Why I chose elephants and mushrooms, and why I probably shouldn't have

First of all, I have to admit, the genius (or idiocy- what have you) of this title can not only be attributed to me. The original notion of Elephants tasting like mushrooms was a shared experience between my boyfriend and I while on Safari in Kenya last June.

Instead of taking in the splendour of our surroundings or pondering the greater questions in life, we were assigning foods to the animals we spotted. (Isn’t that what everyone does in the Masai Mara?) Trust me, two weeks of nothing but acacia trees, binoculars, and adjusting your zoom lens just long enough to miss the shot can do this to a person. The first animals to arrive during our little experiment was a group of massive, whiskery, wrinkled, and sad looking elephants.

(See above picture for offending elephants.)

Before I even had the chance to begin scrolling through my mind for something an elephant would taste like, my boyfriend turned to me, shivered, gagged and said “mushrooms. yup, definitely mushrooms.” Obviously, he’s not a fan of mushrooms. Nonetheless, I immediately agreed. If there is anything in the world that an elephant would taste like (based on appearances of course), it would be a mushroom. Admittedly, no one in our caravan agreed - or for that matter, spoke another word to either of us for the rest of the trip.

Seven months later, the entire episode was forgotten until about a week ago when I decided to begin blogging. Now, I know that the name of a blog holds a great deal of importance, much like the title of a novel or a movie- in a way, it’s a bit like naming a child. Meaning- it will be out there, in the virtual universe forever. And it’s all mine, so I have to take complete responsibility for it (just writing this is turning my stomach in knots and making me think I should have just named it “Morgan’s mind” or something boring and useless so if all fails, it will fade into obscurity).

I digress. I was throwing around ideas with my younger and highly creative sister about the name of my newborn baby (blog) and being that I decided to launch it on my 27th birthday, I was trying to come up with names incorporating the number 27. I contemplated making it a theme. I then realized I was focusing too much on the number and not the blog itself and consequently, that line of thinking was extinguished. HOWEVER, before I came to my senses, I thought of the name “vente sette parete” which means something along the lines of “27 opinions” in Italian and therefore, would begin each entry with the 27 ideas/thoughts/opinions going through my mind at that very moment. I wrote my sister a “demo-list” and one of the thoughts, somewhere around 18 or 19, was “I bet elephants taste like mushrooms.” She immediately wrote back and said, “I bet elephants taste like mushrooms. There you go.”

She may have been joking. I didn’t care. I then proposed the name to a few more people to gauge reactions and for the most part, I received inquisitive laughter. A few individuals cocked their heads and furrowed their brows, but these people probably wouldn’t appreciate the stuff I write anyway. So there you have it;

I Bet Elephants Taste Like Mushrooms.

A few pieces of random information having something to do with the title of the blog;
1. I am a vegetarian and will never ever even come close to tasting an elephant- or anything like one.
2. I sort of like mushrooms. Portabellas are great, shitakes are decent when prepared well, porcinis are gross- edible slugs. As for hallucinogenics, that’s a conversation for another time. Are truffles considered mushrooms? I know they are a fungi. Well- if they can be classified as mushrooms- then mushrooms just shot up in my book.
3. If interested, here are a few of the other potential names of the blog and why I didn’t/couldn’t use them;
-“A life uncommon” a little presumptuous, don’t you think? Maybe one day...
-“yellow roman candles” It’s from my favourite Kerouac quote- which you will eventually find somewhere on this blog. I just figured that very few people would get it and therefore it would be a random stringing together of words. Also, the archetypal significance of yellow is illness...who wants that in their title?
-“into the mystic” Someone already took it. Bitch.
- Lastly, there were a bunch of rhymes I was playing with in Italian (my favorite language) but then I thought that it would be even more obscure than “yellow roman candles,” other than to the 20 people I know in Italy...so I gave it a miss.

And there you have it. I hope you like it.
xx

m