SOUTHWEST CHINA – Chinese officials remain flabbergasted at how easily Tibetan monks have been catching on fire these days. Over 30 monks from the southern Chinese province has died from burn-related deaths over the past year, which the Chinese government has failed to associate with its brutal repression of Tibetan culture. “I have no clue what’s going on here,” claimed Zhang Wei, China’s Culture Minister. “We here in the Chinese government had no clue that monks are so susceptible to spontaneous combustion.” While befuddled by this new problem, the Chinese government was quick to ponder ways of profiting from these monks’ high-energyoutput capacity. “As the hunt for ‘clean energy’ has heated up, we’ve been trying to explore alternative fuel sources,” Zhang noted. “So far, Tibetan monks remain our best bet. After all, it would be cruel to waste the energy their naturally-explosive condition produces.” Chinese officials remain concerned about the depths of their Tibetan monk reserves. Government economists project, however, that their supplies will last through 2015. In related news, the Chinese are also trying to figure out why all these anti-government bloggers keep locking themselves in secluded, high-security prisons while performing torturous punishments on their own bodies.