That went well.

So, I've been thinking about this phrase because it gets said quite a bit right now, we live in interesting times.

Of course, what we mean by that right now is pretty fucked up times. 

So, I recalled a way people would use the phrase when they wanted to say something nasty but did not really want to sound nasty when they said it. 

"May you live in interesting times." is something that the Brits would say in what might be called a cunty way to someone, which basically was wishing bad luck on the person you said it to...because you were saying may you live in fucked up times. Living in fucked up times, as we are experiencing now, is not fun. 

Now there was another way the phrase could be used, in sort of fortune cookie fashion, where you would say "May you not have the ill luck of living in interesting times." which obviously was wishing good luck on the person you said it to. Hoping they would avoid the interesting/fucked up times. This was said to be the place where the cunty Brits stole the phrase from the Chinese. 

The problem is this, they seem to have never traced back the origin of the phrase to the Chinese, and so the cunty way the Brits use the phrase as opposed to the supposed Chinese use of the phrase don't really line up. I think the general feeling was that Brits are cunts and so they say cunty things and the Chinese may have been pretending to be saying the "May you not have the ill luck" part as a nice addition to the phrase that flipped it, but they were just being more backhanded about it than the Brits and meant it in the same way...sort of ancient Chinese sarcasm. 

So, whether it was a British cunt or Chinese smart ass saying it to you, well, they were both giving you a boot in the balls is the general thought. I mean, the phrase is generally said to be a Chinese curse, so not meant to be kind. 

Now, supposedly no Chinese person said this phrase in the ways above or at least it is not attributed to any specific Chinese person. 

There was this guy Feng Menglong though that wrote in 1627 "Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos." and that's as close to the phrase as the Chinese get. 

But we do like a good myth, so Terry Pratchett wrote in his book "Interesting Times" that the Chinese came up with this, or so he thought, and it was part of a trilogy of curses they would lay on someone at the same time, and this was the least of the three. They went like this:

May you live in interesting times.

May you come to attention of those in authority.

May the gods give you everything you ask for. 

This kind of begs the question, who was being more cunty, the Brits or the Chinese with this stuff?

Anyway, what it proves is humanity has gone through "interesting times" many times and people have over the centuries found things to say to be cunts to each other. 

So, from my perspective, nobody should leave because we may end up with a new enduring phrase that someday someone else will wonder what the origin of that phrase was.