Fat boy has a gun

Kim Jong Un is a cartoon. Hands down he would easily land the role of fat comic bad guy in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  

He’s become a joke and over the last few months also the target for anyone with a rudimentary understanding of how to photoshop a picture or edit a you tube video. 

He has a youthful pudgy bland face which seems to ooze out of a bloated button-straining torso and his dress sense is so awful it makes Colonel Gaddafi seem like a fashion icon.

Add to this a face so devoid of expression it looks like he has botox for blood and you end up with a man begging to be taken viral. And for all the wrong reasons.

Right now as I write this I cant think of anyone more in need of a make over than Kim Jong Un.

Initially though the threats coming out of the Korean peninsula were much less funny. Initially that is, but as they went on and the threats got more and more insane I think we all, including most of the worlds leaders, realised it was just the yapping of a lunatic dog. The line from Reservoir Dogs ‘Are you going to bark all day little doggy or are you going to bite?’ seemed somewhat appropriate.

Once we realised the people living just over the border were more interested in the latest release from Psy than the immediate threat of nuclear annihilation everyone breathed out and then the jokes and photoshoping started.

Its now gone very quiet.

This is most likely because Mr Un has nothing left to threaten anyone with. He’s already used the ultimate threat; nuclear war. So what next? Threaten to turn his Death Star in the direction of Washington? Conjure up a biblical plague of locusts?

I’m guessing Kim’s ‘things to threaten people with’ cupboard is pretty bare at the moment.

Nuke Psy that would be my suggestion, should he ask.

Even Kim, and his smaller than he said it was arsenal, must have the capability to do that. It would have the double effect of seriously pissing off the South and also pleasing me immensely. A very, very small warhead, dropped directly on his head would do the trick. I would then never again find myself trying to ride an invisible horse badly on some crappy euro-pop dance floor.

I had a beer once with a man who claimed he went to university with Kim. This was long before the recent escalations. In a time when his father was still alive, him of the Don King hairdo. Over the course of the evening this man managed to convince me that once Kim Jon Il (weird hairdo dad) died and his university friend ascended to the throne all would be much better.

‘He’s a nice, normal, regular guy’ he told me.

Assuming this is true then something serious must have happened to Kim Jon junior (try saying that quickly) since his carefree and normal, regular guy, university days.

Which is not surprising really.

I have changed since my youth so why would he be any different? Granted I’m not creating bad CGI videos of the white house being bombed or threatening stuff I can’t do but still, I have changed.

A lot of things have changed and its not just the lines on my face or the tufts of hair sprouting from my ears, nose and every other orifice either.

Years ago I asked someone much older what’s it like to be old. He responded by telling me that its no different. He felt and thought no different to how he did when he was twenty (my age at the time). Things just hurt more he added.

I’ve subsequently discovered this to be a load of rubbish. Everything has changed.

I think the only things which remain from my youth is my name and a small colourful smudge of a tattoo. My whole outlook on life has shifted dramatically in the last twenty years or so.

I’ve matured.

Yes, I accept there are a lot of people who might disagree with me on this one but believe me, I have.

I read a speech Bill Gates is supposed to have given to a group of college students recently. It was posted on FB and carried with it a gazillion ‘likes’. Even with its questionable veracity the sheer popularity of the posting says something about my generation I think.

I am of the generation which was born in the 60s/70s, grew up in the 80s, partied in the 90s and matured in the naughties.

Generation X is the term used to describe us and I am using the term ‘us’ very loosely here.

In the UK we grew up during the miner and teachers strikes, Thatcher and the Falklands war.

We remember punk rock and our parents were born during WWII. A whole strata of the population were shaped by these events and resulting parental influences.

A good example is Margaret Thatcher. Probably the most polarising individual from the last fifty years or so.  Where she was concerned you either loved or hated her but you never, never ever, sat on the fence.

Generation X have opinions. Agree with them or otherwise but they will have an opinion. This blog is a good example.

The generation following X is logically Y. They were born in the 80s and 90s and it was this cohort which Bill was addressing.

This is the generation, according to Bill and his army of opinionated likers, who do not have a clue about the real world. They don’t understand the concept that hard work is a prerequisite to get a reward. They think everyone wins a prize. They have an inbuilt sense of entitlement. They have the attention span of a gnat and it goes without saying that their music is rubbish.

Is this true? Maybe.

Is it bad? Dunno.

An ocean of little blue and white thumbs up signs suggest a lot of people agree with his sentiments and the moral high ground he seems to be claiming as his own. 

So what are the implication of such a generation existing, if they do in fact exist?

Probably none in the same way there has been no implications coming from generation X maturing. Well apart from the economic crisis, global warming and a couple of wars that is.

Generation Y are different but then generation X was also different to the baby boomers who came before them and so it will go on. I don’t think its bad. Its just different.

Generation Y grew up in a period of wealth, economic prosperity, technological advances, computer games and easy credit. Everything was easy and on tap so is it any wonder their approach to life, their outlook on the world or their attention spans for that matter are different?

According to research Generation Y don’t want to work to live, they want to live and understand they have to work to do so. They want a career which isn’t just about money. They want a career which gives them a sense of fulfilment. They are passionate about environmental issues and lets not forget this is the generation we are sending away to get their limbs blown off in far flung places around the world.

All in, I think its very easy to criticise. But before you do Bill, or whoever actually wrote it, think about what you have done to create this generation in the first place.

If someone has a sense of entitlement, this is because you put it there in the first place. It was you who pandered to their instant gratification requests, got them a PlayStation, tuned into x-factor/Britains got talent/the national lottery/every other instant fame, c-list celebrity, program on TV.

It also wasn’t them who screwed up the economy. Its just them who will ultimately have to pay for it. It wasn’t them who raped the environment but they will have to figure out what the hell to do about it and it wasn’t them who turned the world into a much more dangerous place than it was thirty years ago. But again we are expecting them to sort the whole mess out for us.

Every generation is criticised by the one before. This is normal.

Will we as a generation be able to say we have left the world a better place than when we arrived? I don’t think so.

Generation Y and the ones which follow them are inheriting a utter basket case of a world and it is us and our parents who are fully responsible for this.

Its just a suggestion, but perhaps we should temper the gleeful enthusiasm which we seem to have in abundance when it comes to finding fault or criticising the upcoming generation.

If we don't how does the removal of the old age pension sound? What about a wrinkly tax or a statutory retirement age of 95?

The fat-joke-boy-king Kim has had his bluff called but I’m not so sure generation Y will be so easy to ignore when their time comes.

We could very well find that when the little doggy does grow up and stop barking it will be to turn around and bite us all hard on our respective hairy aging arses.