Start with a picture of the Great Wall of China. Impressive, ancient China.

Convince your friend to hang off a ledge, three feet off the ground and with the police in the background. Maybe not the smartest thing to do in communist China.

Remove some background, arrange layers, and you’re done!

This outsider must be after our prized Orange Chicken.

Those guys can’t stop making babies over there. It must be something in the rice. I think they’re weighing down their continent and displacing the water in the oceans like a couple of fat kids in an inflatable raft.

Let’s just hope they don’t all decide to jump at the same time and hurl Earth off it’s orbit and into the sun.

I told you I got really into fish. It took me three months of having a 10 gallon tank to upgrade to 55 gallons. This is what it started as, but it’s quite different now.

Michelle and I took a trip to China with some friends. So many Chinese people, but there they just call them people.

We got into to the usual vacation hijinx.

This isn’t China. This is the San Diego Zoo.

The very next weekend we went down to San Diego again to Sea World.

I had a great karaoke/bowling birthday party.

I gave Michelle a great gift of us.

I got pretty good at Wii Bowling.

So begins the life of a boring person. Eh. That’s all relative. I think some of this stuff is still really cool. When I hit thirty I’ll do puzzles and play board games.

Bow before our feline leader.

I love that someone noted, ” the girls on offer are not that attractive.” Sign me up!

Suddenly I’m not so worried about China becoming a true super power with policies like this.

The DVD player was £100. That’s like $150! I can buy one at Walmart for $30. What DVD player in China costs $150? They make them there. They should be $5 tops. If crimes this small are not worth punishing, sign me up for a life of petty crime in China. I just have to remember not to grab the PS3. They might punish me then.

I am no artist by any stretch of the imagination. My talents for visual art pieces are pretty much zero, unless you count photo manipulation ability like this.

That was not the point of this  post, although it provides a hilarious distraction. My drawing ability is limited to stick figures, but I have done quite a few drawings for Michelle. It’s a great way to do something special that costs you no money.

Michelle used to call her car Silver Bullet until she got her Volvo. She needed a new name for her car, so we came up with Silver Lunchbox. This one was not drawn freehand, because I needed to get the lunchbox shape and I could not draw a rectangle that looks like a rectangle to save my life.

I have drawn quite a few of these drawings, which I will share here over time. Stay tuned!

I was discussing the Chinese gymnasts with Wendy, and we noted they weren’t very good looking. I’ve brought this up before. China has the same problem that Taiwan has in the looks department. For a moment, I was going to say that the Chinese have a higher percentage of better looking people, but then I realized how many people are in China. I’ve probably seen very few of them, and the ones I’ve seen are in the city. China probably has just as high of a percentage of ugly people as Taiwan. Still, I can’t put a finger on any reasonable explanation for this.

This isn’t a matter of standards in beauty either. The people on Asian television are good looking. They have the same standards of beauty that we do in America. Symmetry is desirable. Just look at what China did in their opening ceremony of the Olympics.

Then Wendy asked me, “Who’s the most Chinese looking of the people we know?” You all know what she was really asking. I’m sure I have met some, but my friends are not in this category. None of my friends have this characteristic, unfortunate look. Chinese and Taiwanese people are always sad looking, sometimes even scowling. Their faces are droopy. Maybe it’s all the smiling we do in our country that make us more symmetrical.

Perhaps it’s a lack of makeup and hair care. Wendy also noted have bad hair. I can buy the hair argument, but the makeup is not the answer. This ugly epidemic is more than a cosmetic touch up. The rule is, “If the barn needs painting, you paint it. Don’t built the barn out of paint.”

So, why are the native people so ugly in China and Taiwan? What other nations have ugly citizens?

Disclaimer: If you are offended by this post, it’s probably just because you’re ugly…or Chinese, which we noted is the same thing unless you’re from America.

As a red blooded American, I am rooting wholeheartedly for USA in everything, whether or not they are expected to be medal contenders. Unlike some of my friends, there is no sentiment of consolation if China, the country of of my ethnic background, is the one beating American to the medals.

Still, I am very impressed with what China has done with their Olympic program. They are set to be the dominant country in the next two or three Olympics. I’m sure they run a strict program, and I wouldn’t want to be this guy. Keep on eye on him. It might be the last time you ever see him again. You don’t bring shame to your nation and live to tell about it.

Other than the redemption of men’s basketball, the events I am following most closely are the swimming events. I am also paying attention to one particular athlete, Michael Phelps. There’s something about a man in a Speedo We all know the story of his pursuit to become the greatest Olympian of all time by grabbing eight gold medals. The man is a machine. He is 6’4″, consumes over 10,000 calories a day, and he can’t break 200lbs. I’d love to be on that diet. I guess it is the fuel he needs to kick ass.

My favorite Phelps victory thus far was the 4×100 Free Relay, where we beat France after they claimed, “The Americans? We will smash them.” What did we learn, France? Don’t even bother shaving your pits for the swimming pool. Tell your women to do it instead.