On June 20th I will be leaving the United States for a ten-day, six-city trip to mainland China as part of an intensive first-semester Chinese language course.  In preparation for my trip, I've spent the couple of months brushing up on my Chinese history, and by "brushing up on my Chinese history" I mean "playing Dynasty Warriors until my arms fall off", because I already know everything that there is to know about Chinese history.  Seriously.  I'm probably the only non-Chinese person you will ever meet who can name every single Imperial Dynasty in order.  I'm just that fucking smart and I rule.  Anyways, in my research I've come to a startling realization:  I am destined for greatness. 

Now many of you (including myself) probably already knew this on some level, but now I have some irrefutable proof.  What is it, you might ask?  Well, I have come across several shocking similarities between my life and that of one Mr. Mao Zedong.  Maybe you've heard of him, if you're not an idiot.  Well since Mao's and my lives are so closely intertwined, I believe that it is only a matter of time before Americans and Chinese alike recognize me leadership abilities and total awesomeness and promote me to Chairman of Earth.  After reading this update, I'm sure that will be your first instinct as well when you come to the shocking realization that I should be the first dictator of America.  Prepare yourself to be awed by the destiny that awaits me and the amazing comparisons between the lives of two of the most influential people of the last two hundred years!

Mao Zedong as a young man.

Ben Thompson as a ninja.

Mao Zedong got his ideological and revolutionary start working as a library assistant at the University of Beijing, which is located in Beijing, and spending his spare time attending student protests and Communist party functions.  Coincidentally enough, I got my revolutionary and professional career started by working a part time job in the interlibrary loan office at Florida State University, which is located in Florida, and spending my spare time drinking, yelling at people and trying to convince the girl that worked with me that she should go down on me in the fifth floor storage closet since there was only one key to that room and I knew where it was.  So it's basically like we followed identical paths here... Mao protested how badly the Chinese got ripped off by the Treaty of Versailles and I listened to Rage Against the Machine, which like is the modern-day equivalent of attending a political rally led by a really angry little man and his stoner friends.  Mao would throw broken bottles at police officers; I would throw beer bottles at drunk people.  Basically, this is the same thing.

I'll bet you didn't know that Mao Zedong went to school in Boston, did you?  Well, he did.  He attended grad school at Harvard or MIT or something, which isn't quite the same thing as doing grad school part-time at Boston University, but it's close enough.  We both traveled great distances (him from China, me from Florida) to be here, we both went to school, and we both found low-paying jobs to help put ourselves through school.  Mao worked as a chef in the upscale swanky restaurant where JFK proposed to Jackie O and got yelled at by snooty asshole patrons and I worked at a job where I got yelled at all the time by my boss because I never did any work and spent all of my time updating my stupid website when I should have been collating documents or getting smacked upside the head with a 2x4 or whatever it was I was supposed to be doing at my last job. 

Mao of course loved Chinese food, because he was Chinese and also worked as a chef that cooked Chinese food.  Well it just so happens that I love Chinese food as well.  Coincidence?  I think not!  Man, I don't even care what kind of Chinese food it is... if you put it infront of me I'm going to go to town like Pac-Man in a small white dot factory without the ghosts.  Freaking cheap-ass Chef Choy's special sesame chicken has roughly the life expectancy of a field medic in Vietnam in the middle of a napalm storm in outer space when it's anywhere in my eyesight.  I can't cook it like Mao could, but I think that if it was my job to make it every single day, I could learn to become pretty good at it.

It's a little known fact that Mao and I used to get together to have Iron Chef-style cook-offs sometimes.  He would of course always kick my ass because the bullshit judge panel liked his roast Peking Duck créme bruleé with Horseradish tartar sauce way better than my $.69 minute-and-a-half instant cup ramen noodles, probably because ramen is made by taking all the residue left over from cooking real food and deep fat frying it, but probably also because it was political bullshit and the panel was all Commie pinko bastards that suck ass.

Ben and Mao shake hands to celebrate another successful cook-off.

Mao Zedong and I both put together comprehensive Five-Year Plans.  However, while Mao's plan was for the economic rehabilitation of rural China, my plan is to get a master's degree in five years without choking to death on food particles or accidentally sever any of my own limbs.  I guess these two plans are slightly different, but the important thing is that they're both five year plans and that we both developed them independently of one another.  It's a sign from God that I am destined to be the next tyrannical despot of a large nation.

The Chinese reads, "We know that one day Ben will graduate."

Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward was an economic plan put into place with the intention of dramatically urbanizing China and creating a high-powered urbanized economy on par with those of developed Western countries.  However, his plan proved to be too ambitious and the result was a disaster that would take China nearly a decade to overcome.

Amazing Ben's Great Leap Forward took place after his Rock Supergroup Bad Mojo played a graduation party for their friend Luke "Peaches" McFarland.  Ben had been drumming his ass off like a damned monster and at the end of his wicked fiery (but not flaming) drum solo where he set himself on fire and then exploded guitar amps and peoples heads with the reverberations from his crash cymbals he leapt from his drummers throne (a metal folding chair) and performed a Great Leap Forward into Luke's swimming pool where he splashed everyone there.  Then, to his surprise, there was an ice cold Coke that someone had dropped in the pool by accident, so Ben dove down and recovered a nice cool, refreshing beverage as people applauded and told him how awesome he was.  Luckily, Sexx was on site to immortalize the moment forever on camera and The Great Leap Forward went down as one of the most excellent accomplishments in the history of rock drumming.

Ben makes his Great Leap Forward following a bitchin' rock show.

Mao and I both have very strong opinions about certain things, and over the years we managed to develop not only a philosophy for life, but a minor cult following as well.  While Mao's ideas and thoughts were forever documented by his work, Quotations from the Sayings of Mao Zedong, otherwise known as "The Little Red Book", I decided to evolve that into the 21st century and start a website about how much ass I kick.  Both the Red Book and my website mention how we are godly and all-knowing and how everyone should respect our collective wisdom and worship us like the supermen that we are, Mao seems to have been a little more successful in that regard than I have so far.  Granted, I still have a couple years to develop a massive cult following consisting of more people than just myself, Hot Andrea and viking warrior Jack Shannon, Mao actually managed to get a couple billion people to elect him their leader and follow his every command.  His cult following consisted of the majority of the Communist Party of China, and he had people throughout the country destroying shit in his name while so far I've only managed to get people to email me and tell me that I'm an idiot because I can't figure out how to operate a six year-old Macintosh computer.  Give it time though.

Chairman Mao's equivalent of My Stupid Website.

Ni Hao, bitches!  That means "Hello".  Shit, I've taken so much Chinese over the past month that I'm practically Chinese now.  Between Ni Hao, "Wo yao yi ge Zhongguo de nu pengyou" (I want a Chinese girlfriend) and "Ni mama wenshang mang ma?" (Is your mother busy tonight?) I feel like I'm more than capable of getting around China like I was a native Chinese person or something, provided that I never need to buy anything, go anywhere or ever use the bathroom.  Guess what?  Mao spoke Chinese too!  I can't believe all the similarities here!  It's enough the boggle the mind, really.

Holy shit, this should be lumped in with the category before.  It's like Mao pretty much followed me everywhere I decided to go; I move to Boston and I find out he live there.  I go to China, BAM!  So did he!  It's fucking uncanny, I tell you what.

When you crossed Mao Zedong you got your shit wrecked.  You were declared an enemy of the people and were shipped off to a forced re-education camp faster than you could say "holy shit", and the next thing you knew you were buying little red books and realizing that you no longer knew how to play the piano.  It's sort of the same thing with me, except that instead of sending you to a prison labor camp, I write mean things about you on the internet or just suck it up and jack you in the mouth like a bitch.  Granted, if I had the option of loading people that pissed me off into a giant catapult and launching them to Siberia I would do it, but I'm a little bit limited by my resources and the fact that nobody really likes me.  So I just try to resort to things like kicking you in the solar-plexus or devoting a paragraph to you in an "Amazing Ben Bitches About Random Shit" article on a website that you'll probably never read.  But it's essentially the same thing.

Mao spent his final years secluded in the Forbidden City reading books and writing philosophy.  I spent the last couple of years secluded in my ultra-fortified two-bedroom apartment playing Xbox and watching SportsCenter, which is what I'm certain Mao would do if he were in my situation today.  We both like to stay far away from our supporters, mostly because we're a little afraid that they may try to pull a knife on us but also because being in large crowds freaks us out and since we're superior beings we've got better shit to do with our time than hang around with people who are so obviously beneath us.

Mao Zedong married Jiang Qing, a sultry vixen who was an adamant Communist party member and who would become the leader of the so-called "Gang of Four" that led the Cultural Revolution and pulled all the strings in Chinese government from the time of Mao's death until people finally got sick of their bullshit.  Jiang was a strong lady, she didn't take any crap from anyone and she was highly educated and intelligent.  And while she was looking a little rough around the time of her trial in the 80's and late 70's, she was a hottie in her early years.  Just check out the picture.

An obvious parallel can be made here to Hot Andrea, who is hot and also bitchy with a strong personality.  I like having Andrea around because when people piss me off and I'm really tired she usually just goes off on them so that I don't have to.  It works out pretty well that way.  The point is that Jiang Qing and Hot Andrea are pretty much the same person, except that Jiang is Asian and I hope that Hot Andrea doesn't get ugly when she gets old.

It's a little known fact that Mao Zedong was a hardcore rock star back in his native China.  It was only fitting then that he asked the greatest band in the history of the United States, Telephone Room 7, to show up and play the party when he declared the People's Republic of China in 1949.  We showed up and rocked the place with a couple of bitchin' Zeppelin covers before bringing down the house with our renditions of "Sex Equals Yes", "Naked Dan" and "The Dickboy Only Dates Asian Chicks Blues".  It ruled.

Telephone Room 7 and Mao Zedong rock out at the declaration of the People's Republic of China.