The Heart of Light And Darkness

I’ve sniped from the parapet enough.

Suit up, Emergency Contact, we’re going in.

In a couple of days, we leave for China. The Middle Kingdom. The Dozey Dragon. We’re going with some mates who know my thoughts on certain monochromatic mammals, and they have threatened to dress me in a black and white suit and throw me to the pandas - just for shits and giggles.

Yep, as part of the tour we’re going to end up in Chengdu – where they have the extremely ominously entitled “Giant Panda Research and Breeding Centre.”

All manner of dire scenes play themselves out before my sleep deprived mind's eye. Like sitting there in the passenger seat going, “That’s no breeding centre, that’s a space station!”

Or perhaps, as I face the great, insane panda in the dark GPRBC, sitting there with his bald head and white gut, drooping over his ankles, we will speak.

“I expected someone like you. Are you an assassin?”

“I’m a tourist.”

“You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to write a blog.”

You don’t have nothin’ to worry about. I’m a professional.

(If you are unaware of the ground breaking research that the A Grey Area Institute for Fuzzy Things has done on pandas, click on Pandemonium over there under Themes. Or, you know... here.)