Grigovia urges calm

Following recent bellicose rhetoric coming from DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and US leader Donald J. Trump, the Parliament of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia released an unanimous statement urging calm. “Nuclear war is against the interests of all humanity,” said prime minister Dr. Frederikka Velldoyend, whose Freedom and Prosperity Party holds a slight majority of seats in the bicameral body. “America is the only nation in the world to have used nuclear weapons in anger; we beg for cool heads to now prevail.” (In Grigovia, the Senate is populated by ten persons selected by the governing body of each independent city-state and canton, and the Congress is selected via popular vote. Similar to the Swiss system, the Grigovian Parliament oversees and manages foreign policy, national defense, federal railways, and the mint.)

“War must only be used as a last resort, a strategy employed once all other options have been exhausted,” said national defense minister Hennda Uilyest of the Grigovian Conservative Green Party. “Diplomacy, cooperation, and open markets alone can assure the future prosperity of all mankind.” Shortly after gaining its independence from the Soviet Union, in 1988, Grigovia dismantled all nuclear weapons the Russians had stored on its soil and promptly joined the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICANW).

“Tinpot tyrants, be they Korean or Ynki, do not have permission to engage in nuclear war,” said Buiryest Darghennd, a 14-year-old student from Pryaghdoyest. “My grandparents fought against the Nazis in the Second World War; their words are still fresh in my mind: ‘Show not mercy, nor give quarter, to those who threaten innocent people with death and destruction.’”

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

yoga for all

In a series of sweeping reforms to its national health-care system, the Glorious Republic of Grigovia made restorative, health-oriented yoga available to all of its citizens. “We tried out the Ana Forrest system of yoga,” said Ulannda Findoyest, deputy Minster of Health and native Pyltagradian, the city where the landlocked Central Asian nation's love affair with this ancient practice began. “It [Forrest yoga] focuses on retraining the individual to breathe deeply and loving into the body and aims to help the person gain the tools necessary to conquer past abuse, addictions, sadness, and fear,” she said while standing in Reverse Warrior II pose and sweating healthily. A thousand Grigovians hit hardest by the ongoing world economic crisis are being put to work building sweat-lodge-yoga-friendly rooms into the hundreds of public health facilities that dot this forward-thinking land.

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border location confirmed

Even as it is tussling with Pakistan on its southeastern border, Afghanistan is celebrating its ongoing friendship with a small neighbor to the northwest, the Glorious Republic of Grigovia. “We recognize the continuing validity and current location of our border with Grigovia, and rejoice in the many years of peaceful prosperity we have shared together,” said Hamid Karzai, prime minster of Afghanistan, at an early-morning press conference in Herat. “Unlike the borders drawn by the cowardly British during the 19th Century, the delineating line that separates the Grigovian from the Afghani people runs exactly where we both agreed it should run during 1952's Regional Conference for Peaceful Prosperity – Central Asia.” After his speech, Karzai warmly greeted his counterpart from Grigovia, the newly-elected prime minister Dr. Frederikka Velldoyend.

“Thank you, brother Hamid,” said prime minster Velldoyend after waiting for a round of raucous applause to die down. “As one of the first female prime minsters in the history of Central Asia, I am overjoyed to be able to recommit to a future replete with peaceful cooperation and prosperous dealings between our two peoples. Together – that is, without any more undue and illegal meddling by foreign powers, especially the United States of America – we might yet after so many decades of hateful warmongering experience peace in these lands. Begone, Ynki invaders, and may you darken our common soils no longer.” To commemorate the occasion, the prime ministers signed a mutual trade and travel pact designed to increase and promote interaction between the Afghani and Grigovian peoples.

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opinions not voiced

Preferring the proven tactic of smile-and-nod over direct confrontation or the voicing of his personal opinions, thirty-something whorphan Wellington Erasmoss Denyels of Shelter Bay, Connecticut, emerged from the belly of the beast largely unscathed. “Fuck,” he said aloud while driving back home through the early fringes of frankenstorm Sandy, his whirring wiper-blades the only things breaking the trip's growing monotony, before his inner monologue kicked in, saying: 'I'm glad no one pressed me on my political views, and I'm so happy that I didn't have to explain my shifting religious philosophies and say just how little I think Jesus is guiding the steps of my life.'

Thinking back to the night before, Wellington shook his head and forced himself to laugh as memories danced across his mind's eye – the woman asking if his wife were sitting in the chair next to him even though he was not even wearing a wedding band and there was no indication he had brought a date; the tattooed, self-proclaimed street minister insisting on pointing out the salient features on his chopper-style motorcycle while making sure to mention after each breath that “Jesus saves”; the condescending ease with which nearly everyone in attendance threw around the name of their religion's god while subtly sniping at each other and touting their own virtues and achievements to anyone within earshot.

Deactivating his vehicle's cruise control so as not to ram a slow-moving car that had lurched suddenly into his path, Mr. Denyels breathed a sigh of relief in the knowledge that he was leaving the South and that he would no longer have to drive past house upon house whose owners had chosen to cement six-foot-high Romney/Ryan signs into the ground mere feet from the edges of busy, narrow byways. He shuddered when remembering the fact that a majority of North Carolinians had but recent amended their state's constitution to restrict the rights of homosexual Americans and to define marriage according to the societal and religious rules of a Bronze-Age desert people, thus exposing their innocent neighbors to the harsh punishments of YHWH, the god of the ancient Israelites. His patience nearly shot and his gas-tank approaching empty, our whorphan exited somewhere in northern Virginia, to have a stretch and to sniff the air for hints of moral repression, of which there were thankfully few.

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