Round and Square: Chinese cosmology

From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

The Power of Five (2)—Fast Food Restaurants

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "The Power of Five"
One year ago on Round and Square (22 June 2012)—Fieldnotes From History: Provincial Elections (d)
Two years ago on Round and Square (22 June 2011)—Seinfeld Ethnography: Just Dessert

[a] Two "all beef" patties, special sauce, lettuce...RF

Below, I list the "Five Fast Food Restaurants."

If this does not make sense, stay with it. But if you somehow think that I am making a "top-five list," you would be badly mistaken. To begin, the whole concept of fast food—from architecture to product—is part of what has haunted the second half of the twentieth century (and beyond...like disco, but more lasting). Nope, this is just "cultural observation.

[b] Easy RF

If you think that I am honoring fast food or making a "best" list, please know that I am not. Go back and look at the introduction to this series to get a feel for yin-yang, five-phase cosmology.

Nope, these are the Five Fast Food Restaurants. As a totality, they are "fast food restaurants." That is what the cosmologist Robert André LaFleur maintains, at least. I welcome your comments and additions, below (but these are still the Five Fast Food Restaurants).

Remember, together they form the idea "fast food restaurants."

If this doesn't make sense...go back and read the introduction and the links!

                                       The Five (American)
                                       Fast Food Restaurants
                                       McDonalds
                                       Kentucky Fried Chicken
                                       Dunkin' Donuts
                                       Dairy Queen
                                       Taco Bell

Discuss. Just don't eat the food.

Just like Dong Zhongshu and Lü Buwei, I don't give my reasons (I don't need no stinkin' reasons).* I am well, a...sort of...cosmologist. My choices should be "self-evident," but the whole point of this Round and Square series is to get a little opinion moving.
*But even I sense the omission of Popeye's (a little bit of "seafood")...and Subway.

And, yes, several of the "illustrations" didn't make the cut.

Feel free to comment and disagree (politely, gracefully...as though you were raised in North Dakota, on the lapping banks of the Red River).

[c] Graceful RF