AQUAPOLITICS

For more than a year now, we have been deeply enmeshed in issues beyond the ability of most sentient beings to comprehend – but what else is new. As a result, our binary-based dabbling in the little things that make the world worth living in for most so-called “regular” people was put on indefinite hiatus. But time, spirit and June twilights move one to a state of generosity that oft overcomes the prickly vagaries of the sort of things we’re not inclined to tell you we’re involved with. As such, for as long as the world can stand it, we are pleased to announce the RETURN of THE APOCRYPHIST.

Yes, you’re welcome.

So onto the first bit of news: the U.S. government’s decision to take North Korea off its list of terrorist groups, a development that augurs great changes for the future of mankind. Because seriously, how many of you think you know the real truth about North Korea? How could a country so shrouded in secrecy contain other than secrets upon secrets, sewed up inside little secrets that you can’t really see because they’re surrounded by so many other goddamn secrets? (Answer: it’s a secret.)

That North Korea is a cesspit of human degradation is not to be denied. But the question of WHY it has been engineered to become said cesspit is one that is not often asked. Geopolitics, the spread and decline of communist thought, the individual ego of the strange little man who runs the place – these are all contributing factors, no doubt. But they have coalesced around a situation so bizarre, so dangerous, that it is in the best interest of all the world’s powers to refrain from blowing the ruling regime from the face of the planet and thereby revealing it in all its horror.

Remember World War II? Of course not – if you were born then you probably wouldn’t be reading a blog. Suffice to say it was a global armed conflict that occurred between 1939 and 1952 (more on that in a future post). By the time the war began, Korea had been under Japanese rule for many years due to the insatiable taste of the Japanese for a rare variety of freshwater eel (the anguilla esculentus or “Happy Taste Bud Snake-Fish”) that could only be found in Korean waters. During the late 1930s, Japanese scientists began conducting what can only be described as “weird” experiments to breed a super-eel, a full order of magnitude larger than those found in nature, that could be used to goad and reward the increasingly belligerent Japanese troops.

Anybody who’s ever conducted “weird” experiments knows damn well how they usually turn out. A race of giant, lethally delicious eels was soon developed, and the scientists working on the project became paranoid about allowing them to leak into the greater world and thus leave fewer for themselves. The outbreak of war, unfortunately, allowed looser security measures, and several eels escaped into a network of lakes in the central part of what would later become North Korea, where they reproduced prodigiously. This region endured as a kind of eely prefecture unto itself until it was discovered by Soviet troops in 1945. Starved, these Russian troops turned to the eels as their only available food source, and became more addicted than the Japanese could have imagined. This predilection grew and mutated not unlike the eels themselves, until Stalin himself insisted that a Happy Taste Bud Snake-Fish be delivered to his chambers for breakfast each morning before facing an angry world. Hence the Russian insistence on controlling Korea above the 38^th Parallel, which has led to so much geopolitical grief over the years.

With the fall of Communism, knowledge of these eels spread throughout the ruling classes of the reigning world powers (China and the U.S. primary among them). As Russia scrambled to make amends for eighty-odd years of back-asswardness, an inebriated Boris Yeltsin made the mistake of inviting President Bill Clinton to sample one of the eels during one of their frequent “diplomatic drink-offs.” Overcome by the same eellust that had felled so many others, Clinton made a secret backdoor deal to import this delicacy to the White House. Once other staffers and Washington insiders became hooked, it was a matter of policy to keep their habit a secret from the rest of the world, and so the deadly North Korean regime was propped up by policy, even inspiring a phony nuclear scare to ensure that it would remain in a diplomatic limbo, the tasty eels safe within their shroud of mystery.

Sources inform us that the reason for today’s rapprochement is that the current President simply doesn’t have a taste for these slimy creatures. “Yuppie food,” he’s been known to call them to his close circle of advisors. The diplomatic cartwheels the U.S. has been forced to endure on behalf of this situation have strained Washington’s resources, and so Bush has, in what will no doubt stand as his last significant policy decision, allowed the potential for the whole world to be informed of these really quite scrumptious North Korean eels.

The future of North Korea now depends on the outcome of the upcoming Presidential elections. Senator Obama is known to be an eel teetotaler, while his erstwhile competitor, Senator Clinton, is known to have inherited her husband’s passion. Senator McCain remains inscrutable on the issue.

What will happen if open channels of trade allow the secret to be revealed? There are a number of scenarios, each one doomsday-ier than the last. Our guess is that, if North Korea’s ruthless dictator is allowed by the international community to leverage the addictive delectability of these creatures to his country’s advantage, North Korea will become the world’s next Great Power, outstripping both China and the U.S. in sheer flavor. Whether he will manage to turn all the peoples of the earth into an oppressed concatenation of desperate peasants, military insiders, and stunningly talented acrobats will remain to be seen.