The Degenerate’s Corner: Kim Jong Un demanding to be added to Mount Rushmore

This isn’t a literary exercise. This isn’t a place where difficult ideas are confronted, or even a place where worthwhile information is communicated. This thing right here is about as close as you can get to a gutter on your webpage. This might just be the journalistic equivalent of the crunchy sock tucked under your eighth-grade brother’s mattress. So while I hope some part of you enjoys what you’re about to read, I’d strongly suggest that you disinfect after doing so.

Welcome to the Degenerate’s Corner. Once a week we come together to examine the latest in pop culture, all through the obscure, legal-ish lens that is an online novelty bet. Maybe you’re looking to see the odds of ‘Crossfitter’ being a recognized ethnicity on the next census, or you might just be curious about the likelihood of this being the last Degenerate’s Corner for the semester (it is). Either way, you’re in the right place.

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE PROCEEDING TO PLACE A BET OR ALERT THE AUTHORITIES: While the odds are real, our endorsement isn’t. We don’t claim any responsibility for losses or winnings resulting from a bet placed. Read this for your enjoyment, and think long and hard before trying to use these odds to turn your student loans into a down payment.

Kim Jong Un to demand his face be added to Mount Rushmore – 100.00 (Ladbrokes)

North Korea has found the cure for cancer. They have caves filled with unicorns. Its leaders don’t have to take shits. They also invented the hamburger in the year 2000. These are all things that have at some point been claimed by the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s state-run press and the nation’s gold standard for journalism.

Like a bell curve in the hands of a vengeful professor, the truth is relative when you’re in North Korea. So even though odds of Kim Jong Un successfully organizing a grassroots campaign that ultimately culminates in his face being added to Mt. Rushmore seem slim to none, we have to remember that when you’re living under the rule of Dear Leader Jr. himself, a man who could drive at the age of three, sail yachts at nine, and compose symphonies virtually right out the womb, anything goes.

This is a bad bet — in fact, it may just be the worst bet I’ve ever seen. But if you happen to be the kind of person who can hack your way into the alternate universe that is North Korea’s internet, who knows what you’ll find. In that highly weaponized and poorly lit corner of the web, this bet might get you all the North Korean Wons (₩) your heart desires.  After adjusting for inflation, you may even come out of this with nine or ten extra dollars in your pocket.

As long as you’re looking at this bet from the point-of-view of the North Korean market, it’s rock solid. The only improbability might be the notion of Kim Jong Un having to ask for his face to be added to Mt. Rushmore, as opposed to Donald Trump ordering through executive action that the entire mountain be renamed in Un’s honour. And were I in North Korea, I’d bet on that too.