Diagnosis: Healthy and BADASS

So yesterday I had a check up. I had a blast with the doctors, squirming, and making their jobs more difficult (I do NOT "fuss"). Oh and I started shouting to the doctors' faces that they were a bunch of clownmunches, and Mom got mad and was trying to come in and punish me--she's so dumb, she was trying to squeeze herself through an eight inch square window.

And then they lured her away with fruit and sweet potatos. Heh. Bear.

As a treat for you all, I have new pictures, newly yoinked from the National Zoo and Washington Post websites.

"Burning the ground, I break from the crowd/I'm on the hunt, I'm after you/I smell like I sound, I'm lost and I'm found/and I'm hungry like the wolf."

They have to hold me down because I'm OUTTA CONTROL!

I'm so cute, it's not even fair.

Close up!!

Slander and Other News

Hello, pissed off baby panda here.

I want those clownmunches at the National Zoo FIRED. Or, they should fire whoever is writing this slander. I do NOT have a pear-shaped rear end. And I'll lift it when I'm good and ready, thank you.

On to other news, Lisa Pugh of Silver Spring, Maryland wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post's Express. "I just can't see a hundred-pound-plus bear (as he will become)..." she writes [you BETCHA Lisa, I'm going to be one big badass bear] "...being called Butterstick. It sounds kind of humiliating. Not the kind of name a panda can wear with real pride."

You're completely right, Lisa. But Bandit is a name I wear with pride, and I will NEVER answer to that awful other name-that-will-not-be-mentioned.

All you silly "grassroots" activists cheering for Butterstick as MY name can just go back to eating your grass roots. I'd rather have a silly Chinese name I don't understand than an insulting American one that I very much understand.

TAKE THAT CLOWNMUNCHES!

Some Boring Business Stuff

So, um, I just thought I should come clean with all my fans...I uh, knew all along that Monica wasn't an obsessed fan. OF COURSE she's my publicist. Doesn't that make sense? I wasn't fooled ever. But I realize that some of my comments might have mislead some of my stupider readers.

Since I knew everything all along, it makes sense that I should explain. So when I started this site, my staff thought it would be smart to test the comments portion, and see how well I could handle that kind of unstable aggressive female attention.

Wait, that sounds like I didn't know. Which is all wrong, because I did.

They told me to ACT like I didn't know, just to see how I would react. Yeah that's closer to how it really went down. And I did really well! I did so well, Monica (my publicist, NOT the hot panda) has suggested we send some headshots to Hollywood. Then Katie, my lawyer, put in some snarky comment about how we should wait until my head no longer resembles a ferret before we go sending glossies all around LA. I fired her.

But I'm a cool boss, so I hired her back. Then Michelle, my boring nerdish editor wanted to play around with the achtemal, or whatever that is, and put a list of my staff on the site. These are my PERSONAL employees, not the army of paeons the Zoo keeps paying to shovel my crap out of the straw.

I have many positions still available, and I'm open to suggestions since I've never hired a full staff on my own before. What I'm looking for:
-An ability to annoy Mom at every turn
-Hotness (for females)
-Badassness (for guys)
-The ability to look cool and impressive during slowmo shots of all of us walking side by side down a street and/or riding around in a vintage convertible.
-Creativity to deal with those clownmunch renegade geckos (more on that later).

Tap the "Click to Apply" link beneath the Staff list, or go directly to the comments on this post.

Later.

Today Sucks

I'm so like, depressed in an uncool way. I overheard some of the servants talking about how I'd have to go "back" to China in two years. This sucks. This sucks like a broccoli milkshake.

They don't need me over there. What if they tried to eat me?! I mean, I could defend myself, no problem, but who wants to have hungry Chinamen chasing after them with chopsticks and woks? Such a downer.

Speaking of downers, Mom took away my copy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It was the only video game I owned, yo. I know it's a few years old, and I don't even have a gaming system, but sometimes I'd climb on top of the game box and make driving noises and I'd pretend I was shooting ho's and stealing stuff. It was way cool and now I can't because MOM is handmaiden to THE MAN.

Here she is taking the game away from me. You can see I didn't let it go without a fight.

Today sucks. First, I find out I'll be getting deported when I hit the big 0-2, and then I lose my guilty pleasure--all in the same day.

Life is so rough at seven weeks old.

My Bike

I love Orange County Choppers (tap the link if you're a LOSER and don't know who they are). I've decided that's what I want to be when I grow up. I want to get tattoos all over my white areas, and be a bike designer. That would rock.

I think they should totally make a Bandit-themed bike. I'm famous, I'm awesome--what's not to love? It would be a perfect synergy between two icons of modern American culture.

I just sounded like a total clownmunch. Ignore that.

It would rule because it would RULE.

What would my bike look like? I think the bars should all look bamboo shaped, and the seat could look like a tree limb. And then they could put a skull and crossbones on the gas tank, just to make sure it looked really badass.

Yeah, this is what it would look like:


See, isn't it sweet?

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Dad. You're what, eight? Geezer.

Photo Gallery

Even though I'm obliged as a resident to include the Zoo's website on my links, it's really boring. So here's a photo tour through my world, with the one and only Bandit as your tour guide.





This was me during my exam. They knocked me out with this really hard liquer, that's why I can't hold my head up.





Ha. Mom being Mom here. Can you even see me in this picture? I remember when they took this, I thought she was trying to kill me by squeezing me. If you look closely, you can almost see the abject terror in my face.

Not that I was scared

I managed to find a picture of Mom and Dad together. Mom's the one up on the rock, sleeping her lazy ass through the afternoon, so that must be Dad sitting there stuffing his face. Wow, that bamboo looks good...

Sorry, got distracted there for a second. It'll be months before I can eat bamboo. Whatever.

This is Dad. Or at least it had better be, or Mom had better take this picture out of her bedroom, the tramp. This is what I want to look like when I grow up. Dad seems cool, I wish I could see him more.

Oh now there's a face you know you can't resist. Ladies, ladies, let's all behave like adults here, there's plenty of Bandit to go around...(ixnay on ANY comments about my belly.)

Ok, here I am telling Mom to go make me some sushi.

She's always honking about how she's not my servant. Ha ha. She's so funny.

An Ode to Monica

Dude...it looks like I have a fan.

Like, not like I don't have millions of fans, but this one is persistently posting comments on my website. It's kind of cool. I want more fans like her.

Mom saw some of the posts and she told me I should just ignore her, that she's a bad influence and that I'm too young for her, but Mom's a TOOL. I called her that too, and she just honked and was all like "I don't know what that means, but I'm going to ask your father and when he tells me, I'm going to come back in here and you're going to get it young man!"

Did you catch that? My dad's so hands off, he has to dole out my punishments by proxy. What a clownmunch.

So anyway back to Monica. That's a hot name...Monica. I wonder if she's a panda, too. Do you think she's a hot panda? Monica the Hot Panda. Hey, it could be true. And she says I'm badass, which is way cool. And I'll bet she doesn't look a thing like Mom. That would suck more than...wow I need to get out there because I have pretty much exhausted the realm of my experience. I guess it would suck more than that FX show "Starved."

Anyway, I want more fans like Monica. And they don't all have to be hot pandas. They don't even have to be pandas, I'm open-minded. I'll write something about each fan I get, how does that work for a bribe?

Hellooo World! (My eyes are open!)

Wow...it's uh...not quite as cool as I imagined it would be. And Mom is really weird looking. I imagined her looking...I don't know...like Courtney Love or something.

They need to do something about the walls here. Really depressing. Makes me want to take up a life of hard drinking.

But other than that, hey it's cool, I can see! This really does make things a lot easier. Oh, and check this out:

"The cub's eyes were first noted to be open at about 4:15 yesterday afternoon. There has been no apparent change in his behavior since then. However, now that his eyes are open, we think he looks even cuter, smarter, and more engaging than any other panda cub, ever!" --The National Zoo (check their link on my tricked-out sidebar)

You hear THAT people. These people are scientists. They don't make statements like that unless it's an absolute proven fact. Aren't you glad you loved me first? Now all these wannabe Bandit-lovin' POSERS are going to start clogging the bandwidth on my site trying to be all "But I loved Bandit ever since high school." "Oh yeah? I loved Bandit ever since middle school." And some really stupid dorks will be like "Well I loved Bandit since before I was BORN, TAKE THAT CLOWNMUNCH!"

I don't know what a clownmunch is but I wouldn't want to be one, so it must suck.

Weight Watching

Does anyone think I need to work out? Stop laughing, this is serious!

My helpless flailing brought my arm in contact with my belly a minute ago and I realized it's huge! It just sticks out there, all round and stuff. And it's kind of hard too, I wonder if I'm bloated... Nah. My personal medical staff would have done something about it by now. I'm like gold to them.

I know Mom's as fat as an elephant, but I want to be a trim, sleek, badass panda. I want to be the panda all the women want to be with, and all the men want to be. I know having a beer gut won't get me that status in any part of the world.

So I'm thinking I should start working out. Lower my body fat percentage. Maybe they can add a dietition to my entourage?

Oh speaking of which, did you know the HBO television show "Entourage" is loosely based on my life? Yeah, ok it's really loosely based. Reeeaally loosely. Like, so loosely, if you think too hard about it, it won't make any sense.

Ok, heh, I'm lying. I hadya going though didn't I? Admit it, admit it!

I rock.

Why I'm So Smart

So I was just squirming in the straw a few minutes ago (I don't really "sit") and it occured to me. You might think it's weird that I'm so well-developed mentally, when on the outside I'm about as functional as a 34 year old crack addict at 7 o'clock on a Monday morning.

I'm not sure how it happened either. Mom keeps telling me Dad's a brainiac--she says I never see him because he does top secret work for the Chinese government, and you know it must be true because I had to get my intelligence somewhere and it sure as heck was NOT from Mom.

Oh dude, you've GOT to hear this story. So yesterday I was honking at Mom (I don't remember why) and she's all like "Mind your manners!" And I was all like "Make me!" And she was all like "I didn't go through an hour and a half of labor just so you can back talk me, young man!" And I was like "Go eat some bamboo, Woman and bring me my dinner!" She honked and then she did.

It was cool.

The Name

As you've probably figured out by now, I have a name. It's a cool name. It makes me sound badass. While I'm a little too small, helpless, and blind to be badass right now, I plan on being the most badass panda in Washington someday. My name's also American (bonus!).

Which is why I was not amused when I heard some old white men decided to *give* me a name by giving the public five choices and then telling them to vote on it. Eeeesh. Look, voting never did anyone any good in this town. Why are they going to leave MY IDENTITY up to the unwashed masses?

Oh and to make matters worse, I can't even pronouce their selections. What self-respecting kid wants to be called Hua Sheng. Hua Sheng? Maybe in CHINA it's cool, but over here, all the other boys will laugh at me. Not that I care, I could kick all their asses. But you know, the effort would be annoying.

Butterstick is not my name. Who ever came up with that? Do they want me to get a swirly on my first day at Zoo School?

I know you, my fan, would not condone such an idiot moniker.

Vote Bandit.

Because naming me anything other than my name would screw up my already fragile self-identity.

And it's badass.

Bandit Speaks Out

Welcome to my site!

I applaud you for coming here. Most people seem content to watch me in grainy cameras on slow-moving websites, but you have chosen to take a more interesting route. You have decided to learn what I really think about me.

First off, let me tell you a little about myself. My parents are Chinese, but I'm an American-born citizen. I rule. Mom is so old-fashioned she thinks the sun is a god, and I'm pretty sure my dad is a deadbeat because I never see him around. I live in a high tech house, with lots of servants and personal medical staff, and I have lots of fans all over the country who watch me on those webcams--I'm still undecided about that btw. It's pretty invasive, but I'm cool, I know I'm cute, so keep watching me if you like. Hang on, brb...

Ok back. God, Mom is clingy. I keep telling her to get off my back about stuff but she just honks or whatever noise they say we make and suffocates me. It's gotten so bad the servants have started to try to lure her out of the house with treats. Yeah. Do you see what I have to put up with?

My mother is a giant bear.

Later