Random observations

[camwyn]

Going 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.

Comments

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

Ye GODS, do not get me started on the American education system.

For crying out loud, if I didn't grow up watching the History Channel, I still would not know that American went on a colonization bender!

I for one would grovel at your feet in return for Chinese history lessons. I hate being ignrant.

[camwyn]

M'kay. I'll start with something fairly soon, I think. At the moment I'm familiar with up through about the Tang dynasty (though I'm working on more very very quickly), which probably doesn't mean a whole lot right now. Just a few quick points about it, the actual lessons or whatever will start when I am at home and am not spending work time on it:

1. The horse whose picture accompanies this posting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is a fairly decent representative of Tang dynasty sculpture. There's a lot of horse sculptures from that dynasty, and a lot of camels. Most of 'em are glazed in three colors - orangey-brown, green, and white.

2. Tang appears in some history books spelled T'ang. This is due to an evil thing called romanization, which drove me nuts for a long time until I got an explanation. (Basically: ignore the apostrophe.)

3. If you've ever read any of Barry Hughart's Number Ten Ox and Master Li books, those take place during the Tang dynasty. Although Mr. Hughart is not the best guide to what happened when, because Mr. Hughart knows his Chinese history to an extent I can only marvel at - and deliberately shredded it all up so that he could put the interesting bits where he needed them to be. (By way of example, Number Ten Ox's introduction about being named Lu Yu? 'I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Classic of Tea'? Fine - except that the eminent author wasn't born until well after the time frame of Ox and Master Li's adventures.)

Anyway. There will be lessons very soon, but right now I've got work, and tonight I've got a test. bleah.