Wednesday, July 30, 2008

it is what it is

feeling a bit reflective a few days back, i decided to walk home one evening in lieu of a $10 cab ride. i strolled up the street, earbuds in, aurally isolated from the world. but i did notice a display for grape nuts.

and it was complex. nuanced. or maybe just dumb.

on the poster, it had two phrases. oatmeal stout. pale ale. both of them with strikethroughs. then some whitespace and the words grape nuts. followed by "it is what it is".

which i find odd. because. i don't what grape nuts "is". they're not grapes. they're not nuts. and they're certainly not nuts that come from grapes. in fact, as a child, after seeing one of their tv commercials, what exactly grape nuts were and how in the hell they got the name grape nuts.

further, being plural, shouldn't it be "they are what they are". now i'm pretty sure what they mean is grape nuts are healthy -- no sugar, food coloring, etc. added. and i'm pretty sure the people who were working on the campaign knew exactly what they were, but for the rest of us we're pretty much in the dark on this.

here's an idea instead of giving us the existential explanation of what grape nuts are, why not just tell us straight away. i guarantee if they had done that, i'd have had several conversations the next day that started with, "hey, you know grape nuts actually are..."

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