Fun Facts and Trivia Part Four: Episodes 10-12

 Here we go, rambling as usual!

The rabbit that Yorick and the Rats meet on the moon is kind of a fun thing...when we here in Canada look at the moon, we see the “Man in the Moon”, a very loose representation of a man’s face. In Japan, however, a rabbit grinding rice in a pestle is seen in the patterns (sometimes just a rabbit sitting).

This is based on an old tale in which a rabbit ends up on the moon making mochi (an absolutely delicious sweet made from glutinous rice). There’s even a great children’s clapping/counting game with a rhyme about the rabbit, the moon and the mochi. The idea of the rabbit on the moon is fairly widespread, however; throughout Asia and even in Aztec and Cree legends! Anyway, it’s a charming representation and to my eye makes more sense than a face.

This brings us on a side note to the wonderful world of pareidolia. Our human brains attempt to make sense of random patterns and shapes by seeing figures and pictures of recognizable things, typically faces, in them. (I’m very prone to this myself; show me a water stain on a wall and I’ll show you an 18th-century gentleman or whatever). Here’s a weird(er) thing, though; computers see things in certain ways, too. Facial recognition software has led to some interesting extrapolations, but there is actually creative image-editing software specifically designed to exaggerate parts of photos of unrelated objects that it detects as facial features (or other parameters), leading to some really bizarre (actually surreal and almost nightmarish) images.

Now back to our series! The Anachronauts keep getting mail for Francis Drake (a real Elizabethan pirate...err... privateer) on his ship the Golden Hind (on which the Golden Hind-er was based). This is just a bit of aggravation from my everyday life: we continually get mail for someone with a similar address. It bugs me.

Believe it or not, the first documented performance of Hamlet actually was aboard the “Red Dragon” off the coast of Sierra Leone in 1607! It was acted by the crew for a visiting bigwig (and to keep the crew from loafing about gambling). And yes, that’s Squeaky as Ophelia awaiting his entrance.
 
A few Shakespeare quotes make their way into these episodes, and two quite famous misquotes. "Lead on, Macduff" is a misquote of "Lay on, Macduff" (from Macbeth), with Macbeth badgering his enemy into attacking him rather than leading him somewhere! Funny how misquotes take on such different meanings from the originals. However, possibly THE most misquoted line in all of Shakespeare is lampooned in the Anachronauts' production of "Hamlet"; it doesn't take on any new meaning to say "I knew him well" rather than "I knew him, Horatio" when speaking of Yorick, but Yorick's a stickler when it comes to his only scene in the great play!


...and, yes, there is a flag on the moon; it’s at the eighth hole.

***the whole "flag on the moon" thing comes from an absolutely baffling B movie called "Beast of Yucca Flats". The narration is cryptic and surreal, kind of like stream-of-consciousness beat poetry. "Flag on the moon..how did it get there?" is repeated and has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE STORY! Oh, and we're supposed to believe that Tor Johnson is a brilliant scientist.