Dead Helmsmen
Imagethief literally had one foot out the door of his office and was contemplating an evening of freedom immersed in his knockoff "Lost" season one DVDs when he stumbled across an article that deserved some comment because it concerns a subject dear to his heart: cash money.

Imagethief is a fan of money, and enjoys having lots of it. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does, whoa, baby! But Imagethief is also a decadent aesthete, and for that reason, he likes his money to look good. Nobody wants to flash a wad of dull bills all adorned with the same, po-faced tyrant. That's why Chinese money has always been something of a letdown and, frankly, Imagethief can't spend the damn stuff fast enough

And while he's ranting on the subject, Singaporean and US money, the other two currencies with which he is intimately acquainted (although, not as intimately as he'd like) also have gruesome shortcomings. Singaporean money is dull beyond measurement, with all bills sporting the image of first president Yusof Ishak on the front, and socially uplifting montages on the back. It's also currently in the midst of its transition to Aussie-style plastic bills, another aesthetic crime, for all it's security advantages.

As for US money...well, the less said the better. We get variety in our faces, but a dull, uniform color and a ponderous assortment of monuments on the back. Frankly, I have always felt that, while the front of the US $20 bill should retain Andrew Jackson, the back should be changed to an engraving of a half-incoherent man snorting lines of coke off the hood of a '73 Corvette Stingray while surrounded by topless barmaids. I also think the front of the $100 bill should lose Ben Franklin and feature Crockett and Tubbs from "Miami Vice". Enough of the revolutionary figures, already. But that's just me; I take a progressive approach to currency design.

Chinese money is fifty-fifty. Frankly, I feel that Communist-era currency design hit its zenith with the ancient "Liberation Truck" one fen note, which is about the size of your thumb, is utterly endearing and features no portrait of Mao Zidong. It's also useless in terms of legal tender, at least in Beijing where one fen is approximately one tenth of a cash-register rounding error. The newer notes, while useful for purchasing goods and services, such as pirate DVDs of "lost" and hand-jobs at the local hair brothel, all feature the Great Helmsman. Frankly, I feel that paying for vice with pictures of Mao...well, now that I think of it, it's entirely appropriate, but it still feels wrong.

So I was excited to see this story from Reuters on possible changes in Chinese currency design:
Deng may be the new currency in China
Panel proposes dropping Mao's portrait from some banknotes

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Move over Mao. China may remove his image from the next range of banknotes to make room for other heroes.

Delegates to an advisory body to China's parliament have proposed that Deng Xiaoping, architect of the nation's economic reforms, and Sun Yat-sen, father of the revolution that toppled the last emperor in 1911, should grace the new bills, state media reported on Monday.

"We owe our sustained, rapid economic growth and constantly rising international status over the past decades to Deng Xiaoping, who initiated the reform and opening drive in the late 1970s," delegate Duan Huijun wrote in his proposal.

The image of Mao Zedong, who founded the People's Republic in 1949 and was once the center of a massive cult of personality, is currently on most Chinese banknotes.
Deng and Sun Yat-sen are hardly as adventurous as my own proposal for new Chinese currency, which is a series of notes featuring  famous television seductresses, but, hey, it's a start.