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T#!$ !$ @ W0R&
Spring, [1] Rob [2] and I went to Stir Crazy in Boca Raton for dinner. And as
per the name, they do nothing but stir fry, either pre-selected dishes, or a
“roll your own” buffet-type deal where you select everything. The food is
good, and as Spring would attest, the Banana-Wanton Drink is to die for. But
the decor—the decor bothers me.
Years ago in college, I took a Chinese calligraphy class, and while I can
only “read” half a dozen Chinese characters, I do have an understanding of
how Chinese characters are written. The reason I bring this up is that the
interior of Stir Crazy is overwritten with that looks like Chinese
characters, but in reality is some Western artist's rendition of what Chinese
characters look like. No attempt was made to make acurate Chinese idiographs
at all (and of the few that are real, they are either the simpler four stroke
or fewer idiographs, or pure mistakes).
“Those characters,” I said, “are not real.”
“How do you know?” asked Rob.
“They're not real characters. They're nearly random strokes,” I said.
“But how can you tell?” asked Spring.
“By the way the characters are formed. That character there,” I said,
pointing to a character with a decidedly circular formation on the wall, “the
one with the circular oval about it. Chinese is written with straight
strokes, not cicrular ones.”
“So it's misspelled?”
“More like it's meaningless. It'd be as if you wrote words with both random
letters and shapes, like a triangle.”
“Ah.”
[1]
http://www.springdew.com/
[2]
http://www.tragic-smurfs.com/
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