Today's funky groceries:

Butter Coconut Cookies (可口奶滋 - kekou naizi, literally: "tasty milk-flavor." "Kekou" is used as the first two characters in the brand name for Coca-Cola, and has no relation at all to the Chinese word for "coconut," which is 椰子.)
 
These cookies are put out under the label of Kraft Foods, believe it or not, despite being Made in Indonesia (印度尼西亞製造)

The label warns us: ARTIFICIALLY BUTTER FLAVORED (人工奶油調味料)

Did you know that the 2008 Beijing Olympics have five color-coded little Teletubbies-esque mascots?

Their names are Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini. If you put those syllables together (Beijing Huanying Ni), it means "Beijing Welcomes You" (although three of the names use different characters -- see this post at Pinyin News for a more thorough explanation).

The hypermuffin is currently addicted to two of the promotional clips from this ad campaign.

Here's the Paralympics mascot (a cute, rainbow-colored cow) chasing dandelion fluff.

And here's the official introduction video for the "Fuwa" (福娃, literally something like "Good-luck Dolls").

I have to say that it's evident a lot of money and thought went into these little characters, and I think it works very well. Look at the elaborate associations that were built into the 5 characters. Combine that kind of symbolism with cute, colorful little characters, a la Teletubbies or Pokemon, and you can't fail to hit the target 3-year old demographic.

At least, it worked in the case of the hypermuffin, who has to watch these clips 20 times a day. And the more I watch them, the more I'm impressed.

When I was in graduate school for China Studies in 1999-2001, I came across a whole bunch of arcane, obscure research. Being me, I photocopied or otherwise preserved notes on certain things that interested me.

One of the things that interests me: Calendars. I like them. The eternal conflict between the solar year and the lunar month, and then trying to work the stars in there, too! Intercalcary days! Intercalcary weeks! Oh, it's all just too interesting.

While up in the attic the other day, I unearthed some of this buried research. It turns out that in traditional Chinese culture, there are 24 segments to each year -- twice a month, or roughly every two weeks, one segment ends and the other begins. Not having the 7-day week, which is an ancient Hebrew invention, traditional China had the 9-day market cycle, and then also these 24 segments based on the sun's progression. Twelve of them are Principal Terms -- basically months -- and the ones in between those twelve are Sectional Terms.

It interested me to see that May 21 (approximately) will begin the fourth Principal Term (Zhongqi), when the sun's longitude is "60." This Principal Term will last 31.2 days, until the sun is at ecliptic longitude 90 -- the summer solstice, and also (incidentally) my birthday.

And I thought it might interest you, too. So I'm making a new tag for "calendars," and if I remember every two weeks, I'll update you on what Term we're in. Just for your reference.

May 21: Xiaoman : 小 滿 (literal meaning: Lesser Fullness [of grain, i.e. kernels plump up])

References:
http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html, a page all about leap years in various calendrical systems.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/focus/solar-term.htm includes the 2008 dates for all these terms

The weather here in Seattle today is cooler, while the sky remains sunny and blue. My brother reminded me of a Chinese saying to describe this time of year: "Tian gao, qi shuang" (heaven is high, the air is crisp) (天高気爽).

Andrew is going off to attend Rachel's "Seventh Sea" game this afternoon, leaving me and the girls home. After putting the hypermuffin to bed, I'll be taking the baby and heading downstairs to tatterdamelion's "Valeland" game. I hope my character can get into a combat this week; that's her strength, not all this diplomacy stuff. ;-)

Tomorrow night Andrew is GMing his "Harmonium" game; we'll get to see aawhitewood, freshly returned from GenCon.

Andrew actually has Labor Day off -- unusual for him! We have no plans whatsoever, and that's fine.

Here is an ancient Chinese proverb:

    Keep a green tree in your heart
    and perhaps the singing bird will come.