#261 Lost in Transocean

So there’s this sushi/teriyaki place. And they used to be named something else. I guess they decided they needed to change that name to grab a different customer. Maybe the old place had developed a bad taste in the mouths of patrons. So they got rid of the former Japanese name and replaced it with a pleasant-sounding American name. And since their restaurant was about seafood, their new name was Seaworld. Uh oh.
Rule of thumb, you should be very careful when you’re not dealing in your native language. See, the sea as in Seaworld is different from the sea as in seafood. Now granted Americans are a little weird when it comes to naming food. We say seafood to encompass everything in the water that’s even vaguely edible but we have no equivalent word for creatures of the solid earth. “Landfood” never caught on. And it’s also true that we Americans feel we have to be redundant when it comes to things from the briny depths. We say we are going to have a tuna fish sandwich or make tuna fish salad. We never feel impelled to designate the order of origin when it comes to, say, chicken. You havin’ the tunafish? I’m gonna get a chicken-bird sandwich. In the case of beef we are even more conflicted. When we want a sandwich crafted from the ground muscle and fat tissue of the noble steer, we don’t say we’re having a beefburger we say we’re having a hamburger. A real hamburger, that is, a burger crafted from pork, we call a sausage patty.
So I’m not blaming our Japanese restaurateurs for doing anything wrong. American is tricky. It’s just that the word “Seaworld” does no conjure up sushi to me. Or if it does, it isn’t pleasant. Every time I drive by the restaurant I have visions of Shamu being sliced into slivers with a sharp sashimi knife. Or Orcas gladly gallivanting to the guillotine, there to be beheaded breaded and cooked into Keiko katsu. Or dolphins frolicking in the pool and soaring through hoops, playful and pleasing to the eye and ear, only to be be rendered, plated, and playing to the palate. Flipper wasn’t meant for the little boats floating in front of the sushi chef. He was meant to be free. And he wasn’t meant for performing on command at Seaworld either, that aquatic Folsom that never had a even a finny Johnny Cash to relieve their monotony. As a kid, I loved to see the dolphins and the killer whales. But the truth is, even though they have a bigger jail cell and exercise yard than most detainees, the ocean is a mighty big place and Seaworld ain’t much of a world at all. You can argue over whether creatures that evolved with the spirit of the boundless waves welling inside them would have a hard time settling for a swimming pool. But you can bet they weren’t designed to have a beach ball on their nose.
America, ya gotta love it.