Semantic saturation and the war on chicken paste.

Words are stupid.

Or at least people use them stupidly.

Take processed food. That’s bad, right? You’re not supposed to eat too much processed food.

But what the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway? What is this “process” that is so undesirable?

Because “processed food” means something bad, but “food processor” for some reason doesn’t.

Is the food processor putting the food in your kitchen through an altogether different process than the processing that happens behind-the-scenes at your favorite guilty pleasure fast food joint?

Well…yeah.

One is the process of taking your 3/4 cups of nuts and chopping them into something that can go in your carrot cake. The other is taking uncategorized animal bits and chopping them down into a tacky slurry that can be molded into nugget shapes. (They’re great with this stuff called ketchup, which it turns out is what happens when you put a bunch of tomatoes through yet another process, but that’s a story for another day.)

Where were we going with this?

Oh.

Semantic saturation.

Semantic saturation is when you say a word too many times and it begins to look completely foreign and nonsensical. You start wondering if it’s actually a word at all.

Process.

Prooooocesss.

Process.

{Allen Iverson Voice: “Process…”}

Process.

That’s a weird fucking word.

It’s kind of unsettling, really.

You know what? Probably just don’t buy this. You don’t need another process in your life.

Process.

Process.

Processsssssssssssssssss.