Thursday, December 10, 2009

Existential crises

Some days it's hard to know what to post here, not because nothing happens, but because too much has happened to digest. So it seems a perfect time to share with you the mordant humor of my favorite Japanese snack - kakipi (a multiply compressed name: abbreviation of kaki no tane = persimmon seed, though it really refers to spicy snacks merely shaped like these + abbreviation of piinatsu = peanuts). The backs of these individual serving bags celebrate the overlooked and left behind in a manner Hans Christian Andersen would surely appreciate - things like the fake green leaves which come with bento boxes. Here we have the hole in your belt which you'd use were you to lose weight, and the paper wrapper of a drinking straw. The former's plaintive thoughts: the hole two from me gets used every day, while I'm ever waiting for our owner to go on a diet... it would be enough to be used just once before the belt gets old and thrown away! The latter's monologue is more involved and harder to render in English: it wonders just what it is; while the straw inside gets used for drinking juice, it is sometimes torn, sometimes blown off with a puff, sometimes scrunched up and then laughed at as it is placed in water and gawkily lengthens... These surely are the existential crises of late capitalism!

Update: here are eight more.