Friday, June 19, 2009

words that make other kinds of sense

Asian product quote of the day, from a rather dubious pancake recipe:

"Grill to meedium heat until cake reaches darkness of color."

There's something charming about that sentence. It's perfectly understandable, but the way the words are arranged make them seem like they're talking about something else. Something much more exotic than pancakes anyway.

Once, when I was in an Asian market, I saw a jar of something called "Gelatinous Mutant Coconut." It made me feel like I was somewhere special, a place where wondrous things like Gelatinous Mutant Coconut lined the shelves and turning the corner might mean bumping into a Push-Me-Pull-You, or a Snark, or a Boojum, or a Bandersnatch. Something that would feast on Gelatinous Mutant Coconut as a matter of course.

4 comments:

Kat Howard said...

Gelatinous Mutant Coconut sounds like something that would be in Lovecraft. I'm a little scared of it, yet at the same time, I really want to write a menu of things to go with it.

Charles said...

Gelatinous Mutant Coconut is an interesting description. =) It's actually a Filipino delicacy, although I suspect customs and health laws had something to do with the labeling (we don't know how to classify it!).

Megan Kurashige said...

Kat, I should like to read that menu. Maybe not while eating though...

Charles, I'm glad to know it's a delicacy of some sort and not actually something that will crawl out of the jar if you don't eat it fast enough.

Emily Jiang said...

Darkness is relative. As is Mutant-ness.