You always know its going to be a good one when it starts with a North Korean dateline! This one we just love, actually we reckon we’re developing a bit of fetish (can we say that, or does it come out sounding just plain weird!?!) for that wacky place of bizzare synchronisation, anachronistic socialism, overt warmongering and sadly, a starving (in more ways than one), repressed population. And let’s not forget the major cult of personality and quite frankly really bad hair styles. Oh and we’re also big fans of their super stern newscaster that reads the anti-everything-but-North Korea news with such venomous vigour that we reckon she’s going to pop an artery in her brain one of these days. Actually, we just had a little brain episode ourselves – maybe the organisers of certain air cargo events could hire her as a co-host alongside that BBC guy. Wow, what a show that would be!
So yes, back to the issue at hand. First we have to confess this has nothing whatso- ever to do with air cargo (at least last time we talked about the country’s airline Air Korya), but it IS about something close to the hearts of ‘some’ of the Belly Ache gang – DISCLAIMER – we will deny knowing anything about anything should lawyers acting on behalf of the movie, software or music industry come knocking on our door.
Apparently, having been kicked out of Sweden and resting tentatively in Norway (surely doesn’t seem like much hope there, I mean if you can’t survive in liberal Sweden, Norway isn’t exactly the next best place that springs to mind) and Spain (clearly a better choice), the infamous Pirate Bay ‘sharing’ website has been offered virtual refuge in …drum roll please…North Korea! According to The Pirate Bay, aka TPB, North Korea’s Mini-Me dictator Kim-Jong Un himself, invited the website to his own personal Eden. We have it on good authority that JU is an ardent downloader and has the entire collection of Austin Powers movies, courtesy of TPB.
And why not, after all the invitation comes shortly after a visit to the country by former NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman (who admittedly got a bit confused over where exactly Gangnam Style came from) and Google’s top boss, Eric Schmidt.
We take it as a positive sign – the evil dictator may be starving the population to death and threatening war and pestilence on all-and-sundry, but at least he’s going to open up the country to the Internet. Too bad nobody there can afford a computer, unless they’re tight with Jong Un.
For all the TPB junkies out there, fear not, as long as ethics don’t get in your way (seemingly unlikely since you’re already busy stealing ones and zeros) because of the connection to the evil dictator, you’ll be fine! And besides, no need to worry about the TPB being located there, after all it’s not like anyone is making credit card purchases!
The new (old) ‘F’ word. The Belly Achers think of themselves as being the consummate journalists – factual, clear, concise, colourful and creative in measured amounts, never distracting the reader with bombastic, overbearing or obtuse language. Well, okay that’s the image that plays over and over in our collective heads – and we’re staying with that! But when it comes to use of language, we give the prize to our colleagues in India, who clearly have much more expansive vocabularies than our humble selves. If ever there was a concern that the grandeur of the English language would fade away, fear not, for there is India! Anyone familiar with Indian newspapers knows exactly what we’re talking about.
In a recent report about the opening of an air cargo facility in Mangalore, we came across this sentence: “Mr Singh and Mr Moily felicitated former director of the airport M. R. Vasudeva for his contribution to the development of the airport.” Understandably we did a double take. We were all quite concerned at Belly Ache Central as to what exactly Mr Singh and Mr Moily had in mind for Mr Vasudeva. But, our deepest, darkest fears were put to rest after Googling that rather queer word in the sentence. Apparently, felicitate means “to congratulate”. Well, what’ya know…we all learned something new today! And so, coming away that much wiser from this new nugget of knowledge we picked up, there was really nothing else to do but felicitate ourselves.
