OctoTriple

Yes, I sometimes find myself asking the question “Is it just me or…?” from time to time. Something to do with the issue of differing views of the world and so forth… This time it is about this bag.

To me, there’s a huge Pi on it, first and foremost. Just Pi. You know, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. When I first saw it I had not seen the octopus written below, and so was feeling pleased to see a commercial logo on a shopping bag that simply had Pi on it. It fit with my oft-expressed desire to see more science and science related things out there in the general culture. This stretched to plays on numbers, mathematics, and so forth.

So then I wondered what the Pi stood for, or what clever pun they were going to work into the mix to connect it to their product. Then I saw that they simply meant it to be octopus eyes. (On a severely deformed octopus – I always thought that they had eight legs…). Given that the blob has the wrong number of legs and all, I can’t properly make it work for me as an octopus. How about you?

Bit disappointing that Pi is not involved. Perhaps it could have worked if the store was using the plural form of the animal’s name.

I’ve been saying legs. Perhaps I should say “appendages”. This all puts me in mind of one of my favourite Ogden Nash rhymes called The Octopus:

The Octopus

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I’d call me Us.

-Ogden Nash

As for parts of octopi being removed, it can be in a good cause.

Here’s a shot of an octopus (pulpo – lovely word in Spanish for the creature) course I shared with some friends in Madrid two weeks ago.

Delicious.

-cvj