First, I failed to note earlier that the brand name is Potato Cat in English, 土豆貓 in Chinese. In "Same aloo gobi (actually different aloo gobi every time)," I noted that aloo (Hindi for "potato") was not only transliterated but also translated differently on the two menus I saw: once as 洋芋 ("ocean taro") and once as 馬鈴薯 ("horse bell potato"). Here we have a third Chinese word for "potato": 土豆 ("earth bean"). In Taiwan, that's actually a dialect word for "peanut," but it means "potato" on the Mainland, which is apparently where these pastels were made. (Notice also the simplified character 画, where the Taiwanese would use the traditional 畫).
Since different ways of rendering "potato" in Chinese had just come up in connection with aloo gobhi ("potatoes [and] cauliflower"), I wondered what the Hindi for "cat" might be. It's billi. So Potato Cat would be aloo billi -- what you might say to your hounds when you're hunting roe deer in western France.
In yesterday's post, I noted the significance of the blue book with a gold heart on the cover but said I wasn't sure how the word Banana on the spine fit in with that symbolism. Actually, it fits perfectly. Vidya is a major gap in my cultural literacy, but luckily I've got Bill and WG to fill me in when necessary. It turns out that "Breaking Through (Heart of Gold)" is the main theme song of the 2025 Nintendo game Donkey Kong Bananza.
Bananza isn't just the name of the game. The word also appears in the lyrics, shortly after the only mention of a "heart of gold":
Look at us, so big and smallTwo together through it allHeart of gold, a wish come trueYou and me, unbreakableBananzaBananza
Other parts of the lyrics are interesting, too. The first line is:
This strange world, it's so vast and deep
Which reminds me of a translation from Nietzsche I did back in 2019:
O man, give ear!Deep midnight speaketh; canst thou hear?"From sleep, from sleep,From dreaming deep I woke and rose;The world is deep,More deep than day would e’er suppose.How deep her woe!Joy—deeper still than heartache, she.Though woe cry, 'Go!'All joys long for eternity—For deep on deep eternity!"
Although the lines quoted earlier refer to "Two together through it all," another repeated line is:
We'll strike a chord that's gonna break us free
Two can't make a chord; it takes at least three. This syncs with something that happened this morning. I was listening (again!) to "Aloo Gobi" by Weezer and came to these lines:
You are not aloneYou are not aloneSomeone else will be there with you, be there with youYou are not aloneBe there with you, be there with youYou are not alone
As this was playing, a stack of books on my desk caught my eye:
I saw "We Are NOT Alone, Child of Fortune." As I have mentioned before, "Child of Fortune" is the meaning of my last name, Tychonievich. "You are not alone" can be true if there are just two people: you and someone else. "We are not alone," like a chord, requires three.
At the bottom of the stack is The Secret Language of Birthdays, which I have posted about before ("Squaring the circle, and more red and blue eyes"). I bought that book for the newspaper clippings the previous owner had put in it, but in the context of the present post, what is significant about it is the cover art, which is a colorized version of a detail from the Flammarion engraving:
The Donkey Kong Bananza song, remember, is called "Breaking Through (Heart of Gold)." The Flammarion engraving depicts someone "breaking through" into another world, and I included this image in my 2022 post "Break on through to the other side":
Coming back to the "strike a chord" reference, though, the heart of gold has been associated with one particular chord: A minor (ACE). In fact, my "bright eyes" post quoted and linked to my 2024 post "I've been A minor for a heart of gold." That post begins by referring to an earlier post with a nearly identical title, "I've been a miner for a heart of gold," and cautioning the reader not to confuse the two. The idea of a pair of "twin" posts with nearly but not precisely identical titles also came up in the "bright eyes" post.
More Donkey Kong lyrics that got my attention:
You and me (We're my favorite band)My hand in your hand
Given that the song has "Heart of Gold" in the title, this is a link to the Grateful Dead song "Scarlet Begonias":
Wind in the willow's playin' "Tea For Two"The sky was yellow, and the Sun was blueStrangers stoppin' strangers, just to shake their handEverybody's playing in the heart of gold band, heart of gold band
That song has come up a lot, but most recently I think in "Blueberry Hill and the Golden Age," because the Fats Domino song "Blueberry Hill" also references a song being played by the "wind in the willow" -- and that brings us to the strangest connection with the Donkey Kong lyrics.
When "Blueberry Hill" first came up, I remembered a Tori Amos song that said, "Too bad 'Blueberry Hill' was premature." When I looked it up, though, I found that I'd always misheard it. The song is "Mr. Zebra":
The final line is in fact:
Too bad the burial was premature, she said and smiled
The meter of the song requires Tori to stress the last syllable of burial, making it sound like "berry hill," and I guess I just hallucinated "blue" to make the lyrics make some sort of sense.
Here's how the song begins:
Hello, Mr. ZebraCan I have your sweater?'Cause it's cold, cold, coldIn my hole, hole, hole
And here are lines from the Donkey Kong song:
When it all seems so dark and bleakWhen the hole looks so cold and deep
So they both have a cold hole and a roundabout connection to "Blueberry Hill." Not that impressive -- until I scrolled down on the lyrics site I had been using and saw this:
Yes, this same video game has another song called "Zebra Bananza" -- played, apparently, when Donkey Kong transforms into a zebra. I guess he transforms into lots of different animals in this game -- there's an "Ostrich Bananza" song, an "Elephant Banaza" song, and so on -- but "Zebra Bananza" was the one the lyrics site thought I might also like.
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