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So I've been trying to write this big script style Virtual series called the Long Night and I was doing a little research in search of real world inspiration to flesh out some of the alien cultures and I found something called Buzkashi, played in Afghanistan where two teams try to get a goat corpse over a goal line while riding horses and hitting each other.

If that isn't a Klingon sport, I don't know what is.

Any one else see something that you see and think "(blank) alien race would most certainly do that!"

After living in a foreign country, that I was annoyed that Star Trek aliens were often less alien to me than other humans I had met (as in these people different presuppositions, attitudes, habits way different from mine or Americans in general.)

Here are two cool ceremonies from Thailand: At least the first could be Bajoran.

Loykertung (I am spelling this phonetically): All the children build a little boat, with a base made from a circle of styrofoam about foot across, with all these flowers or decorations on top and a candle in the middle. So first you admire all these floats made by kids. Then everyone goes to the river at dusk and floats their boats down the river. So there are all these flickering lights floating down the river and people lined up on the banks and people going down to launch their boats. It kind of has the feel of Halloween in the sense that everyone is out at night, but it is very peaceful. The meaning has to do with floating your sins away down the river.

Then there is Sonkron (again, the spelling is phonetic.) It began as day when you bless other people by pouring a little perfumed water on them (consensually). It evolved into a nation-wide water fight, all in in good fun, with people suprising each other AND passersby by throwing buckets of water at them. You spend the whole day drenched, but it is so hot out it doesn't matter. A fun idea for a national holiday! I don't know what alien race should claim this one. I think it would be a good idea for more humans.

The best way to design an alien culture is make it relatable to something in similar culture on Earth. So I'm not surprised to hear humans are harder to understand then soemthing on Star Trek.

For instance, ancient Zorastrians would bury their dead in huge "Towers of Silence" where vultures and the elements would clean the bones and then they'd store them in a sacred ossuary. Sounds kind of Vulcan or Romulan to me.

A lot of Aztec and Mayan architecture kind of reminds me of what the Gorn home world might look like. Lots of steps, statues of dragons and lizards.

Bajoran stuff seems based on Asian and Indian culture, There's a Hindu festival called Holi where they toss colored powder at shrines.

justTripn wrote:After living in a foreign country, that I was annoyed that Star Trek aliens were often less alien to me than other humans I had met (as in these people different presuppositions, attitudes, habits way different from mine or Americans in general.)

Yep, I've often found this kind of peculiar. If I had to write Star Trek for a living, I'd read anthropology all the time. But maybe general audiences would be turned off and think, "Oh please, THAT'S not believable."

justTripn wrote:Then there is Sonkron (again, the spelling is phonetic.) It began as day when you bless other people by pouring a little perfumed water on them (consensually). It evolved into a nation-wide water fight, all in in good fun, with people suprising each other AND passersby by throwing buckets of water at them. You spend the whole day drenched, but it is so hot out it doesn't matter. A fun idea for a national holiday! I don't know what alien race should claim this one. I think it would be a good idea for more humans.

Kinda hard on those of us who wear glasses. We'd spend the day blind.

I like the candle thing. In Manchester NH they have a less spiritual and heartwarming take on it -- rubber ducky day. They fill the Merrimack with numbered rubber duckies... the winner gets a pretty good cash prize, I believe. Still pretty fun.

I sometimes wonder who's minding the shop on Kronos. Administration, research, medicine, education, raing Targs, composing operas, ect. Everybody seems to be out blustering, bullying and sharpening thier teeth...

I love cultural artifacts which have lost some of their original purpose but live on in ritual. I imagine Klingons at home are more civilized then they would like to admit, but enjoy the rough edges and warrior stuff from their past to define who they are or would still like to be. The warrior stuff still works in the military though, and maybe echoed in sports and rites of passage such as weddings and funerals.

From earth - two examples. First, and I am not Jewish, but have heard of homes where two stoves are in the kitchen - one for cooking meat dishes and another for some other kind of dishes, milk? (Help me here, anyone who knows this tradition better). Originally this was a health practice, separating different kinds of food and not eating some other kinds of food because combining them would make you sick. But this is not necessarily so today with refrigeration and other means of keeping food from going bad.

From Native American culture, something I am closer to, there is the tradition of not carrying children who cannot walk yet, out on the pow wow dance floor. Being allowed out there is a reward for learning to walk. Children are encouraged to learn to walk as soon as they can because if they have to be carried, they are an extra load on older children and adults when a camp is moved. All the equipment has to be carried by adults when the camp is moved so children are encouraged to walk and not be a burden and also to carry stuff too as soon as they can. Of course 'moving camp' is now done in powered vehicles, LOL, but the tradition survives in pow wow rituals. I imagine Klingons, Vulcans, Andorians, and every other alien culture has ritual survivals like this!

Explore earth cultures and borrow some of these for your aliens. Make up some original ones too! It is lots of fun building a fantasy culture.

Oh, and I remember a practice that is both in Jewish culture and Native American culture. This is the Native ghost dinner and the placing of the tombstone in Jewish culture. Both traditions happen a year after the death. I was thinking of this as a dear friend who died last year who is Jewish, his family invited me to this tradition which is to happen in a couple of weeks. I am making some food for the dinner which follows the trip to the cemetary where individuals can place rocks on the tombstone. I am making wild rice and fry bread for the dinner, as my friend had Native friends and was a great admirer of Native culture. There will be all sorts of different foods because this was a remarkable man with friends of many cultural backgrounds. The last thing he said to me over the phone from his hospital bed was "I love you". Sniff, I could still cry although he has been gone for almost a year!

To make a long story short, there is something about marking the date a year after the death in both cultures. For Jews, my friend's wife told me, it is the point where you stop active mourning and go on with your life. To continue extreme grief is to disrespect God's wishes. For Native people, there is a dinner and a plate of food is made for the deceased and placed outside.

For Catholics (here in Spain, at least) you have to pay a mass for the date of a month after the death, six months after the death and one year after the death (and after that, a mass every year to remember the aniversary of the death.)

A game for the Klingons could be something Basques used to do: you take a living chicken, bury in till its neck (that means only making the head and part of the neck visible), and then a (drunk) person with his eyes covered by a scarf tries to cut its neck with an axe (usually with not much luck.)

It was bloody, sadistic and stupid, that's why it was forbidden.

Hmm...sounds like the person would stand just as much of a chance cutting their own foot off as the chicken's head. Maybe Klingons use such such games to thin out the herd - make more space in the warrior caste. They do seem to love their booze.

Did you mention what part of Florida is home, Alelou? My sister lives in Tallahassee.

Sleepy Inverness is where my folks live now (technically, Tampa/Clearwater would be home). We did live in Tallahassee for a year when I was younger and my father was covering the capitol for the Tribune.

There are still plenty of Jews who observe kosher restrictions in terms of separating dairy and meat, though I think most settle for separate sets of dishes and not mixing them at meals rather than trying to cram two stoves into what is often an urban kitchen. When my husband used to moonlight in a Jewish group home for developmentally-disabled adults, we were always getting practically new skillets given to us because the residents would forget the restriction and 'contaminate' the things.

Add a completely separate set of dishes for Passover and oh man you're talking about storage. I had a friend in Manhattan who managed to do that in a tiny studio apartment. She'd also start dinner cooking Friday and leave it in the stove on warm so we could share it on Saturday without her having to turn on anything. It takes ingenuity to be an observant orthodox Jew!

Sounds like a recipe for food poisoning to me.

The thought occurred to me, too, but I survived. I guess if you leave the oven on at least 225 you'll be okay.