Wednesday 19 November 2008

Do you extrude your food?

Okay, here's where I am today. This afternoon, we are scheduled for the feedback session following several intensive psycho-educational tests on my younger daughter, whose current label is PDD-NOS. I've learned to loathe and dread these sessions. Assessments are rarely geared toward strengths; they exist to justify funding, so I'm going to be spending half an hour or so being told what's wrong with my daughter. What I need is a distraction. But I have to ask myself, how desperate am I?

A few weeks back, when we'd just returned to Hades and the humid air flopped over my nose like a cloth soaked with chloroform, I was meditating on the Proust Questionnaire. At that time, I was considering my least favourite noise. Today, I'm thinking of my least favourite word. That word, my friends, is extrude. The very visions that word evokes makes my fingers curl convulsively, my gorge rise, and my nostrils constrict in self-defense. It is a disgusting word. I first encountered it during a First Aid course in relation to eyeballs. Ugh.

Now imagine my consternation in reading Jaywalker's latest post in her otherwise beguiling blog. Apparently Google thoughtfully supplies different advertisements with each correspondent who contacts Jaywalker through her gmail, presumably computer-generated to match our myriad interests and obsessions. The ads accompanying my love-notes to JW are about "food extrusion consultants".

What the *&%#@ is a food extrusion consultant? I "googled" it (of course), and got exactly two results: one is Jaywalker's latest post and the other is this, which informs me that food extrusion is: " A type of food processing in which a food product is exposed to intense pressure and heat within an extruder and cooked in order to give the product a particular shape or greater uniformity." Mmmmn. Yummy. This, of course, forced me to look up extruder and the first hit I got was: "device used to melt-mix plastics and powder coatings". So, I'm guessing we're not talking Jamie Oliver here.

Another question in the Proust Questionnaire is: "What profession would you not like to attempt?" Up until now, my answer has always been "anything in sales". My new answer is...

7 comments:

Waffle said...

You know, if I think about this more logically ALL this gmail advertising only really comes to me, so perhaps you can let yourself off responsibility for the extruding. Hmm. Let me extrude that for you. I could imagine extruding might be a useful parenting tool. 'Let go of your brother or I'll extrude your Pokemons!"

Stevyn Colgan said...

I've just told my missus that I'm off to do some food extrusion and she looked physically ill. Ha! That one's locked away now for an occasional airing when I want to 'gross someone out' (as those humorous American chaps say).

I have actually met the man who, I believe, has the very worst job in the world. But faint heart and public decency forbid me from explaining it in all of its nauseating detail.

Ooh! Freaky! The word verification doodam just asked me to type 'Vader'!

Persephone said...

Hey JW (E), what's this about your fainting on a tram? I'm a wee bit sensitive about ambulances these days. I take it you're back at home?

Persephone said...

Hello Steve, thanks for "following" me here! I'm having a particularly devastating day and this is a spirit-lifter.

Jane Henry said...

Um any words that have come into use since Tony Blair's tenure in office. These include, instutionalised anything WHAT DOES IT MEAN????? and several others which at the moment escape me (thankfully I have cast them out of my mind).

I really hate jargon I think. So blue sky thinking, thinking outside the box, ball park figures (never understood what that meant) etc etc make my toes curl.

So sorry you are having a rotten time. You need it like a hole in the head. Do hope today is better now you have David for companyxxx

Persephone said...

Jane, let us not forget educational jargon. We have a teacher who send home stuff for the kids to sign about rules for the "learning environment". And don't get me started on "mission statements"...

Vanessa said...

Can't say the word "extrude" has frequently come up in my sentences or conversations. I'll be on the lookout from now on. ;-)