn’t supposed to be living in a house. So the humans got a couple of tigers, one male and one female, and squashed them until they became small and cute. And the rest is history.

In the future, cats will become smaller and smaller until mice are no longer afraid of them. What will happen after that, is anyone’s guess.

I’m not suggesting for one moment that cats will become subserviant to mice. Mice have much better taste and self respect than to eat a cat for dinner. But I do think that mice will eventually realise that their time has come. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the movies in the Terminator trilogy, but I’m pretty sure that one of these days a giant naked mouse will turn up here in a time machine and enter a diner with a large weapon to steal a motorcycle.

And believe me, when that happens, we’re all bandjaxed.

So we may as well make the best of the limited time which we have left. I suggest taking up a hobby, or becoming guardian angel to a troubled boy who’s thinking of running away to join the circus but who can probably be helped to resolve most of his issues tidily in about sixty minutes, including commercials.

Personally, I have no hobbies whatsoever. I prefer to fill my spare time lying on my recliner chair thinking about the passing of time, the evolution of monkeys into human beings, the mysteries of the cosmos, the colour of the sky, the depth of the seas and the price of cabbage.

And I know what you’re going to say. There’s very little that I can do about any of those things. But that’s where you’re wrong. Take a look outside your window right now and see what the sky looks like today.

You’re welcome.

Neal’s Belch no. 137 for 15th Jun, 2004

I’ve always prided myself on keeping up with the latest fashions and trends. And in that vein, I’ve recently bought myself a pointy green hat with a three inch long flap of elastic at the front to cover my eyebrows (which of course are no longer fashionable) and a free-range eggshell glued to the top, rather like a bobble. I’m not telling you this just to show off by the way. I do have a point – it’s just that the eggshell thing fits snuggly over it so it’s not visible.

I prefer things to be rounded rather than pointy. A well-rounded person can’t hurt you by pointing the top of his or head at you and stabbing you with it. And I’ve always found that very reassuring in a world gone mad. I myself am round rather than pointy, except for my toenails, which are long and mighty.

That’s one part of my masculininty that I am not prepared to sacrifice. A man’s toenails should be maintained at a length at least long enough to be able, in theory, to turn them into noodle sticks. Don’t eat them, obviously, because you’ll hurt your back, but you can always put them on display on top of the microwave as a momento of the day when you decided you were going to be a man, and not cut your toenails

In some cultures, microwaves and other household appliances are themselves considered (mistakenly, in my opinion) to be signs of masculinity. In China, for example, a four-slice toaster means you sweat a lot. But that’s bound to happen anyway if you have your head over a toaster all day. The English prefer to make toast under the grill, and I’ve always found that to be a marvellously civilised way of doing things. You can’t get sweaty in front of a grill, unless you open the door very wide and poke your head in to see whether the toast is ready. But that shouldn’t be necessary if you have a suitably-converted egg timer, to which you have attached some sort of toast adaptor, so that it can time the toast. But you know all this already.

The point is, round things are better. Allow me to demonstrate. Take a look at the following diagrams.

So anyway, back to the toast. I prefer mine with marmalade and sunflower margarine, rather than peanut butter. But I’m prepared to tolerate differing tastes. Within limits of course.

There’s no excuse for putting cheese on anything at breakfast. Hello everybody in the USA if you’re listening. Cheese is not a breakfast food, okay? Although I can see how you would get confused, what with other dairy items, such as milk, being very widely used in morning eating sessions. But cheese is different from milk, in ways that are too subtle to explain properly here. But you’ll understand, some day. Then you’ll thank me for putting you straight. Until then, take my word for it. Cheese into breakfast doesn’t go. Ditto ham.

Personally, I prefer cereal in ice cold milk. But I always take the milk cubes out just before I eat it. Ice is re-usable, and I don’t like to put anything to waste, so I put the used milk cubes back in the freezer for later. We all must do our best to preserve the world’s precious natural resources, you know, and ice is one of those. There are polar bears who would kill for an milk cube right now. Or a Fox’s Glacier Mint. Whichever is cheaper. It’s mainly a homesickness thing. They’d probably be able to get over it and become happier if they weren’t being kept in the Sahara Desert Zoo.

Neal’s Belch no. 138 for 14th Jun, 2004

Today’s Belch will be sub-standard.

This is due to the fact that it’s hot and sunny and I want to go out and make sandcastles. So I’m in a hurry. I hope you’ll understand.

In case you don’t, I’ll repeat it for you in Irish.Ta sé te agus ta an ghrian ag something amach. I think taitneamh is the word, but I’m not sure. I’ve never had much confidence when it comes to translating meaningless sentences into obscure local languages just for the sake of showing off to foreigners, and today is no exception.

Ta brón orm.

Anyway as I sit here at my new kitchen table, on my new wobbly kitchen chair in my eight by ten bedsittingroom apartment on the outskirts of Dublin city, Ireland, I can’t help but think back on that day, in the nineteen eighies, when the late (no offence), dead (no offence) President (no offence) Ronald Reagan visited Ireland and spent a day waving at us on the television.

Now, many of you will remember my discussion some time back of the visit Pope John Paul II. At the time, I explained why it was okay, for complicated reasons to do with the local economy, for the pope to eat popcorn during his visit, despite having taken a vow of poverty.. I have since been praised by the Vatican for my fairness and accuracy in that piece, and also for my continued obeyance of the ten commandments, except the one about coveting my neighbour’s cat.

So clearly I am well qualified to speak about the snacking habits of other prominent world leaders, past present and future.

And in case that’s not enough, I’ve recently made my peace with my neighbour, and have arranged, at my own expense, for a reputable veterinary surgeon to reverse the coveting.

The late President Clinton choked to death, as you know, as a delayed result of eating one of those twig shaped things that Americans like. I can never remember what the damned things are called.

Twigs, maybe. I’ve just realised that I’m confusing him with George Bush junior. I’m sorry but I’m from Ireland and I don’t follow American politics very closely. Anyway I’m not going to bother deleting it. Every word that I type here is one of my babies. Except “twigs”. I would never be so cruel as to name a child after a piece of a tree. I would name the child first, then name the piece of the tree. Some people in this world seem to think trees are more important that human beings.

Anyway, President Reagan, while he was visiting my country, declared that he had just discovered that his ancestors were from Ballyporeen. Nobody had ever heard of Ballyporeen until then, but suddenly it was the place to be.

So everybody went there, and stood in a crowd on the street while Ronnie made a speach about something or other. I was around ten years old at the time, and I didn’t understand much of what he was saying, But I liked that routine that he did about the other queues in the supermarket always moving faster than yours.

I remember very clearly a day, back in the mid nineteen nineties, when President Clinton visited Ireland. He drank beer with the Irish head of government and his girlfriend, made a speach, went shopping with his wife and kid, paid a courtesy visit to our head of state, and helped sort out the peace process.

By the time he’d finished, it was almost lunchtime. Anyway, two cats walk into a bar.

One of them goes up to the bartender and orders a large double vodca and a saucer of milk. He doesn’t like milk, he just drinks it in front of the other cats to make him look tough. The other cat orders a large double vodca and a saucer of semi skimmed. Five minutes later he’s regretting it big time, as fifteen cats crowd round and laugh mercilessly at him.

But he doesn’t care. If there’s one thing that the cat has learned during his two years on this planet, it’s that image is nothing, thirst is everything, drink Sprite. Or was it 7up? I can never remember.

When I was a young child, 7up had an advert that was adapted from the song “Bette Davis Eyes”, which was a hit in the early eighties. It featured a very loud drum beat, which used to scare the carp out of me. So I preferred Club Orange. Nowadays, of course, I’m all grown-up, so I don’t worry about things like drums. I just get on with my life, and let them get on with theirs.

Live and let live – that’s what I always say. Well, I don’t actually say it. But I’m sure it’s relevent to all this in some way.

I told you it was going to be sub-standard today so stop whining. They’ve been mostly tolerable lately. And that’s not just me saying it. Look at this praise:

“Neal’s Belch is fantastic. I don’t know how he does it, when you’re not allowed to have pencils in prison. I think he’s, like, producing his own ink now. Like a squid or a crab or something. Or is it horses? No. Horses make glue don’t they. Whatever” – Anonymous person in the street

“So it’s a belch now is it? In my day, it was a burp. And frankly, I don’t like change.” – Anomynous reader

“I swear by Neal’s Belch. Which is cool because an oath is only valid if you use a bible, so what I do is wrap a Dilbert book in a sheet that I’ve printed off his website. Then I produce that in court and swear by it. It’s kinda like having my fingers crossed behind my back.” –Anomynous suspected criminal

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.