THE CARE AND FEEDING OF STRANGE BEINGS

In Japan there's an apple possessed by the spirit of a cat who is a heavy metal drummer: Nyango Star. You've probably seen the video of him playing the Anpanman March, entitled "when you're overqualified for the job". It's an internet meme. He is a mascot representinging an apple growing area (Kuroishi City in Aomori). Ever since I found out about him I've been wondering about animated fruit, if apples can have ears, and what the cell structure of ambulatory vegetable matter would be like.

It's far more confusing than Portland Sleestak, who is clearly of animal origin, possibly from another dimension. But Nyango Star is both animal AND vegetable.
And therefore just slightly more out there.

Death Metal Fruit Muppet.


There are times that I am happy that I do not dream in Japanese. And that Anpanman's March is NOT one of the tunes I hear often. Years ago there was a toystore near Union Square with "It's A Small World After All" on permanent loop. The employees there after several months of brassy tinkly-poo inane music went on to careers in mass murder and screaming insanity, and quite a few of them starred in stage productions of Sweeney Todd not realizing it was fantasy. Method acting. What's your motivation? Homicidal bloodlust. Perfect. You. Are. Hired!

Some of them are also succesful in the tech industry.
Corner offices and an exercise bike.

Yesterday a woman who heard me speaking Cantonese, with whom I subsequently had a conversation in Mandarin, asked me if I was a professor.

Nah, just a goofball from North Brabant, and I'm faking it.
My Cantonese is sort of okay, passable.
My Mandarin is awful.


But I didn't say that of course. I simply got out of that situation as fast as possible, lest my mask slip and I be revealed as merely a frog daemon from a Brueghel painting, now marvelously animatronic and gibbering.



About the title of this post? The best way to care and feed the beast is to give him Cantonese food and provide a hot caffeinated beverage. It is not necessary to poke him with a stick, but you may occasionally twitch a wand with a feathery thing at him to atract his attention.



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