by Randy Weeks
In recent months, North Korea has been battering South Korea, but not with conventional weapons. No, siree. They’ve been flying balloons that drop bags of North Korean trash on South Korea. I give North Korea an “A” for creativity, but dropping garbage on another nation, well, it just seems downright trashy to me.
To retaliate, the South Koreans are blasting loud, annoying music across the Demilitarized Zone that serves as a buffer between the two. The playlist includes, but is not limited to, a plethora of songs by Weird Al Yankovic, Slim Whiteman, Lawrence Welk, Super Chikan, Kate Smith (“God Bless America”), “Macarena,” “Disco Duck,” and most especially, the theme from Jeopardy, looped ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
To begin with, trash bombing is against the Geneva Convention which outlaws “willful killing, torture, or inhumane treatment including biological experiments, and willingly causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health. Tell me North Korea’s trash bombing doesn’t violate that!
Imagine this: You’re having a pool party. A huge bag of garbage suddenly drops from the sky slap dab in the middle of your pool. Two people are killed when the bagged garbage makes a direct hit on their heads. Upon impact the bag explodes and releases rotten tomatoes, bananas, a 90-year-old fruitcake, coffee grounds, used band aids, filthy diapers and the like into the once pristine water you were swimming in just one minute earlier.
But the trash doesn’t just leak into the pool. On impact the burst balloon sends the nasty garbage flying through the air to smack everyone that’s there. Whatever crap is left descends to the bottom of the pool and is sucked into the drain where it clogs up your entire water system.
Meanwhile the stench of the garbage is spreading like napalm, resulting in massive projectile vomiting. Many have pieces of garbage stuck to themselves like leeches from a dirty pond. Mayhem ensues. In the chaos some of your confused guests jump back into the scummy pool, only to be reminded that the pool is full of crap (Not Baby Ruths). In the bedlam people flee the scene, rushing to their vehicles. They zoom away like the proverbial bats-out-of-hell, leading to a plethora of accidents with injuries. Paramedics have to wear hazmat suits to take care of the plagued. The National Guard has to be called in to quell the melee. They, too, are overcome by the effects of the garbage bomb, puking, passing out, and being rendered useless.
Because this was an orchestrated and synchronized military mission, scenes like this transpire across the nation. The population is rendered defenseless and invading troops take over. The stench doesn’t bother them because the garbage came from their own homes and they are thus inoculated and immune from the effects.
Now let us consider a lower-scale application. Suppose you are pissed off at a neighbor. You have a drone that will carry a small garbage bag. You spot the neighbors in their back yard. BAM! A direct hit! Your child gets a bad grade they didn’t deserve. Their teacher is walking to their car after school. BAM! Another direct hit. Your boyfriend or girlfriend has done you wrong. You see them on a lovey-dovey date at a street cafe. BAM! Date’s over. Revenge like that is sweeter than a stalk of sugar cane!
Balloons could also be filled with water or paint. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Outdoor sports and festivals couldn’t go on. Children couldn’t play outside, just like in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The point is that even the smaller trash bombs can ruin someone’s day.
I just finished watching Oppenheimer. Could you imagine the difference it would have made if instead of atomic and hydrogen bombs we’d dropped phosphorescent paint balloons all over Japan? If people had died, they would have died colorfully from pee-in-your-pants laughter.
What if we were to do that to ourselves? Mississippi, which often winds up on the worst end of studies and surveys, very well could rise to the top. The new slogan for Oxford? “Oxford: The Town That Glows in the Dark.”
…and that’s the View from The Balcony.
Randy Weeks is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Shamanic Life Coach, an ordained minister, a singer-songwriter, an actor, and a writer. He tends toward pacifism and firmly believes that phosphorescent paint balloons could stop many wars. Randy may be reached at randallsweeks@gmail.com.
