This isn't my writing, but I thought it was funny enough to reproduce here. For the original, see
www.MyRick.ca. Cheers, Edgewood for
sharing this one.
The only serious problem is the fucking pandas.
People in the West think pandas are these huge cute Chinese bears. Westerners are wrong. They don’t know the horrible truth about pandas. Firstly, they are not even bears. They are huge freakin’ raccoons! This a reasonably well-known fact.
What’s not well known outside of China is that pandas also act like raccoons. Most people think raccoons are cute, but anyone who lives in a raccoon-infected part of North America will testify that raccoons are vermin.
I stayed with my sister once while she was living in Ottawa. There was a raccoon problem in her neighborhood. Raccoons would regularly wake her in the middle of the night. They would jump along rooftops tearing off shingles as they did. They would rummage through the garbage bins at all hours.
Suburban Ottawa is noisier than a war zone. It also reeks of government bureaucrats. Never, ever, go there!
Raccoons are also vicious. The sharp-clawed and huge-fanged beasts are usually rabid. Rabies is incredibly common among raccoons – it’s epizootic! Few people have survived an alleyway encounter with one of these hell-spawned scavengers without a few scars or stitches to show for it. Pandas are essentially the same, but 10 times bigger.
To my horror, I woke Tuesday night to the sound of a panda rummaging through the dumpster. If I were in the States this wouldn’t have been a problem: firstly, there are no pandas; second, I’d own a gun. China, however, has both pandas and gun control. Each on their own is bad: together they are often deadly.
Lacking proper arms, I quickly boiled a pot of water, went outside and threw it at the beast - pot and all. As the scalding water penetrated its fur, it shrieked its horrible giant-raccoon scream. The neighbors awoke.
Suddenly, I was greeted by the clanging of pots and pans, drums and fireworks. The entire neighborhood, all of whom were still strangers to me, came out to chase away that damn panda. Although it was just my immediate neighbors, the din was far louder than anything I had ever heard at a Chinese New Year celebration in either Singapore or Hong Kong.
Sensing danger, the panda fled down HuaiHai road toward the high street area.
While people in Beijing would deride the Shanghainese as being self interested, money-grubbing souls without a sense of poetry, what I saw on that Tuesday night should put paid to that notion. Never in my travels of the Middle East and Asia have I ever seen such a spontaneous outbreak of community spirit.
Thankfully things ended without violence. The AP picture on the right shows residents of a Chengdu neighborhood forcibly trying to evict a street panda. The men on the far right and far left were mauled shortly after the shot was taken. Only one survived and he lost his right ear and half his jaw.
The pandas were once peaceful beasts, living in and feeding off of the dense bamboo forests. But that was many decades ago. Maoist industrial policies, collective farming and state-run enterprises denuded much of the pandas’ natural habitat. The new regime of capitalism socialism with Chinese characteristics hasn’t yet helped much.
PandametroWith an absence of bamboo in the countryside, pandas have increasingly invaded urban areas. Some, like the cheerful bear giant raccoon on the left, have had some success at blending in. Most of his genetic brethren are simply a menace.
Bamboo is now more plentiful in the cities than it is in the countryside. It is used for decorative purposes, in cooking and as scaffolding on construction sites. China’s high number of construction site fatalities is, in fact, largely panda related. The beasts eat the scaffolding at night. They prefer to eat only the shoots and leaves, but hungry urban pandas can’t afford to be as picky. This kills hundreds of migrant construction workers every year.
China has suppressed most of the information on the panda plague and it's low-key measures to stomp it out. Mercantlism is still the ruling principle among the cadres. After witnessing the way that animal-rights activists were able to damage the economies of seal-hunting Newfoundland, wolf-culling Alaska and Kangaroo-culling Oz, they didn’t want to risk the adverse publicity.
It was especially worrying for the authorities since the animal has been adopted as a mascot by the World Wildlife Fund (an NGO so powerful it was even able to take on the
World Wrestling Federation Entertainment). I fear my blog may be shut down for breaking the silence.
This may be the only post you ever see on the panda plague.
I hate pandas. They’re worse than the fucking koalas.
... and we have to watch it at 5:30 in the morning, MONDAY MORNING! One of the drawbacks of living on the other side of the world is the timezone difference. While everyone else back in Warren is sleeping, I'm working (or playing computer games when the boss isn't looking). When I'm calling NFG#2 Federal Credit Union about my balance, it's at midnight. When I ring up WCCBI (even though I've never ring up WCCBI, it just sounds cool to say that) it's at 11 at night, sometimes from a bar. And when mom rings me up in the morning, I'm generally out somewhere else (probably at the bar.) The time difference for Shanghai is either 11 or 12 hours ahead of Warren, depending on Daylight Savings, which isn't used here.
