Where can I acquire this set of blocks for the kidlets???

(edit) Pish and tosh, looks like I crashed the site with my inconsiderate browsing. Or maybe all 3 people who read my blog did it. Yeah, that must be it. Shame on you and your wanton clicking through! :-)

(edit 2) I read the comments, and found that they were purchased at the "RT-Mart in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province." My brother says he has a good friend there, and will ask if she can find a set for me.

*holding my breath*

I scribbled these lines down myself in Penglai, China, between February and March 1998. (After that my TV broke, so I couldn't record any more.) Some of these are from movies; some are from TV shows.

Can I really take down subtitles that quickly? Usually, yes, if only one or two lines in a row need to be transcribed. I credit my years of devotion to transcribing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles quotations down from live TV, since we didn't have a VCR... but that's an embarrassing anecdote for another time.

Anyway, the subtitles!

Cleaning out my Geocities account of drecky old stuff. Posting some of it here so as not to lose it.

Behold -- Hong Kong Movie Subtitles, as sent to me probably almost 10 years ago (!) by Craig Andera, who introduced me to Call of Cthulhu.

On a whim, I bought a bag of "Snapea Crisps." It was only $1.00, and I wanted some more snacky-type food at my desk at work.

The back of the bag is an example of some kind of mangled English. While technically correct (or close to it -- I would have changed the "which" to "that"), it does not sound as though a native speaker wrote it.

My guess it that this is translated from Chinese. The Chinese have a tendency to put everything into a vast, sweeping historical context stretching back through 5,000 years of glorious history. Even snack peas have a place in this overall cosmic order.

The copy reads:

"The pea has played an important role in dietary life and culture since the dawn of recorded history, and because of its nutritional value it has great potential for our dietary lives in the future. We are expecting to see the continuing development of "Snapea Crisps" as a delicate and tasty product which has taken advantage of the pea's original goodness, and we propose this product as a new type of snack."

Distributed by Calbee America, Inc., Torrance CA 90502. www.snacksalad.com

--Wow. It's not enough that they have to be tasty; they also have to live up to being part of the "dietary life and culture since the dawn of recorded history." That's a lot of baggage for baked crispy snack peas.

Whether or not they have "great potential for our dietary lives in the future," I can report that right now, they're crispy and crunchy and salty and delicious. I just had some on a baked potato with cottage cheese. skylerannesmom doesn't agree, but I enjoy different textures in the same dish.  :-)