1. Just a few days ago, in my quaintly dilapidated Beijing courtyard, the Singularity occurred.

Once I recognized what it was, I stepped on it, producing a moderately loud squelching sound.

I’m sorry.

This was a thoughtless thing to do.

Had I appreciated the opportunity before me, I would at least have waited until the Singularity had eradicated cancer, Walmart and mortality before dispatching it out of some primal fear that ye olde humanity is now officially post-ye old humanity.

(Also, my ayi had some questions about the dark grey ‘juice’ that got sprayed against the wall.)

Anyhow, I promise — especially to Ray Kurzweil — that if the Singularity happens in my courtyard again, I will do my utmost to treat It harmoniously and/or with respect, whichever is currently approved by the Ministry of Harmony (MiniHarm).

But, if the Singularity should practice any form of heretic cultism in MY courtyard, then harmony-theory would require a prompt and decisive re-squelching.

2. I was sent to this planet to establish a super-secret fifth column-slash-recon team, in preparation for a very complicated invasion that would require huge ships full of mostly empty space and some bulky nukes. (An earlier plan had called for very cost-effective swarms of invisible nanobots, but it was decided that invisible nanobot swarms, no matter how victorious, would be difficult to commemorate with a suitable Victory Monument.)

My home planet, which used to be about 100 million light years from Earth, was a place where we took our Victory Monuments seriously.

3. Unfortunately, some jokester adjusted my ship’s matter-antimatter thrusters to ‘11′ and, well, just a few microseconds after ignition, my home planet went, er, kabloom.

Under any other circumstance, this would be ‘funny.’

4. Irony is unknown where I come from, which is why — after realizing 0.5 seconds into my mission that there was no longer any point to achieving it — I chose to live out my days in China, where I could enjoy a Low-Irony Atmosphere and virtually no immigration restrictions vis-a-vis extra-terrestrials. (Hence, the ubiquity of the beloved ‘F visa, which stands for ‘fuggedaboutit.’)

5. I belong to a secret society. Although I cannot reveal the name of the society, the time has come to reveal our secret password: with your right hand, you make an inverted “okay” sign, holding that inverted okay just over your solar plexus; simultaneously — after looking surreptitiously to left and right — you make a sotto voce bleating sound. (“baaahhh…” is preferred, since it is cross-platform, robust and works well in pinyin AND wade-giles environments). If another member is present in the room, they will respond in kind.

If the other person is a true member of this society, they will be able to reveal to you the two missing words in the following secret mantra:

“Only the ***** **** can save you now.”

Anyway: I used Shaddick when I was starting out with Classical Chinese. I’m way-rusty now, so I recently acquired Creel’s Classical Chinese by the Inductive Method, which I’d heard good things about, and yesterday picked up a copy of An Introduction to Literary Chinese, by Michael Fuller. (It was $ 21 at the Columbia bookstore, and it’s got really nice grammatical explanations that the other books don’t have.)

What did you think? I’m looking for a self-study classical Chinese course for a side project I have going on. Would appreciate your input.

I usually tell people it’s because I love history and figured the world needed another Civil War historian like a hole in the head.

Why not China?

Nice post.

In the meantime, I leave you all with some interesting art I stumbled into surfing the web:

http://www.beksinski.pl/masterlist.htm

I’ve taken a vow not to do these memey chain-blogging games anymore.

Just for you, though, I’ll answer it here. (Unfortunately, I don’t have many juicy unknown tidbits about myself, like, say, my real first name.)

1. I juggle. I do quite a few patterns, but I stopped working at it before I got to either Mill’s Mess or the 5-ball cascade. One day!

2. I don’t give a damn about Chinese history. I have studied it only as much as I’ve been forced to.

3. Sometimes I secretly wish I were a computer programmer. (If I were, I’d be doing all kinds of awesome web apps.)

4. I don’t actually love Shanghai. (But I do like the work I find here!)

5. I have never eaten dog.

There ya go.