you wouldn’t do well, there isn’t much respect for vegans here
I learned that China has a national pork reserve
in deep frozen caves, like our national oil reserve
they keep adding to it, doomsday pork
they love their pork
the students all rush up and ask me to draw pigs for them
I ask why always pigs?
They say, we think pigs are funny.
(and tasty)

Anyway, I really think this plan needs some reworking. I guess the Bush administration isn’t (yet) tracking SuperVegan — those guys really aren’t kidding when they say all they do is eat and gossip.

My father is on a U.S. State Department-arranged speaking/democracy propaganda tour of universities in China right now. This is what the Q&A was like:

Do your cartoons hurt your personal relationships with the politicians you draw?
No, I don’t have personal relationships with the people I draw.

Do you worry that your drawings will hurt the reputation of someone you have drawn?
No, if one of my cartoons hurts the reputation of a politician that I am criticizing, then I am pleased. (Sometimes the crowd murmurs when I say this. It doesn’t seem to be what they expect me to say.)

Do you ever draw cartoons that are supportive of China?
No, I don’t draw cartoons that support anything. I just criticize. Supportive cartoons are lousy cartoons.

Now that you have visited China, and have learned more about China, will you be drawing cartoons that support China?
Probably not.

He and my mom were supposed to head to Chengdu today but of course, post-quake, they were re-routed. Now they’re spending some extra time in Harbin, “the Moscow of China,” where they still have ample Internet access for IMing while I Google child prodigies — that is, until sight-seeing resumes after breakfast. “We’re going to the tiger sanctuary today, where visitors throw live chickens to the tigers.”

So I guess they’re having fun.

You’ve gotta appreciate the service journalism from the New York Times. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want a president who has neither lips nor skin pigment, and who is being referred to as “lonely” (and appears to be on the verge of man-tears..?).

If only there were a… Oh, well, would you look at that.

This also, of course, means I’ve been introduced to RayRay, that ever-grinning reminder of our continued march as a culture toward the lowest common denominator. (Not to mention those recipes take at least an hour.)

Now, I find Anthony Bourdain as repugnant as any of y’all, but I just had to block quote this for posterity…

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion–you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”

That is all.

Susie: I’d bite that hand that feeds me til it bled, if I weren’t so damn hungry.

So! On to the important stuff. Like, who wore it better? I think Medvedev has the most powerful sleeve length, and Putin might need to take his jacket to the tailor–or go on the Master Cleanse!