Chinese Dragon is the name of the paint that even now sits, slowly, carefully, quietly drying on my walls.
I sit here in the middle of the room, with a surplus monitor resting on the plastic-covered desk, with my firewall and cable modem out in the middle of the floor, the smell of solvents in my nostrils. Chinese dragon. It's not quite red. It's not quite orange. It's not quite Burnt Umber; although I have no idea whatsoever what Burnt Umber is, this is onomotovisually Burnt Umber.
It's red. I lied.
This was my room. It's still my room. My things are all over the rest of the apartment. The room is entirely empty save for me, the desk, my server (on which I'm running GNOME) and, of course, Everything2.
Me and the world.
Surrounded by Chinese Dragon. The colors sing through the wire, down to the box, down the street, under the avenue, into the building, out to the world. My light switches are bare, as are the outlets; naked metal opened to the pale harsh light of the hideous ceiling light fixture that I swear I have to nuke from orbit tomorrow.
None of this really matters. A color with a name of a drug; a room with no objects; a filthy Royal Blue carpet trying mightily to clash with the walls, the smell of solvents and plasticizers. Nothing.
The shuttle went up. I saw it on television. They have even better cameras watching it now, that can show you detailed images of the SSMEs, SRB nozzles and even the bottom of the external tank for the first fifteen or twenty miles of flight.
The flames were Chinese Dragon, from the boosters, with a flashgun brightness; the edges of them, and most especially the blossoming cloud of burnout flames as the boosters prepared to separate. Chinese dragon.
It's a Behr paint. Number 1B26-6.