Rat (zodiac)

The Rat (子) is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Rat is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 子.

Years and the Five Elements

People born within these date ranges can be said to have been born in the "Year of the Rat", while also bearing the following elemental sign:

Basic astrology elements

Description

See also

References

List of Pearls Before Swine characters

This is a partial list of characters in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis.

Rat

Personality

Rat is a megalomaniacal, misanthropic rat, who is frequently critical of the strip's style and artwork, as well as the other characters in his and other strips, real life people, and almost all living (and often nonliving) things. He believes himself to be much more intelligent than he actually is, and thinks more or less anybody else is stupid with the only person he believes worthy of his respect being Leonardo da Vinci. He tends to irritate people, particularly his intelligent friend Goat, and is easily irritated by his naïve, dim-witted housemate Pig. Rat believes himself to be the wisdom of the strip, if not wisdom itself, and that anybody else is more or less dumb, whereas most other characters view him as "a loudmouth, pompous malcontent". He may or may not be a personification of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Rat is very prideful and arrogant (he once made a list of all the geniuses in the world that only said "Mozart, da Vinci, Me", and then said that he only put 'that music dude' there to be nice), and is constantly dreaming up schemes that invariably would keep him away from anyone and everyone else, though these inevitably backfire. He often appears incapable of seeing his own faults.

Rat (film)

Rat is a 2000 Irish/British/American comedy film directed by Steve Barron. The film focuses on the transformation of a working-class man into a rat and how his family copes with the startling change.

Synopsis

After his usual night of drinking at the local pub, Hubert Flynn (Pete Postlethwaite) returns home and transforms into a rat. Hubert's family each have different views on him now that he became a rodent. His wife Conchita (Imelda Staunton) thinks that this change is supposed to be a lesson to Hubert and that the reason he transformed is his own fault. Their son Pius (Andrew Lovern), destined for a religious life, feels that because his father is now an animal, his family should kill him. Their daughter Marietta (Kerry Condon) feels that the rat is still her father and that they should treat him with love and respect.

After hearing the news of a man changing into a rat on the local radio, ghostwriter Phelim Spratt (David Wilmot) convinces Conchita to write a book of the story. Because Phelim wants to write about Conchita's bravery and the family's loyalty to Hubert in the face of adversity, he suggests that they take Hubert out to the pub and bookie to see his friends and to show the public that they are proud of him.

Uncle

Uncle (from Latin: avunculus "little grandfather", the diminutive of avus "grandfather") is a family relationship or kinship within an extended family. An uncle is the brother, brother-in-law or half-brother of one's parent. A biological uncle is a second degree relative and shares 30% genetic overlap.

A great-uncle (sometimes written as great uncle, grand-uncle or granduncle) is the brother or brother-in-law of one's grandparent.

A woman with an equivalent relationship is an aunt, and the reciprocal relationship is that of a nephew or niece.

In some cultures and families, children may refer to the cousins of their parents as "aunt" or "uncle". It is also a title of respect for elders (for example older cousins, neighbors, acquaintances, close family friends as well as total strangers). Using this term in this way is a form of fictive kinship.

In some cultures, like Slavic or Persian cultures, no single inclusive term describing both a person's kinship to their parental male sibling or parental male in-law exists. Instead, there are specific terms describing a person's kinship to their mother's brother ("daiyee" in Persian) or a person's kinship to their father's brother ("amou" in Persian).

Uncle (TV series)

Uncle is a British sitcom written and directed by Oliver Refson & Lilah Vandenburgh. A pilot episode was first broadcast on Channel 4 in December 2012, before the show was commissioned by BBC Three. The first episode from the series, a remake of the pilot, aired on 13 January 2014. Uncle stars Nick Helm, Daisy Haggard, Elliot Speller-Gillott and Sydney Rae White. The show was renewed for a second series, which began on BBC Three on 10 February 2015. In December 2015 it was announced that the programme would return for a third series in 2016.

Production

The show was commissioned by the BBC after a pilot was originally broadcast on Channel 4. The pilot episode aired on the channel in December 2012, as part of a strand called 4Funnies. When Channel 4's head of comedy, Shane Allen moved to the BBC, he brought the show with him.Uncle was written by Oliver Refson for Baby Cow Productions. Comedian Nick Helm explained that the show was inspired by Wes Anderson's comedy film The Royal Tenenbaums and thought it fitted in with other comedy shows produced by Baby Cow. He said that while the show was not written for him, it was 75 per cent of what he would have done himself.

J. P. Martin

J. P. (John Percival) Martin (1879 – 24 March 1966) was an English author best known for his Uncle series of children's stories.

Martin was born in Scarborough in the county of Yorkshire in summer 1879 and became a Methodist minister in 1902 before serving as a missionary in South Africa and as an army chaplain in Palestine during the First World War. After the Second World War he lived in the village of Timberscombe in Somerset, where he died in March 1966. In 1905 he married Sarah McCormick in Durham. He later married for a second time. He had four children, two girls and two boys. One of his daughters, Stella, became a playwright and married the poet R.N. Currey.

The Uncle series

Martin's Uncle stories were first told to his children before he was persuaded to write them down for a wider audience. When they were first published in the late 1960s and early 1970s they were hailed as modern classics of children's literature, although their fame has faded considerably since then, leading for many years to a complete lack of reprints and great scarcity, although some of the stories were re-published as recently as 2008. The Uncle of the six books in the series is a millionaire elephant with a purple dressing-gown, a B.A. from Oxford, and a clean-living past marred by a single, never-to-be-forgotten discreditable incident. He has many friends and supporters, including the Old Monkey, the One-Armed Badger, the cat Goodman, Noddy Ninety, Cloutman, the King of the Badgers, and Butterskin Mute. He is also the owner of an enormous castle called Homeward:

Altan

Altan is a common masculine Turkish given name used also as surname and a Mongolian given name. Altan means "golden" in Mongolian and "red dawn" in Turkic. The related word "Altın" is also Turkish for "golden" and a common Turkish surname.

Given name

Surname