No, it’s not a band name (that I know of) …
Has anyone ever seen the little fortunetelling device known as mystic fish?
They are very thin, fish-shaped pieces of plastic(?). You place them in your hand, and the little fishy curls up, turns over, or whatever. The result is supposed to indicate something about your future (like, if it curls at the corners, you’re in love; if its head curls up, you will die a fiery death in one week; if it flips over, Bush will be the next president, etc.)
It appears that these work on either temperature or humidity, I’m leaning toward temperature, based on some simple experiments. Does anyone know what these are made of, or what the true mechanism is?
Boy! I haven’t seen those in 35 - 40 years. My memory was that they were a form of celluloid, so I would have guessed they reacted to the heat of the palm. I have no memory of what the various curls and twists were supposed to mean.
I don’t know whether they had any connection to the small bayou fish that figured eponymously in the 1992 film Passion Fish, although I wouldn’t be surprised. (Of course, it’s possible that the movie invented a “real” fish based on the scriptwriter’s memory of the celluloid critters that I remember from my youth.)
I’m afraid I have had no luck with the search engines, (“passion fish” brings up dozens of film references with no explication).
It’s a “Fortune-Telling Fish”, and from what I remember of my muddled childhood and physics class (we played with a lot of kinetic toys), it was a couple pieces of laminated plastic cut into the shape of a fish. The heat from your hand (or other body parts, details are not necessary) would cause one side of the fish to curl (differences in temperature and type of plastic, or something like that). [Damn, now I’m going to be wondering about this.]
Anyway, check yahoo under “Fortune-telling Fish”. Ignore the rock album by Ativin, and there are three gift packs/stocking stuffers that include the “Fortune-telling Fish”.