I’m waiting for Ovalquik.

But in the spirit of comity with my cast-iron-loving brother Tayler, I’ll offer the rewrite above.

Please know that I’m not taking issue with you calling the chupaqueso “fake.” I’m taking issue with your use of “ostensibly.” Because definition 1, “Represented or appearing as such,” would indicate that I’m representing or causing the chupaqueso to appear fake. I’m not — I’m representing it as REAL food, and causing it to appear that way (and whether or not I think it IS real isn’t the point.)

Definition 2, “from appearances alone,” would suggest that regardless of my intent (and the intent of Jay Maynard who is handling hosting), the chupaqueso “from appearances alone” appears to be fake. Well… I guess if you think it appears to be fake, then from your perspective it’s “ostensibly-fake.”

But I have to wonder whether that’s what you MEANT when you used that word. Perhaps what you meant to say was “people reading Howard’s comic may think the chupaqueso is fake, but it’s not.” THAT meaning nicely explains why the chupaqueso entry got pulled from wikipedia — not that you had anything to do with it, and not that I particularly minded one way or another. The fact that you linked to a strip where the chupaqueso was mentioned lends support to this argument, but it still seems to me to be poor word choice.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. Maybe it’s waaay past my bedtime, and I’ve already typed more in response than you wrote in your original post. And maybe I should have spent more time addressing the central point, which is that webcomic geeks (and lots of other geeks) have the creative power to be pretty good cooks.

Make yourself a chupaqueso, and maybe if you’re in town sometime I’ll treat you to some bacon-wrapped chicken, veggie-kababs, or a nice masaman curry.

–Howard