Sunday, July 6, 2008

Little is nice

As I finished off the last of Maggie Beer's Burnt Fig Jam Honeycomb and Caramel Ice Cream, two thoughts crossed my mind. First, this is possibly the best ice-cream I have ever tasted. It is truly amazing! You may be suspecting me of being caught up in some kind of cash-for-comment scandal. I only wish I was, because I could use the cash to buy more Maggie Beer's Burnt Fig Jam Honeycomb and Caramel Ice Cream. Not very much though, because this ice-cream is seriously expensive. However, since I am apparently going to be a doctor one day, I thought it would be wise to affect some of the trappings of wealth, and even though this ice-cream is really expensive, it's still cheaper than a set of golf clubs.

The second thought to cross my mind was that this ice-cream has the longest product name I have ever seen. In fact, this is not so much a product name as a list of ingredients, a topic I have posted on before. Ms. Beer could have called it Fig Honey and Caramel Ice Cream of course, but I suppose she had to add in the extra words to make it seem worth the extortionate amount of money I had to pay for it. It annoys me, but not too much since it does provide information about the product.

Unlike the names of most cars. When I'm stuck in traffic I examine the back of the car in front of me very closely in case there is a kidnapped person trapped inside and I need to provide a description to the police. And before you mention license plates, the kidnappers would have stolen them off another car, so there's no point bothering with them. Since bumper stickers seem to be out of vogue these days except on utes with searchlights and bulldozer-sized roo-bars on them (such stickers say things like, "Fat chicks - shoot 'em, don't root 'em", which I find contemptible, disgusting, and highly amusing), the only thing to examine is usually the model name of the car itself. And I have found that I much prefer short names to long names, as I am an elegant, aesthetic type of guy.

My favourite so far for its brevity: Mazda 3
My least favourite so far for its verbosity: Toyota Corolla Seca Ascent

If Mazda can have a single digit to enumerate its cars, why does Toyota need to use four whole words? And none of the words actually mean anything! If the word Seca actually signified something about the car that was worth knowing, it would be okay (for example the Datsun 200B used the number 200 to signify the fact that it had a 2-litre engine, whereas the 120Y had a 1.2-litre engine). The thing that really gets me is that there don't seem to be any Toyota Corolla Secas that aren't also Toyota Corolla Seca Ascents. It seems inefficient and wasteful. Note to Toyota: you'll save money by not having to write whole sentences across the rear end of your cars.

Next time you see a Toyota Corolla Seca Ascent on the road, point and jeer - then pick up a rake or light a torch and give chase to the hideous monster. There's nothing a frenzied mob can't achieve if pointed in the right direction.

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