You often hear someone accusing another of being “nuts” or a “nutter” (OED definition = someone who gathers nuts). By this, he means that the person in question is either raving or stupid, or both. But why does comparison with a nut imply a lack of intelligence? If we just examine the situation, we find this is in fact a gross error.
Take, for example, a walnut. Crack its shell and you’ll discover that the kernel within is a perfect brain shape, even to the point of having left and right hemispheres. And why should Nature deign to create a brain-shaped kernel? In order that it might encompass intelligence, of course. The conclusion is therefore inescapable: Walnuts are capable of cogent thought.
Unfortunately, confined within a shell, they are deprived of the normal sensory inputs that would allow them to learn of the outside world and so build up experience and wisdom. And without bodies, they have no means of articulating any thoughts. Indeed, the majority of walnuts live sad, meaningless existences; their potentials unfulfilled. For most, the revelation that there actually is a wide world outside comes only for a brief moment as the nutcracker does its business. But then they're eaten.
Happier is the fate of a nut on a Walnut Whip - just. Some years ago, I recall that these sweets contained both halves of the walnut: one hemisphere stuck on the top, the second on the base, surrounded by fondant cream. No doubt as they sat in the sweetshops, the two communed with one another. During the time of their brief shelf life, they probably acquired a sense of self, and a sharp insight into the thoughts and activities of the shop and its customers.
However, a thinking sweet was obviously too much for Nestlé, who took over from Rowntree as manufacturers of these delicacies. I imagine they feared that consumers might end up eating their intellectual superiors. Consequently, nowadays Nestlé effectively lobotomises the walnut. Each Whip contains onlyone hemisphere, thereby severely restricting its intellectual development. In my opinion this is crime on a par with gelding a horse or docking a dog's tail.
I feel that in the future, walnuts may replace human brains. In instances where severely injured patients are declared brain dead, for example, a walnut could be substituted. Then the voice of the nut will at last be heard in the land. And if they do show signs of profundity of thought and intellectual achievement, never again will the term “nuts” be used as an insult. Instead, it will be a compliment. “Albert Einstein was nuts”, we'll say, and, “There was no-one nuttier in Renaissance Italy than Leonardo da Vinci.”
ANAL SUNBEAMS
You often hear it said of someone that, “He thinks the sun shines out of his arse.” Generally speaking, this is thought to be a bad thing. The implication is that the person in question has an over-inflated sense of his own worth and is, perhaps, exhibiting a certain degree of self-aggrandizement. He’s to be scorned, in other words.
I, however, beg to differ. Those people who actually do believe that the sun shines out of their arse are, in fact, to be pitied. This is because, far from being something to be proud of, the genuine condition would have a life-crippling effect.
Take, for example, solar radiation. If the sun truly were to be located somewhere up your colon then you’d have to regularly apply massive amounts of Factor 1,000,000 suntan lotion to you sphincter to stop it from being burnt to a cinder. It would be like suffering a permanent, highly extreme form of haemorrhoids. The only relief would come on the very rare occasions when the moon went into orbit around your bottom and, for a few minutes, blocked out the rays in the form of a total eclipse. Even then, I’d imagine that your coronal filaments would still give you gyp.
Next, of course, there’s the problem of farting. A conventional fart, even in a worst case scenario, just clears a room for a few minutes. But if the sun were up your arse, the fart would no doubt be accompanied by a solar flare. A small solar flare would make you extremely unpopular with people who owned portable devices such as iPods and MP3 players as it would have the effect of shorting out the electronics. A big solar flare, on the other hand, might totally destroy your social life as it could wipe out every living thing on the planet.
Finally, there’s old age. As you aged, so, too, would the sun up your arse. The best thing you could hope for would be that it merely turned into a red dwarf. In this case, you’d just implode slightly as its increased gravity kicked in. But if it were to go all the way and turn into a black hole, then you would literally disappear up your own arse and perhaps be sucked into a parallel dimension.
Henceforth, therefore, when we describe a person as thinking that the sun shines out of his arse, we should always append the statement with the words, “Poor fellow.”
