Hallowe'en Shopping

1. Death looks sad this year. Proabably because he's tired.
2. At last, after years of working out, I finally have the figure of a Skeletor!
3. I have become an album cover.

The Fabulous Cat-Bears of China

I.
-I am your local tour guide. My name is Darth Vader. That is not my real name. It is my English nickname. Your driver today is Dirty Harry.

II.
-The pandas, you know, there are not so many of them and these that have been a raised in captivity do not know how to get it on with another panda. In order to stimulate and teach them, they show them the video of the pandas together, yeah? This is a really hot one.
Okay. Enough of the Panda love video. Who wants to see an Emu?

III.
-Are we going to see the Pandas?
-I don’t know, honey, with all this rain.

-Maybe they like rain.
-I hear they really don’t.
-I thought maybe they don’t mind with all that fur.
-All that fur gets really wet.


IV.
-Liu, you are the Panda today.
-But it’s raining.
-That’s why you’re the Panda. A tour group is coming. Suit up.
-Why me?
-Because it’s your turn. Because -have you read? Pandas are endangered. There are not many of them. On the other hand, -you may have heard of this -there are millions and millions of Chinese. Specifically millions and millions of Lius. Therefore, you go in the rain for the tourists and play and frolic and eat bamboo and the Pandas -our national treasure -stay dry in the comfort hut.
-It’s pouring!
-The American tourist believes the Chinese Panda loves the rain. All that fur.
-Please, Mr. Supervisor Manager, you do not want to send me out in the rain to be a panda for the American Tourist. My eyes will give me away. They are dark, like a cute panda’s eye’s, but all too human. As I sit in the rain in this mildewy suit, trying to tear leaves of bamboo, I think of my mother and my father, my brothers and sisters in faraway Foshan. I think of family dinners together, warm tea and gay artful kites in the fall air. I also think of our history and our struggle as a people as the last great socialist power. My eyes take on a wistful, nostalgic appearance that will betray my humanity.
-Your patriotism and love of family are deeply moving, Liu.
-Thank you, sir.
-They will make you an excellent citizen and and a superior Panda.
-Wait, why do we have to do this?
-Why Liu? Because a bus is coming. And on that bus are American tourists. And among those tourists is a little blond girl who has come all the way to China to see the Pandas. You don’t want to disappoint the little blond girl, do you?
-No, sir.
-Besides bringing in valuable tourist dollars, this is probably the only thing that keeps them from bombing us. They want to bomb everybody who isn’t Clint Black.
-No, wait, wait -there’s something else you should know.
-What?
-When I get into the moldy Panda suit -sometimes I involuntarily get an erection. A huge erection. You wouldn’t want the little girl to see that.
-We all get an erection, Liu, that is why it is our national symbol. Now quit stalling and suit up.
-What is this thing made from anyway, it’s not at all water repellant, soaks up rain and never dries out.
-It is made from Panda, now remember -you really have to eat the bamboo.