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Head | Oct 20 2005

My ketchup bottle has a quote on the front. It says “Has Restaurant Experience.” On the back of the bottle the manufacturer explains that they’re running a “talking label” contest. You can send in your own phrase. The contest is called Say Something Ketchuppy. It makes me want to cut my head off.

For a while I kept the bottle at the back of the refrigerator, where I wouldn’t have to look at it, but this didn’t help because I knew the bottle was there and still thought about it every time I opened the refrigerator.

I was tempted to throw it out—I don’t even eat ketchup—but K does, and that’s why I bought it: for K, who so far as I know doesn’t mind the quote on the bottle, assuming she’s even noticed it.

For my part I’ve never mentioned it to her, nor mentioned how I feel about it, because to do so would give it even more power than it already has and make me think about it more than I already do, which is a lot.

Finally this morning I had enough: I took the bottle and poured its contents into an empty salad dressing bottle, threw the ketchup bottle in the trash, took the trash bag downstairs and stuck it in one of the trash cans in front of the building. Then I dragged the can to the curb, though today isn’t trash day.

The new ketchup bottle is adorned with a drawing of the head of a famous actor, now retired I believe, who’s wearing a thick ruffled collar like those favored by Renaissance era aristocrats. This drawing is meant as a kind of joke, a charming bit of fun, but sadly it makes the actor’s head look like a fancy Italian delicacy, something you’d buy in a bakery in Little Italy. I don’t mind the drawing nearly as much as the quote on the ketchup bottle, although it does now appear that the actor’s head is floating in a sea of blood—an unfortunate although not entirely irrelevant coincidence.