About two o’clock in the afternoon today, I was relaxing at home in Great Falls, Virginia, with my friend Cerise and my cat Twinkle. All three of us were lying naked on satin sheets in my king size extra deep memory foam mattress with the windows open, the bed vibrator set on low, Mozart on the quadrophonic stereo, and an ice bucket containing a bottle of Cristal on the nightstand. And before anybody calls PETA about me, for the record Twinkle did not get any of the Cristal, thank you, or, for that matter has my cat ever worn any clothes, not even on Halloween. She and Cerise were in dreamland, dreaming about whatever it is women and cats dream about. I was enjoying the Cristal and the Mozart. Then my land line rang, and Caller ID revealed it was a satellite phone call from none other than Kim Jong Un, Glorious and Infallible Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. I picked up, of course. Wouldn’t you?
Tom: Yo, Kimster!
Kim: [Expletive], Tom, you have no [expletive] idea how good it is to hear your voice!
Tom: Same here, dude, whattup?
Kim: They’ve moved me to this place in the mountains. They say it’s a clinic, but [expletive] man, there’s nothing [expletive] wrong with me!
Tom: Your doubles, on the other hand – or at least one of them, anyway – he definitely hasn’t been acting very well lately.
Kim: What’s he been doing?
Tom: They don’t let you watch the news?
Kim: Are you kidding? They don’t even let me wipe my own [expletive]! And this old piece of [expletive] Japanese satellite phone quit working over a year ago. But I got so frustrated, I’d take it out every couple of weeks and try to use it anyhow, and this time, when it didn’t work, I got so mad, I threw the [expletive] thing against the wall of this closet I hide out in at three in the morning while my [expletive] “valet” is asleep, and whattaya know – the stupid [expletive] lit up and started working again!
Tom: Sounds like a loose ground connection on your main circuit board.
Kim: Oh, well, forget about that electronics [expletive], because that’s not my thing, dude. No [expletive] way am I going to open this [expletive] piece of [expletive] up and try to fix anything. That’s like a total guarantee it will never work again, know what I mean?
Tom: I can imagine.
Kim: So, right, okay, look – before you tell me what my doubles have been doing and all that [expletive], what the [expletive] is happening in the NBA?
Tom: Ah, yeah, well, the regular season doesn’t start until the end of the month, of course, but there’s this power forward, Blake Griffin, with the Clippers. He’s already making a name for himself with top of the mark free throw shooting, elegant distribution and back-to-the basket oriented play. Then there’s…
Kim: [Expletive] that pre-season [expletive]! Who won the 2014 NBA finals?
Tom: The Spurs beat the Heat four games out of five.
Kim: Yes! I knew it! And who won the NCAA championship?
Tom: The Connecticut Huskies.
Kim: Excellent! And how’s LeBron James doing?
Tom: He left the Heat and went back to Cleveland.
Kim: Really? No [expletive]?
Tom: I kid you not, Supreme Leader.
Kim: That’s insane! What the [expletive] did he do that for?
Tom: I dunno. Got homesick, maybe.
Kim: What about Dennis Rodman?
Tom: Uh, as I recall, in January he made some comments about how Kenneth Bae was his own worst enemy, or words to that effect, and it’s his own fault he’s a prisoner in North Korea now. And by some strange, inexplicable coincidence, since then, Rodman’s been under investigation by the federal government for basically anything they can find, generally, but definitely by the Treasury Department for all those gifts he brought you the last time he visited North Korea.
Kim: Oh, [expletive]! Would it help his case any for the Treasury Department to know that I never got any of that expensive [expletive] swag Rodman handed out to my doubles?
Tom: If it could be proved, yes, I suppose so; otherwise, probably not.
Kim: Well, [expletive], I can’t even prove I’m here instead of in Pyongyang, so [expletive] that, I guess. You mean to tell me that Kenneth Bae guy is still in jail?
Tom: Sadly, yes. As a matter of fact, in April, he was sentence to fifteen years hard labor.
Kim: Oh, [expletive]! That totally sucks, dude! I wish there was something I could do to help him. All right, so what did you say Vice Marshal Hwang Pyong-so and the rest of those [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] have been making my doubles do?
Tom: Walk around like gimps. Every time one of them appears in public, he’s limping, hobbling or shambling around like a cripple or a senile ninety-year old lush. The North Korea experts here in the West figure you’ve developed Type Two diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s, prostate cancer, arthritis and / or gout, at the very least.
Kim: [Expletive]! What the [expletive] are they talking about? I’m thirty-one [expletive] years old!
Tom: The theory is, you smoke, drink and eat too much cheese.
Kim: Oh, yeah, right – I live like a [expletive] UN diplomat, and that’s what’s supposedly killing me?
Tom: Supposedly, yes. Reuters reports that “sources inside the North Korean government” contend you injured your ankles while leading your top generals through a grueling obstacle course of sheer walls, deep trenches and barbed wire. Rodong Sinmun, your country’s state-run newspaper, said much the same thing. But in Washington, London, Paris, Tokyo, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow, Rome and Berlin, that’s not what all the North Korea experts are saying – they’re saying that you haven’t been seen in public since you attended a concert with your wife on September third because of various medical problems related to the consequences of an excessively sybaritic, debauched and decadent lifestyle.
Kim: September third? What are those [expletives] thinking? I haven’t seen my wife in over six months! Don’t those [expletives] know that?
Tom: Apparently not. So let me amend my remarks as follows – none of your doubles have been seen in public with your wife since September third. You missed – or rather, should I say, none of your doubles appeared to celebrate the seventeenth anniversary of your father’s elevation to Supreme Leader on October 7, or at the sixty-ninth anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers’ Party on October 10.
Kim: Oh, [expletive] [expletive] those [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] bastards, Hwang Pyong-so, Kim Yong-chun, Ri Yong-mu, Jang Sung-taek, O Kuk-ryol, Pak To-chun, Kim Won-hong, Kim Jong-gak!
Tom: You might want to add your sister, Kim Yo-jung, to that list. There are various reports that in your absence, she’s running North Korea now.
Kim: Yo-jung? Little Monkey Nipples? Her? That conniving [expletive]? That [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]? All right, maybe the little whore can lick the chrome off a trailer hitch, but that hardly qualifies her to run North Korea! No [expletive] way is she running anything but hot water for some guy’s bath before she [expletive] him! I tell you, Tom, somebody’s got his hand up her [expletive] like she’s a ventriloquist’s dummy, and all she’s doing is spouting out whatever it is he wants her to say!
Tom: I don’t think all the Korea experts in Washington, London, Paris, Tokyo, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow, Rome and Berlin would agree with you on very much, dude, but I’m absolutely positive they would agree with you on that. As a matter of fact, some of them tell me they, themselves, have, actually, shall we say… verified your speculations with respect to…
Kim: Oh, [expletive]! I hear my “valet” coming! Gotta go!
Tom: Sure – I understand. Call back when you can.
Kim: Will do, dude! Goodbye!