In the interest of posting a post in September, I present with no introduction the cover of a nonexistent graphic novel: "Curse of the Dagger!" This was an idea I had and messed around with for a while. Finally I inked it and scanned it into Photoshop for the colors. Fun!A young pharaoh finds a mysterious dagger stuck in a strange looking skull in the desert. As he pulls the dagger from the bizarre, deformed skull, a brilliant red light flashes across the landscape.
Little does the young king know, he has released an ancient curse that will ravage the kingdom and threaten to destroy the very fabric of reality!
Anyway...
OK, I thought of a translational subject:
The Chinese phrase: 胡说八道 (hú shuō bā dào) means "nonsense." It is what Rep. Joe Wilson would have yelled at Pres. Obama during his health care speech if he spoke Chinese. Literally it means: "Outrageous speech in eight ways." What is the origin of this strange saying? Let me regale you with the tale...
A young pharaoh finds a mysterious dagger stuck in a strange looking skull - No, no that's not it. Here is the story that makes most sense to me (from Baidu).
In ancient times, Chinese people referred to the minority populations to the north and west as the "Hu." The who? Yes. The Hu. So the unintelligible language of these groups was lumped under the phrase, "hu shuo" 胡说 (Hu speak).
The 八道 (bā dào) part of this expression comes from the "Noble Eightfold Path" 八正道 (ba1 zheng4 dao4) of Buddhism. So in other words, the phrase means "an ignorant barbarian trying to talk about the Noble Eightfold Path to enlightenment."
See, now isn't that much more interesting than a moronic outburst of "you lie!" ?
