Thursday, October 12, 2006

"Unspecified consequences"

So, the United Nations has said to North Korea, as far as I can gather, something like "If you do something that we don't want you to do and that we would have no way of knowing whether you have done it or not, we're going to do something but we're not going to say what it is".

As potentially diabolical as the North Korean "crisis" may be for the stability of an already pretty darn unstable world, I can't help thinking about this idea of "unspecified consequences" and what that might mean; and what comes to mind is the scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where the French soldier is standing up on the battlements, railing against his English visitors, throwing at them such lines as "go and boil your bottoms", "your mother was a hamster", "your father smelled of elderberry", and the famous "I fart in your general direction".

Yes, I can see that as the kind of response that would have the Eternal Bosom of Hot Love quaking in his boots.