Juche (Satire) by Amy David

Attention, dieters!

Are you sick of cabbage soup, the master cleanse, things endorsed by Oprah, Atkins, and ingesting tapeworms? Can you totally ignore all scientific information on the topic of weight loss? Do you like stereotyping people from other countries? Does amputating an entire limb seem a little too extreme?

The North Korean Diet is for you!

Your rations on this diet are as follows:

One-third pound of meat per month.
Three cups of grain per day.

You may have a fourth cup of grain, provided you spend the day engaged in heavy labor. Sign up now to be a logger, miner, or steelworker! When the country engages in military action, this bonus disappears, but the occupational hazards are yours to keep.

Got milk? Only if you steal it from school children or suckle a sewer rat. Liquor? Only for funerals, so start thinking about which child you can spare. Sugar? Out of the question. From now on, rich men on Craig’s List will be known as just “daddies”. On the birthday of the Great Leader, you may indulge -- up to a quarter pound of delicious bottom-feeding fish!

This diet also features an authentic North Korean radio in your kitchen. You can choose from a wide selection of three stations run by the state and here to help you control those pesky cravings brought on by malnutrition. There’s no “off” switch, but at least you won’t hear a single fucking thing about Justin Bieber.

Find radio too primitive? Grab your laptop and surf any one of the thirty (that’s 3-0!) websites available to North Koreans! Log on to Naenara and watch Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il talk smack about Becky the cheerleader and make pouty faces in front of his webcam. Burn calories by gritting your teeth and shaking an angry fist at South Korea’s lies about your mother. Waste the hours between meals clicking on the broken links like “free press” and “foreign trade”.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “what about all the people who have died since rations were cut this past June?” Let me assure you that those people are no more real than Native Americans or Heidi Montag.

Reject the propaganda of the USDA. If your country truly cared about you, they wouldn’t give you a food pyramid, they’d give you something genuinely American, like a food statue of liberty, or a food baseball, or a food food. Why support a government that lets its poor starve when you could support North Korea instead? All the classism at half the calories!

Follow these rations, comrade, and in just days, you’ll be sinking warships! Flex your uranium-enriched muscles for the entire world to see! Trade in your flabby mid-section for a fit, tight Axis of Evil!

Author bio:

Amy David is a poet, performer, and Ph.D student from Evanston, IL. She has competed at the National Poetry Slam three times as a member of the Chicago - Green Mill team and was an instigator of the first-ever disqualification from group piece finals. Her work has appeared most recently in WordRiot, Shit Creek Review, The November 3rd Club, APICS Magazine, and the Chicago Redeye’s 5 on 5.