Today on a trip to Sainbury's I bought a large piece of ginger which looks just like the scary rabbit that haunts Jake Gyllenhaal's character in Donnie Darko. I don't really know why I bought it. I needed some ginger but certainly didn't venture out with the intention of recreating characters from cult movie in root form.
I guess I was just worried that someone might buy it without realising the likeness and that seemed to me to be a terrible waste. Better it be bought by someone with a keen interest in cinema.
I had a brief dig around in the loose vegetable section and found a sweet potato that looked a bit like Napolean Dynamite but I wasn't sure whether it was technically a root or a tuber so put it back.
Later, while conducting some internet research to find out what other plants in the ginger family might also have a tendency to assume the form of film characters, I found the strangest article on Wikipedia I have ever seen.
Later still I remember a Thai variant of ginger I once tried to track down when making a red curry from scratch and type 'gallanghal' into Google and get freaked out by the following results:
And so it goes full circle.
It turns out that 'galangal' is the correct spelling, but even so I feel I've tapped into something a little disturbing and decide to curtail my research.
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