Carrot Fishing Net

The Pearl, Continued

News of the great pearl that Kino had found and the terrible luck that it had brought him soon reached beyond La Paz. Fishermen in distant cities told the story of his pearl, of Coyotito’s murder, and of the way Kino and Juana never spoke of what had befallen them in the mountains.

Once the pearl was returned to the sea, Kino knew he would have to rebuild his life. Because he had no canoe, and no brush house, he and Juana simply slept upon the shore of the estuary, keeping warm with a fire made from driftwood and eating fish Kino caught with a line he collected from among the rocks. They spoke to no-one and no-one spoke to them; it was as if they were ghosts on the periphery of the town. It was considered bad luck to approach them, and even Juan Tomas stayed away.

Years passed in this way until the town’s memory of Kino’s misfortune was buried along with the citizens who’d known of it first-hand. He became a legend whom children fancied lived a very long time ago. The doctor choked to death on a fishbone and was mourned by no-one, not even his cat. The beggars on the church steps carried on begging for scraps. The town kept on breathing, and children kept on being born, and pearls kept on being bought and sold and the pearl fishermen knew that nothing could be done.

Eventually, Kino grew too old to wade into the sea, so to keep himself occupied while Juana went into the town, he sat and carved elaborate fishing nets out of carrots. In his dreams, each net held baby Coyotito before that fateful scorpion bite, giggling as Juana prepared corncakes. Then his son was replaced by a great pearl, glistening in the moonlight. Then the pearl was replaced by a skull, bleached clean by the sea and the sun. Then Kino woke up and carved another net, hoping each day to catch a different dream.

Garnishing: A Feast For Your Eyes, HP Books, 1987

Also from this book: Cabbage Christmas Tree, Randolph The Red-Nosed Rainmoose

Eat Your Vegetables!

Conventional wisdom suggests that in order to get a reluctant entity to ingest an object that is inherently good for it, one has to use the ancient art of subterfuge.

Most commonly, this involves hiding or disguising the good thing (be it medicine or carrots and celery) within something far more desirable, which is then eaten. Pills can be crushed and blended into a hamburger, or some carrot blended into a tomato soup: the unsuspecting recalcitrant is none the wiser.

Mothers, in particular, are experts at hiding good foods within bad ones. They’ll try to squeeze in as many vitamins and minerals as possible — the way cereal companies do when they offer sugar-crusted candy corn shapes which have been infused with micro quantities of the ingredients heavily advertized in fun colors at the top of the package.

Occasionally, however, you get a Mom who is either profoundly incompetent at this necessary skill, or who just doesn’t give a fuck, and fails to appreciate the very notion of “cloak-and-dagger” nutrition, and serves a sackful of carrots embedded in a translucent mold of clear jelly.

Under the impression of elegance, she will artlessly suggest that her creation isn’t in fact what it appears to be; she will have you believe that what are clearly carrot discs are some exotic orange fruit whose deliciousness will be a revelation. “Look,” she will say, “would I have taken such trouble to arrange all that flat-leaf Italian parsley around it if it wasn’t worth it?”

She’s the sort of person who will insist you eat the garnish too.

Salads, Time-Life Books, 1979

Also from this book: Mind Your Tongue, Jellied Salad

You Say Carat; I Say Carrot (Let's Call The Whole Thing Off)

How About A 24-Carrot Necklace?

Don’t do it, dude. Girlfriend is going to be pissed as hell if you try to slip a root vegetable ring on her finger after you propose. Things are going to get nasty if you get down on one knee, pop the question, trick her into saying “Yes!” then pull out this rubbish. Trust me, she will be able to tell the difference between a ring made from a “trifaceted chunk of avocado seed, sanded and lacquered, on a circlet of sweet potato” and an actual diamond solitaire engagement ring. Made out of metal and precious stones. That comes in a velvet-lined ring box. Preferably pale blue in color. With “Tiffany & Co.” embossed on it.

 No matter how nice your fiancée is (or was), she will not accept your excuse about being broke-ass broke and having to “be creative.” She might even play along to humor you, but watch your back.

This can go two ways: either she'll tell everyone you ever knew or ever hope to meet (after she drops your cheap sorry ass like a hot potato) what a douche you are so that you become the laughing stock of your worst nightmares, or she will actually marry you and you’ll be stuck with a woman whose standards are so low she won’t get up off her lazy ass to take the trash out of the trailer. She will cease giving a toss about her appearance, put on 200lbs, and continue to wear dried vegetable “jewelry” in public, rendering it impossible for you to leave the house. Either way, you will end up a lonely, frustrated recluse with no hope of ever having sex again.

If you doubt this, just look at the model’s expression. That’s not a smile; that’s a grimace. If you look into her eyes you can see her taking mental note to fire her agent, like, yesterday.

Note how the text plays fast and loose with archeological processes that take millions of years to accomplish: “You cut the vegetables, then let them dry into fascinating semiprecious stones.” If it were that easy, the Petrified Forest National Park wouldn’t have to keep posting signs warning visitors not to steal the gravel. That used to be wood, y’all!

What is saddest of all is that in 1972, Women’s Day thought this was a good use of their readership’s time and energy. According to one of the many cigarette ads in its pages is the perfect back-handed response to this drivel: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Woman’s Day, September 1972

More Yuckylicious ads: The Big Squeez, Behold The Versatronic, Gold Medal Memories, What A Douchebag, The Seven Year Itch, Mad Men, It’s The Real Thing (What Is, Exactly?), Putting the Special in Special K