Eat Must Be First

My wife (whose palate is clearly more refined than mine) loves Chinese food and likes to order from any new joint that comes to her attention. She has an extensive collection of menus, one of which recently caught my eye, not for its colorful list of Asian delicacies, such as Cold Noodles w. Hot Sesame Sauce (2.99), Jin Jun Pork (5.29) or even it's highly recommended Baby Shrimp w. Cashew Nuts (6.79), but instead for the name of the establishment: Eat Must Be First.

I'm hopelessly drawn to inventive eccentricity and I fully intend to inquire into the genesis of the business' name. But the strange name did bring to mind a similarly structured phrase of wider purview: "All your base are belong to us".

That curious phrase haunted the Internet a couple of years ago like a benign Trojan, turning up in the most unexpected places. And like many phenomena spawned in cyberspace, once the mainstream media latched onto it, the life was slowly sucked out.

For you readers who aren't familiar with the "All your base are belong to us" sensation, the Website, www.planettribes.com provides comprehensive information on the history of the phrase and contains some very amusing video widely shared during the height of the "All your base..." craze.

I got quite a kick out of revisiting the madness.