Wots inside the pumpkin?

Ever wondered why supermarkets sell all their pumpkin already cut up? Sure, for one reason it's because lots of people don't want to buy a whole pumpkin anymore, but by cutting open the pumpkin the supermarket hopes you'll see how bright and golden they are inside - much more attractive than the often roughened, sun-marked skin outside. Now I don't mind butternut, or golden nugget, I'll eat Queensland Blue at a pinch but I really love Jap pumpkins (or Kent pumpkin to reflect the current "correct" name). But I digress, as I so often do.

Looking at a whole pumpkin, its very hard to know what they are like inside. The skin might be smooth and unmarked and yet when you get it home and open it up the flesh can be pale and insipid in taste. Or it may be overripe, and the pulp around the seeds on the verge of fermenting. Nasty. Of course, if like me you slaved for eight years at the mercy of management in the fruit and vege section of a supermarket, you'll know damn well how to pick a good pumpkin because all the good ones got prepped for sale by machete wielding youths like myself - and woe betide the feckless fool who picked a pumpkin for cutting that did not reflect the standard.

So all the good pumpkins got cut up, and the (probably) not so good ones got placed out for sale at the slightly cheaper "whole" price.

So what lesson can we learn from this? Does there need to be a lesson at all? It's my blog, so yes, there is a lesson and you'll damn well like it. (helloooooooooo? anyone reading my blog??? No, Gren, they fell asleep during the last class. . .)

Life is like a pumpkin. No, that's not it, PEOPLE are like pumpkins, what you see on the outside is not necessarily a truthfull reflection of what is inside, and those that you can see the inside of have been opened up in some way.

I would suggest that this process of opening up is often painful (certainly for the pumpkins at any rate), but it would seem to be necessary in order to see the best bits of everybody. Sometimes someone comes along and cuts you open, sometimes you break open, sometimes you are so full of something that you burst open - whatever suits eh?

I wonder if there is something out there that has the job of going round opening up "pumpkins"?

Perhaps the universe just prefers pumpkins to be open and created supermarkets to ensure that this happens as often as possible. Have pumpkins in fact driven the evolution of the supermarket to its current heights?

Join me tomorrow when I discuss something else.

Or not.



I'll never listen to Smashing Pumpkins the same way again.