[2123] in Humor
HUMOR: Amazing Growing Sealife
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Jun 27 09:46:22 1997
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:41:23 EDT
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 23:32:21 -0700
From: Connie Kleinjans <connie@nanospace.com>
From: janos@netcom.com (Janos_Gereben)
Wednesday, June 18, 1997 =B7 Page E10
=A91997 San Francisco Chronicle
_________________________________________________________________
Place the Creature In the Water
JON CARROLL
SHORTLY BEFORE FATHER'S Day, my older daughter, Rachel, gave me a
bubble pack of Amazing Growing Sealife, saying that I might be amused
by the instructions on the back.
It occurred to me to wonder what it might be like to have a father who
collects the prose on the back of junky toys as opposed to (say) old
Roman coins or Civil War uniforms, but I finally decided that the Male
Collecting Syndrome is so ultimately mysterious and pointless that a
sane daughter can only be grateful that it's not body parts or rabid
ferrets that have captured Dad's attention.
In any event, Amazing Growing Sealife represents yet another advance
in the art of cheap prose. Originally toys came with no instructions
at all or with instructions written by the engineering department
(``To assemble, place flange A parallel to the grout channels and bend
slightly.'').
This was considered user-unfriendly, so companies strove for simpler
English. At the same time, companies strove for greater profits by
outsourcing all manufacturing to nations where English was not an
oft-spoken tongue.
Hence, the many fine examples of odd prose found on American shelves
everywhere.
The next step is represented by Amazing Growing Sealife, which was
made in Taiwan for a Seattle-based company. Amazing Growing Sealife is
not sea life, nor does it grow, although it does get larger. It is
amazing only if you are very easily amazed.
Accompanying prose: ``1. Pick up the package with your hand, unless
you are under the age of five. If you are under five, drop it right
now. 2. Take out the aquatic creature by pulling up the blisterseal.
It is non-toxic, but not edible. Please don't eat it. 3. Put the
creature down.''
SO WHAT WE HAVE are speakers of English who have been influenced by
cheap toy instructions written by non-English speakers. We have a
gloss on the odd prose of toy boxes written to amuse the parents of
the probable end users of Amazing Growing Sealife.
We have nudge nudge and wink wink; we have irony. ``5. Fill the
container with warm (not hot) water. Hot water may cause the creature
to become covered with mossy slime. If you desire this effect, hot
water is just the thing.''
It's the last sentence that's the tip-off. It was written by someone
who had just crafted the previous sentence and then thought, ``Mossy
slime might be kind of cool.''
``6. Place the creature in water. 7. Look at it for a minute. It won't
grow at all. You will think you've been ripped off. So you must wait
until about two days have passed before your creature has reached its
full length (up to a foot long).
``8. Rejoice that you have such a lovely growing creature in your
possession. Gaze at it for a few days if you like. 9. Take it out of
the water and watch it shrink!''
The exclamation point, that's another marker. Watch it become
unamazing by the same process by which it became amazing! Reflect on
the ineffable cycles of life, or the stupidity of cheap toys, or both!
We share your cynicism! Please buy our product!
FOR THE RECORD, Amazing Growing Sealife is a weird blue plastic animal
shaped sort of like a squid. It absorbs water and becomes a grotesque
misshapen weird blue plastic animal suitable for absolutely nothing.
Mine did get to be a foot long. It was slimy. Seeking some closure on
the experience, I went out to the back yard and hurled my Amazing
Growing Sealife into the air. It landed with a satisfying splat,
spurting water everywhere.
It was entirely undamaged. If my math is right, it was probably going
10 miles an hour at impact, making the Amazing Growing Sealife rather
more crashworthy than the bumper of a standard Lexus.
