... at the Butterstick Store (UPDATE: fixed link). For those interested in such things. They've taken yesterday's design and made it into two okay shirts rather than one ugly one.

Check out the comment thread from DCist's reference to my recent panda post. It's pretty vicious — they're on the verge of convincing me that I'm a horrible, horrible racist.

Well, for the record, I really wish that pandas came from a different part of the world — one with a boringly conventional cuisine. I'm sorry that the eccentricities of Chinese ingredients are considered a slur by some. To be honest, it seems like a criticism that could be leveled against virtually any culture. To the extent that Asian cuisines are singled out as its target, I can understand the sensitivity, if not its volume.

Seriously, though, the whole joke was supposed to be a self-deprecating exercise in jingoism and xenophobia, not an excuse to pick on the Chinese. It wasn't meant in an "Asians will eat anything" sort of way. It was meant to be taken in the style of "Jews eat Christian babies!"

See? Nothing offensive there.

i realized that i never posted anything at the end of november about what i was thankful for, something which i find geeky but in a geekily earnest way, so i usually try to really think about it. but you know what? i'm glad i didn't. because i didn't know FROM thankful until my mom took me to tyson's mall, led me to the north face store and purchased me the best thing to ever come into my life as an early birthday present. screw great friends, family and education. this jacket is the only thing worthwhile in MY WHOLE LIFE.

i was totally reluctant to get any north face gear when i came to chicago, mainly because i was cloaked in bitter vestiges of north face's dominance at the preppy, preppy uva campus, and also because i assumed everybody and their dog had a north face jacket in chicago and i didn't want to be a such slave to conformity. jeez. but you know what? people have these jackets for a reason. because they save your fucking life on a daily basis. sure, every time i put it on, i feel like stay puft wearing a mattress with armholes, but it works. in combination wtih the furry hat, i'm basically an unstoppable force of fat, trundling warmth galumping through the streets of chicago. seriously, if, like, i was on a boat, and i was there with my coat and tommy, and a gust of wind knocked them both off into the water, and i could only choose one to save...well, i'm just saying - tommy is not a) waterproof b) made out of goose down.

Google, I love ya, but this does not sit well:

I haven't been doing anything unusual, so far as I know. Well, there's the GreaseMonkey colorizer script, but that should be invisible from Google's perspective. I suppose it could've been that stupid Gmail conversation preview script — but I didn't think that did anything unless I right-clicked.

On Saturday Charles and I elected to flee our freezing apartment, and headed for the toasty confines of the Chinatown Express. Along the way through Chinatown I noticed this restaurant:

"Huh!" I thought, "Tai Shan — that's the same name as the one the zoo gave to the new panda cub. 'Peaceful Mountain' must be a pretty common phrase in Chinese culture. But wait, what's that photo in the right window..."

BoingBoing featured a photo of an entertainingly bad translation to English. For the hell of it, I sent in a link to our Italian gas pump post. I just got a trackback. So if you smell ozone and hear a bubbling noise, that's just the webserver.