Hourglass
LOOK AT THIS HOURGLASS.
This is your life in the shadow of the giant prick country that is North Korea.
Recently, relatively recently, anyway, North Korea has gotten a lot of flak for holding nuclear tests in an underground bunker in P'unggye-yok (anyone who can't pronounce that will be caught and executed now), from which shakes could be felt from as far away as Russia. Considering Russia is already a neighbour to almost every country (and indeed state) in the world, however, that hardly seems an outrageous claim. Unfortunately, instead of this flak hitting North Korea right where it hurts, North Korea actually grabbed the flak by the neck, swallowed it whole, and then defecated one impressive act of flicking the Vs at every single nation in the world by listening very carefully to every single public criticism, ranging from China to the United States, and then staging another test two hours later.
They clearly couldn't hear us over all those hostile nuclear weapons they were testing. I left a message on their answering machine though. I'm sure they'll get back to me.
Now, I'm not saying that this is a light situation, except, of course, it is. North Korea and its leader are batshit insane. Fortunately for us, however, they are not batshit stupid and have probably considered that, after taking a view of their economic and social problems, kicking the collective world in the nuts is probably not a good idea for its own well-being, especially seeing as the United States and the United Kingdom have both proved themselves so eager to press the "Go to War for an Arbitrary, Non-existent Reason" button. You can just give these people reasons! It takes the fun out of it! We all want what we can't have. And the Western world wants a lot wars for arbitrary, non-existent reasons. We can't help it! You have no idea what it's like! You don't understand wars for arbitrary, non-existent reasons!!! I CAN CHANGE IT! I CAN MAKE IT BETTER! IT LOVES ME, I KNOW IT!!!!
Anyway, being that South Korea is an uncomfortably close neighbour (enough to be sharing the name and a peninsula, talk about your overbearing roommates), many people are under the opinion that North Korean soldiers regularly smash through the windows of South Korean homes to threaten them with nuclear radiation, and to completely ruin the country's economy by tilting the entire market in favour of window repairers. However, South Koreans have managed to accept that their goofy, somewhat hostile neighbour as completely insane, unlike the rest of the world, who enjoy collecting all those bricks from their pants to build a house that the Big Bad Wolf of this communist country can't blow down, never noticing that it never had enough wind in its lungs to knock over the straw houses in the first place.
Kim Jong-il is completely out of line!, they say. He's gone mental!
There is a research department somewhere that is drawing the list of world leaders who are mental.
They have been working on this list for over two thousand years, starting with 'God'.
But Iran can't do anything right now, you might say. Ahmadinejad, the self-implied George W. Bush of Iran, is too busy dealing with riots! They're tearing themselves apart, they won't fire any missiles. Surely the only viable candidate to start a nuclear war would be North Korea.
Ahmadinejad being the man who believes that there are no gays in his country (burned them all, they were causing global warming) and obviously rigged his own election. ... Isn't the argument more in question of "why hasn't he done this already?" Because if I were to illegally win an election I'd clearly lost (not that I will, though Oscar keeps an emergency revolver in his desk should the day arrive), putting my entire country into complete and utter chaos, I would wonder "why the hell not? What's the worst thing that could happen?" not "Hmm, maybe I should wait until my country has stabilised into a sexist, oppressive regime first before giving the entire world the middle finger." Basically, if I were as crazy as Ahmadinejad, I would be jamming my finger as fast and as I could into that particular big red button until it broke.
And why stop there? Why not just point a few of those Israel-marked rockets at Antarctica, take those aquatic dicks hostage, physically and mentally torture them while humiliating them out in public? ("You call those wings?! You're a pathetic member of your aviary family, you shame me!!!") Why not even catch a polar bear and beat it to death with a plastic bottle? Who are you to tell me what I can, and cannot do!? I'M THE BLOODY FUCKING PRESIDENT OF IRAN! And that is true in more ways then one!
Dictators cannot be sane. It is a proven theory, having be researched at length by the thousands of people in various miserable countries living in subjugation, PhD. If these people are sane, then they are, quite clearly, people who have been boo'd off horribly on an open mic night, and in a combination of blood-thirsty revenge and dedication to entertainment, stabbed its way to the top of an already unstable nation that has been teetering on the political balance beam for quite some time, punching it in the stomach, shoving it into the mat and taking a sledgehammer to its kneecaps, so that they could take their rightful place, up on a podium surrounded by cameras and mics... to be the craziest, most hilarious leaders we have ever seen.
Let's face it. The only reason we pay North Korea any attention ever is when it's doing something like firing nukes. To me, it seems like a desperate ploy for attention. "Oh, America, America! Look at me! My hands are melting!" The other half, and by half I mean 90% (yes I did go from fractions to percentages, if you have a problem with it, decimal point, come sue me!), of the time, we don't give a damn about their militaristic regime, their overly-restrictive ways of life and their complete economic starvation. Listen. If you're not making ridiculous porn or putting lead in our children's toys, try harder.
And they did. They tried really hard.
Now, the media might say, "No no no. We're not ignorant. the North Korean government controls what goes into the world. It's not our fault for not noticing!"
Which begs the question, really, of how does that change anything? What, do you think that we'll start believing them when they tell us that they're full of daisies now, with rainbows that spill candy? Well, I'm packing my bags right now - I hear they've got daisies! Oh, what? You meant NUCLEAR WEAPONS? And STARVATION and BORDERLINE POVERTY? Bloody hell, it's like that leader of theirs isn't even trying to plant those seeds!
Oh! You mean that Kim Jong-Il wants to be perceived as a strong, not bad, leader?
Exactly what about him makes him a good leader? What, the economic destitution!? The complete devotion to its fiscal-military state that leaves the rest of the country ruined!? Look, there's a reason they didn't vote for him, although in this world, I don't think we would have noticed the difference. (Is George W. Bush the emperor of the United States yet?)
As for how North Korea itself feels about this entire situation, I believe that it can be best summed up as so:
(image courtesy of CAD comics)
...But then Michael Jackson died.
And so the world was left in turmoil. No threat of nuclear war, no unbelievable suffering at the hands of terrorists and torturing, or even brutal, gory car-bombings in Iraq could be comparable to this.
*sob* Oh Michael. Why did you have to leave us? I already forgave you for all those children you molested, I know you didn't mean it!! Oh god, I miss your extremely disturbing pale face and vapid eyes already!
Victor Gooch
The Department
1276 words
OOC: Written after being IMed at midnight by some person I hadn't talked to in at least a year, asking me if I was worried about the impending nuclear threat.
I didn't have a answer for him, but I did say that I'd tell him if I found myself dead from radiation poisoning.