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Random observations
Mar. 12th, 2002 09:50 amGoing through a spreadsheet of names of people and organizations to get thank-you letters for having donated to Red Cross. Most of these are for tax purposes- donors need the letter to prove to the IRS that they gave the $$. Anyway, the batch I'm currently doing takes up several columns on the screen. I have some of the columns shrunk down so that I can see them all, although I can only see the first part of a few columns, the ones I don't need. I'm glancing down the list of Salutations to make sure that people named 'Hitesh Patel' get addressed as 'Friend' or 'Hitesh' instead of 'Patel'- the default salutation is (title) (last name), and if you don't have a title, the computer doesn't necessarily realize that. Companies get the company name as their default addressee.
Anyway, I had to smile just a little bit as I looked down this contracted column and spotted one that, for all intents and purposes, simply said 'Popular Fish'.
It's a fish market, it's got a longer name than that, but I kind of liked the idea of a place just being named Popular Fish. As Dave Barry would say, it would make a good band name. Maybe I'll use it somewhere.
In the meantime, I've been going over the alt-history thing I mentioned yesterday and thinking about RPG uses for it. For lack of a better term I'll call it the Elemental Conspiracy setting; if there's enough demand I might just wind up trotting out the background so far for y'all and we can hash out what to do with it. I mentioned it to an offline friend of mine the other day and got forcibly reminded that even really well-educated, intelligent Americans have very little chance of knowing the Chinese history that would have led up to the events of the setting. I am so grateful to Larry Gonick for his Cartoon History of the Universe, but last time I checked, he'd only gotten as far as the Three Kingdoms period. I've had to dig up the rest myself, swearing and cursing about the American school curriculum along the way. I'm sorely tempted to start offering lessons or something, but that presumes an audience. Plus it's presumptuous as all get-out for someone like myself, who's neither of the right ethnic background, nor the right racial background, nor the right educational background. (Anthropology courses concentrating on Asia are not the same as having a history degree.) *sigh*
Anyway. To summarize. Popular Fish, very funny; possible game setting foo, indicative of deeply flawed history curriculum in American schools.
Today's pulp survival tip is #44: If the box/tomb/statue base/temple claims to be cursed, try not to be there when someone opens it. There may not be a Supernatural Menace at hand, but mundane boobytraps have killed better tomb raiders than you.
Anyway, I had to smile just a little bit as I looked down this contracted column and spotted one that, for all intents and purposes, simply said 'Popular Fish'.
It's a fish market, it's got a longer name than that, but I kind of liked the idea of a place just being named Popular Fish. As Dave Barry would say, it would make a good band name. Maybe I'll use it somewhere.
In the meantime, I've been going over the alt-history thing I mentioned yesterday and thinking about RPG uses for it. For lack of a better term I'll call it the Elemental Conspiracy setting; if there's enough demand I might just wind up trotting out the background so far for y'all and we can hash out what to do with it. I mentioned it to an offline friend of mine the other day and got forcibly reminded that even really well-educated, intelligent Americans have very little chance of knowing the Chinese history that would have led up to the events of the setting. I am so grateful to Larry Gonick for his Cartoon History of the Universe, but last time I checked, he'd only gotten as far as the Three Kingdoms period. I've had to dig up the rest myself, swearing and cursing about the American school curriculum along the way. I'm sorely tempted to start offering lessons or something, but that presumes an audience. Plus it's presumptuous as all get-out for someone like myself, who's neither of the right ethnic background, nor the right racial background, nor the right educational background. (Anthropology courses concentrating on Asia are not the same as having a history degree.) *sigh*
Anyway. To summarize. Popular Fish, very funny; possible game setting foo, indicative of deeply flawed history curriculum in American schools.
Today's pulp survival tip is #44: If the box/tomb/statue base/temple claims to be cursed, try not to be there when someone opens it. There may not be a Supernatural Menace at hand, but mundane boobytraps have killed better tomb raiders than you.
