Der Kaninchenfisch (Rabbitfish)
Dec. 9th, 2002 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistWe had a movie-watching, cookie-making party at my house yesterday. Originally it was supposed to be Christmas movies and Christmas cookies, but since we had a wider selection of movies and Jenn got a variety of cookie cutters, we were able to enjoy some diversity. We didn't just watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, White Christmas, and (of course the cartoon version of) How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but also Spaceballs, The Emperor's New Groove, and Lilo & Stitch. And our cookies weren't just Santas and trees and snowmen, but also horses and elephants and lions.
And some things that I found completely undefinable...though most of them were decipherable after a little creative thinking or a different perspective.
"What is that?" I asked Al and Sarah once. It looked more like a dolphin than anything else, but that didn't make any sense.
"It's a bunny," Sarah said.
"What?"
"It's a bunny with a fin!" Al said. "That's the best explanation I can come up with." So of course my brain conjured up an image of the kind of fins they put on old cars. I imagined the rabbit with fins like a Cadillac. I had to admit, though, that it looked like it could be sort of a mermaid bunny, with the head of a rabbit and the tail of a fish.
(I'd already come up with the theory that what a person saw in the cookie shapes said at least as much about the person as it did about the cookies. It was a sort of Rorschach test, only tastier than inkblots. Katie saw Santa with a bag of toys slung over his shoulder as a thief skulking away. Josh said the nice little stereotypical Christmas star was a pentagram. Well, that one was on purpose, but he also looked at one of the snowman cookie-cutters upside down and asked why there was a light bulb. I think that one ended up frosted like a light bulb--which it did very much resemble!)
Some time when I was saying something to Matthew about the cookies and needed a name (an antecedent, if you will) for the odd bunny-fish-dolphin-rabbit thing, I called it a rabbitfish. He laughed.
And some things that I found completely undefinable...though most of them were decipherable after a little creative thinking or a different perspective.
"What is that?" I asked Al and Sarah once. It looked more like a dolphin than anything else, but that didn't make any sense.
"It's a bunny," Sarah said.
"What?"
"It's a bunny with a fin!" Al said. "That's the best explanation I can come up with." So of course my brain conjured up an image of the kind of fins they put on old cars. I imagined the rabbit with fins like a Cadillac. I had to admit, though, that it looked like it could be sort of a mermaid bunny, with the head of a rabbit and the tail of a fish.
(I'd already come up with the theory that what a person saw in the cookie shapes said at least as much about the person as it did about the cookies. It was a sort of Rorschach test, only tastier than inkblots. Katie saw Santa with a bag of toys slung over his shoulder as a thief skulking away. Josh said the nice little stereotypical Christmas star was a pentagram. Well, that one was on purpose, but he also looked at one of the snowman cookie-cutters upside down and asked why there was a light bulb. I think that one ended up frosted like a light bulb--which it did very much resemble!)
Some time when I was saying something to Matthew about the cookies and needed a name (an antecedent, if you will) for the odd bunny-fish-dolphin-rabbit thing, I called it a rabbitfish. He laughed.