Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Funny Hat Day in Pyongyang and Berkeley - column, 16 April 2017

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Funny Hat Day in Pyongyang and Berkeley

Is every day in North Korea a Funny Hat Day?

Same for Berkeley – with their grubby watch caps everyone seems to channel Jack Nicholson’s role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Cuckoo’s nest – well, yeah, Berkeley.

President Trump and Fearless Leader of the Glorious North Korean Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic of Earthly Delights Kim Jong Un have something in common – really bad hairdos. Perhaps they could bring peace through a beauticians’ summit. Getting a nice haircut somehow makes a man feel better, maybe not-starting-a-nuclear-war better.

Does Kim Jong Un’s office staff play Secret Santa?

Kim Jong Un desperately wants one of those M.O.A.B. bombs – he’s got another sleepy uncle and an ex-girlfriend or two to dispatch.

When Donald Trump says “You’re fired,” that means you have to find another job. When Kim Jong Un says “You’re fired,” that’s the signal for an artillery officer to shoot you with a big ol’ cannon.

The Day of the Sun parade in Pyongyang was a matter of thousands of people in uniforms strutting and goose-stepping and driving hundreds of motorized missile launchers in millimeter precision. In contrast, the Trumpistas and Anti-Trumpistas of Berkeley couldn’t even organize pushing a dumpster down the street.

Berkeley’s Saturday milling-around event was better than Kim Jong Un’s Look-at-me-I’m-a-Hitler-wannabe stomp, though. In Berkeley people yelled at each other for a few hours, threw a few punches, and then went for coffee, while Kim Jong Un’s nicely-uniformed slaves marched on and on and on into the night.

A young woman in a tailored skirt can be elegant; a thousand young women goose-stepping in short skirts and waving swords about in the streets of Pyongyang is just plain weird. And since young women in Berkeley appear to dress out of rag barrels from behind resale shops, they’re just weird too.

In Pyongyang young people march about in step while staring vacantly and holding their Kalashnikovs at arm’s length. In Berkeley young people stumble about while staring vacantly into their little Orwellian telescreens held at arm’s length.

North Korean generalissimos wear dozens of medals and spend all their time clapping. Every time Kim Jong Un moves, the generals clap. When a missile launcher rolls by the generals clap. The generals don’t stop clapping until Kim Jong Un says they stop clapping. All those medals those generals wear must be for excellence in clapping, which is a bad case of the clap.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un bikini mud wrestling. Discuss.

All those old men with missiles and guns and bad hair and attitudes – this is not good. One wishes that Pyongyang and Berkeley could twin as sister cities. Young North Koreans could teach young Berkely-istas how to bathe more often and dress a bit better, while Berkeley’s young people could teach North Koreans how to idle away their lives over adjective coffees instead of threatening war all the time.

No hope for the funny hats, though.

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