Dear Departed Leader

(Props to Don)

Or
Kim Jong-no longer Ill
(An epitaphany shared with Mark)

Or
Train in Vain
(Kudos to Don)

Or
Un for the Road
(Additional accolades for Don)

Or
Drear Leader
(More merit for Mark)
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, part Bond villain, part Monty Python sketch, a veritable Willy Wonka with nuclear missles, has died at the age of 69 or 70 of a heart attack on a train brought on by “great mental and physical strain” during a “high-intensity field inspection.” Which is how I think you would probably describe Elvis’ eternal bowel movement, if you’re looking for a more honest assessment of his final moments. There was a double rainbow over the log cabin on the sacred mountain where he was born, so be prepared for similarly supernatural visions for his funeral on Dec. 28. When the “peerlessly great man” replaced his father as the leader of the most backward country in Asia, pear and apricot trees spontaneously came into bloom, attracting butterflies and bees, while a fisherman caught a rare white sea cucumber, the finest indication of fitness to lead since a watery tart hurled a scimitar at Arthur. At the age of 23 he was repairing auto engines, improving farming practices, penning operas and plays and authoring a thesis on Korean history. Then on Tuesday… For fun he would wander through cemeteries and rattle off the phone numbers of the deceased. The first time he ever played golf, he shot 11 holes-in-one and recorded a score of 38 under par. Hennessy reported that in 1993 and 1994, he was their single biggest customer in the world, importing more than $750,000 a year, roughly 833 times the average salary of a North Korean, 2 million of whom (10% of the population) died during a famine in the 1990s brought on largely by state incompetence. But man destroys, man builds – he developed a plan to solve the famine by breeding rabbits to be the size of dogs for food. A noted cinephile who literally wrote the book on Communist film-making (1973’s On the Art of the Cinema) he tried to jump start the North Korean movie industry by kidnapping a South Korean director and actress and forcing them to make Pulgasari, a Godzilla rip-off with a pro-Communist subplot. When he was forced to give up smoking on doctor’s orders, he decided that the entire country would go smoke free, under penalty of prison and hard labor – more effective than Nicorette. Part of the North Korean science curriculum in schools is that Kim transcended producing urine and feces. Still more reasonable than intelligent design. When not providing punchlines for the Western world, Kim was running roughshod over his people, starving them with an iron hand as he fostered his own personality cult. Despite the cartoonish appearance of the 5-foot-3 inch dictator with Jackie O’s hand-me-down sunglasses and a bouffant, he built the 5th largest army in the world at 1.1 million men and added North Korea to the nuclear weapon fraternity. They can’t figure out how to get the things to fly straight, but still…