Reflecting at the Year's End

We in the fictional news business have had a great year! We've had so much to be sarcastic and unpleasant about.  Just consider:

• Kim Chee Who, the restrained and civilized leader of North Korea. What more need we say?
• Vladimir Putin, the last in a long line of statesmen, including Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney, and Benito Mussolini, who can be trusted with a weapon, since they only shoot their friends or their own feet.
• Pakistan, a country now regretting its long-standing policy of nurturing savagery and violence on its Western border. (Pro tip: a buffer state is supposed to keep the bad guys away from you.)
• Nigeria, where the government has sentenced a number of its soldiers to death for refusing to go into combat without guns or ammunition.
• The Scots voters who (narrowly) expressed a preference for being part of the United Kingdom.
• The rest of the United Kingdom, which (narrowly) decided to turn down a US offer to become the fifty-first state.
• Raul Castro; just visualize him making a scale-balancing gesture with his hands: "Russia, the US? Russia, the US? Gosh, why didn't I think of this before? Thanks, Your Holiness."
• The fringies and nut jobs who will find, in the current outpouring of outrage over police shootings (by and of), an excuse to do some shooting of their own.
• Detroit, where everyone some people a few people are celebrating a successful bankruptcy. Bankruptcy, of course, is a way of legally reneging on debt. But still, whoopee!
• And finally, the good folks of our own state, who want the damn roads fixed and are damned if they'll pay one red cent more in taxes to get it done. See, the problem is, money used to grow on trees, and then the Emerald Ash Borer came along and ...

Problem is, from our stand point, all of that is more or less real.  As the saying goes, you can't make this stuff up, and since that's our stock in trade, we have to look elsewhere for inspiration.  Oh, well. At least we can contemplate a well-deserved retirement on the lake front property in Shiawassee County. The only question is, which lake will get there first, Huron or Michigan?

Have a good festive season, and join us in hoping that we have to make up more of the bad news next year, instead of just reading about it.

I hear and obey, Dear Leader

North Korea has (it is claimed -- remember the "Uncle-fed-to-dogs" rumor of a while back) mandated that all males must have the Kim Jong Un hair cut. 

Far be it from me to fight city hall.

Desparate Media Fooled Again

It appears that the execution of the North Korean CFO (Chief Fascism Officer) and Uncle of  Kim Jong Un was not as barbaric as it has been painted. The story that he was thrown to a pack of starved dogs while other officials were forced to watch seems to have originated with a Chinese Onion wannabe humor website. A North Korean spokesman told reporters that he was absolutely not fed to dogs.

"That is a fabrication of the Western savage-barbarian conspiracy. The filthy traitor was executed in the manner laid down by our laws. He was marinated overnight in lite soy sauce, and then offered to a woodchuck, but as the woodchuck declined to participate, we shot him. The woodchuck. Then we shot the traitor, too, sort of as an afterthought."

The US State Department refused to comment, but an official at the Department of Agriculture cast doubt on that version of the facts, noting that the export of woodchucks to North Korea has been under embargo since 2011.

Meanwhile, news sources in Michigan were running Korean developments on the Internet equivalent of page six, since "Top News" feeds were occupied with snowstorm pictures and warnings from Governor Snyder about using caution when driving in twelve feet of snow and/or running with scissors.