Monday, November 12, 2007

Idle threat of the week

During America's industrial revolution we practically built entire cities from dangerous lead. Which is why it wasn't so surprising when we learned that many of rapidly industrializing China's exports contain the toxic malleable metal.

The news that the Chinese have been lacing bite-sized children's toys with GHB, aka "the date rape drug," has been a little harder swallow.

Although the method behind this seeming madness should become clear to the astute student of history. In the distant past empires (as China aspires to be) which had female shortages (as China does) would simply invade their neighbors and use brute force to steal away the most desirable women.

Because of a pesky little thing called modernity, literal rape and pillage is strictly off limits to the aspiring empire with a demographic hole to fill.

But what if there was another way? What if there was a way for a nation to get their surplus male population laid by combining the violence of ancient Rome with the more subtle but still battle tested techniques of today's frosted tipped, fake tanned club goer?

I think you can see where I am going with this. Fortunately (or unfortunately), despite all this talk of Chinese efficiency, something got supremely screwed up in central planning and China mistakenly tested the potency of their new weaponized exports on children in Australia and the United States.

Since a couple woozy Western five year olds equals a well-publicized international incident, the cat is now out of the bag on China's ultimate intention to drug neighboring countries such as Nepal and Vietnam and then sneak in to purloin their most child-bearingest females.

If China had kept the whole thing on their own continent they may have been able to again use their seductive marketplace to convince the other world powers to avert all eyes from this audicious plot. But because of their snafu we can no longer feign ignorance, and China's attempt to put a new spin on an old empire building technique has become the Idle Threat of the Week for November 5th through 11th.

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