Strange Andrew, I'm wasting time burning minutes before deadline on a major project of my own (the upcoming Lonely Planet guide for Taiwan), flicking through Salon as I do for news from home. And one of your sentences jumped out at me.

"...my other obsession, Taiwan."

I thought to myself, "huh...lattice of coincidence indeed. Now get back to work!"

Today I woke up to news of Vonnegut's passing, and thought I could hear his voice in my head (joining that of my other long dead literary muse Henry Miller)

"OK, you're a working writer, now produce something they'll remember you for."

He will be missed, but remembered, I think, far longer.

Anyway, Andrew, lovely article, truly fine. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. Did you ever make it back to Taiwan? If you ever do, look me up on Penghu.

With Respect,

Joshua Samuel Brown

While the idea of including words like "learning" or "study" in conjunction with the name "George W. Bush" (a man famous for having never done either) is laughable, a future as a Mandarin speaker might suite Dubya quiet well.

Tones aside, Mandarin is an especially forgiving language when it comes to grammar, with verbs that need no conjugation and a highly flexible approach to subject - object relations. Since Dubya's most glaring malapropisms tend to be grammatical, Mandarin might be just the ticket for him.

Shanghai and Beijing are filled with ne'er do well western frat-boy types who, having burned their bridges behind them in their own countries, fled to China where they now lead relatively privileged, mostly drunk, and overwhelmingly easy lifestyles. Dubya would fit right in!

It seems as if they're generating "Auto Apologies" now! A couple of days back I was doing some research about traveling with pets, specifically from overseas; just for good measure I went to the Port of Seattle Website to see if they had any specific regulations. I didn't see anything specifically pertaining to my question, but there were a couple of email links for people with security questions. A quick letter (basic gist: My wife and I will be returning home after a few years overseas teaching English, and we are planning to bring the dog and cat that we adopted while here back home with us. What do we need to know about importing pets?) netted me the following:

Thank you for your e-mail. We regret to hear that you had an unpleasant experience and hope the following information is helpful in addressing your concerns.

Please know that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) takes comments such as yours very seriously. TSA is responsible for all passenger and baggage screening to ensure that weapons and other prohibited items are not brought on-board aircraft. One of our key objectives has been to ensure that all passengers consistently receive professional and courteous processing while maintaining our high level of security. We train security screeners to conduct enhanced screening with courteous professionalism in order to treat passengers with dignity and respect. We regret that you feel these high standards were not met.

We monitor the number and nature of complaints we receive to track trends and spot areas of concern that may require special attention. This ongoing process will enable us to ensure prompt, corrective action whenever we determine that security-screening policies need modification or specific employees or screener teams are the subjects of repeated complaints.

Again, we deeply regret any inconvenience or discomfort you may have suffered as a result of enhanced screening procedures. TSA appreciates you for taking the time to share your concerns with us. We are confident that through the concerns brought to us by the traveling public, we will be better able to address problem areas with corrective action.

TSA Contact Center

My guess is that complaints about shoddy treatment by security screeners must be so common that the TSA just decided to set their system to respond to all emails with automatic apology notes and called it a day!