1. The “Confucius Peace Prize” award ceremony turned into such a debacle of such high unintentional comedy that the relevant propaganda organs are right now tripping over themselves to disown the whole stupid idea. In other news, the strategy of “locking a lot of people up” is — unbelievably — not taking the focus off of China’s human right’s record. Suffice it to say, MOFA spokeswoman Jiang Yu probably wishes she had decided to call in sick today. On the plus side, former spokesgeek Qin Gang would have probably started crying on the podium so…kind of a win.
2. Yajun was at the press conference for the Confucius Prize this afternoon and she told me that she actually started to feel bad for some members of the “committee” who clearly had no idea what they had signed up and that the ringleader of the whole circus,Tan Changliu, is totally fucking nuts in a kind of “check his refrigerator for human organs” kind of way.
3. It’s the end of the semester and I am 19 papers away from locking myself in closet with 50 boxes of ramen noodles and a case of Four Loko not to emerge again until I’ve