The pajama strut.

"If there is a city that needs your help more than DC does, it is Shanghai. Representative sample attached."

Picture courtesy of my friend E who is doing his darndest to convince himself it was a sound decision to leave the comforts of a country where women don't do the "pajama strut" and head East - waaay East - to that mythical place everyone foolishly puts on their I've-always-wanted-to-go-there list and where even in its most cosmopolitan city the food sold on the street might be labeled "chicken with spices" but is more likely ground cat-paw covered in dumpster sauce.

Yes, my boy E is in the funpark that is Mainland China, where indulgences and state-borne ideas run rampantly, gloriously and with a security detail as inconspicuous as a liberal at a gun-range.

As much as I enjoyed this picture - admittedly, more for the "challenged-looking" fellow with the cowlick poking out from behind the wall on the left than for the fashion subject - it was this next line of E's e-mail that got me most hot and bothered:

"By the way, 'Serious Job' appears to be blocked in China."

My benign, little blog...blocked?

At first, I thought it was pretty cool to be on par with the BBC and occasionally CNN in terms of my threat-level to the Chinese government, but once the cold-hard truth set in and I realized my pearls of fashion wisdom and opals of celebrity insight weren't able to reach China's enormously style-challenged female population (pajamas to work are the least of their problems, believe me), I became quite upset, especially considering how much of my life I've devoted to this mother-'effing country. After I allowed it to swallow up the better part of my early to mid-20s, after I endured months of listening to their crappy, melodramatic pop music, after the trauma - okay, excitement - of being approached in the Tianjin Guoji Dasha Starbucks to be "very special, well-paid personal assistant" to a Mr. Li Wang who was half my height and shooting me the unsexiest sexy-eyes I'd seen since Cameron Diaz in Vanilla Sky, after being forced to eat barbecued dog cartilage twice a week while living in a city whose only Western food outlet was a Popeye's that didn't have mashed potatoes or soft-serve -- this is how my Red friends re-pay me?

Hmpf.