he gonzo box office success of Lions Gate Entertainment’s new film The Hunger Games has drawn criticism from North Korea’s beloved madman Kim Jong-un this week, as the diminutive leader called bullshit on the killing of teenagers in ritualized sport suddenly becoming cool after his country had been doing it for decades.

"Once again a Hollywood movie has made a mockery of the glorious North Korean lifestyle," griped Kim. "Same thing happen in Dark City and Mad Max."

Kim Jong-un, back in power after the nation’s failed experiment with Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was rapidly abandoned due to Dotcom being jailed for paying to see The Smurfs, violating North Korea’s longstanding policy regarding the mandatory pirating of Hollywood films, added that The Hunger Games was "popcorn bullshit" and that unlike Westerners, the fortunate citizens of North Korea don’t have to pay exorbitant movie theater prices to see that kind of thing every day.

The insular nation, which subjects its citizens to harrowing games of life and death on a daily basis, is no stranger to televised competitions that would probably be called The Hunger Games if they’d thought of that first. These include the capital city’s weekly "Fight For Your Food Fun Fight" events, which critics have condemned as a natural result of the state’s failed economy and collapsed chain of food production disguised as a trumped-up game show where regular citizens punch each other to death over the last canned ham in the entire city. Regardless, the North Korean tourism board has been quick to capitalize on the success of the Hunger Games film, already advertising tourism packages where Hunger Games fans can tour the Pyongyang Deathdrome and kill an actual North Korean teenager with their bare hands for less than the average New Yorker spends on "Whoops, I ran over another homeless person" insurance.

The Hunger Games opened to a gangbusters $155 million in its first weekend in theaters, a figure described by Hollywood pundits as "fucking bananas" and "bigger than $154 million," and representing the biggest box-office opening in history for a non-sequel film. Critics dispute the importance of this claim, however, since it was also the first non-sequel film to be released since 2007.

Based on the first of a berserkly popular series of young adult novels by writer Suzanne Collins, the books and film alike have been criticized for being heavily derivative of previous source materials, such as the Japanese film Battle Royale, the American films The Running Man, Series 7, The Condemned, The Most Dangerous Game, Lord of the Files, The Truman Show, Spartacus and Death Race 2000, the Italian film The 10th Victim, the Stephen King story The Long Walk and the Shirley Jackson novel The Lottery. In honor of this long chain of shit being ripped off, the CW has already begun filming the pilot for their own Hunger Games knock-off television series, The Selection, which involves a cast of lesser-known actors rehashing the plot of The Hunger Games on a weekly basis.

When asked recently if she thought her novels were derivative of these previous works, Collins responded "What? I can’t hear you because of the noise from all the money I’m drowning in over here," before literally drowning in an avalanche of hundred dollar bills. Funeral services will be held Tuesday at the cash landfill in North Hollywood where rich people are buried.

In spite of the author’s death, the white-hot success of the first film all but guarantees that Lions Gate will return to Collins’ grave at least twice more to adapt the other two books in the series, 2009’s Catching Fire and 2010’s Oxycute ’em! in hopes of sating the bloodlust of twelve-year-old American girls. Stars Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson have reportedly already signed on for three sequels, with a uniquely ironic clause in their contracts stating that if they back out of the sequels for any reason, they’ll be hunted by hordes of teenaged fans out for blood.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s Jong-un has demanded that Hollywood filmmakers stop ripping off ideas from his country for their dystopian sci-fi visions.

"You get your own ideas," the beloved "Supreme Tall Sunshine Man" spat into a microphone shaped like a hamburger. "I don’t want to see any more movie with robots that look like humans but are spies for government, or people with clocks stuck in their arms ticking down to time when they die, or genetic-engineered battle giraffes, or desalination plant that run on dead babies."

"In closing," Jong-un decreed, while eating a roll of Fruit-by-the-Foot, "I also downloaded bittorrent of The Smurfs, and there’s not goddamned thing you people can do about it."

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Twisted gas needles! It's time! 'Tis the season when a Nedmiller's happier than a hamster cut up by a coat hanger! Next Yesteryear done come and came, and Ned had hisself the biggest Next Yesteryear ever, as can be vouched by the fresh gypsies of Good King Wencelas, no less.

All was well-fittin' with the tradition of Next Yesteryear as invented by Nedley's great grandfather and greater granddappa in the year seven days before 18 hundred and 66, the same year Wencelas choked himself to death on a camel toe. As in every year, Ned scaled the great tent pole in the backyard and planted the head of a dead fish to ward off the Next Yesteryear goblin and his self-dropping breeches. "Whew!" said Ned. No sense taking chances of free-danglin' goblin willies scaring off Ned's guests at this Yesteryear party, no sir!

Course if there is any guarantee to be had of a Yesteryear party for the ages, it comes from collecting all of your person's dead skin flakes and mixing them into a fine, grainy paste. No joking! A true Nedmiller would do nothing less for the best Next Yesteryear ever, and Ned did it up good. Big old books will tell you suntanning by the mighty oak tree in the backyard makes them skins nice an flaked, and Ned will be bit on the ass by a woodpecker if that's a printed falsehood. Also, you just know climbing inside the over helps a heap for making skin flakes crunchy and ready to be flaked!

Before three possums can say Yahtzee, them party is begun. Fresh off the trolley comes Ned's fat meaty cat, and Ned cooks 'em brilliant. None for you? More for Ned!

More treats for the guests is laid out by the handfuls. Cinnamon gravy richer than the king of Siam, bottle caps with moth eggs laid nice in, and a dead guy roasting on the lawn. And them's just for appeteasers! Such a time brings back mammaries of Ned's first Next Yesteryear back on the plantation, yessir. Brings a genuine wet tear to Ned's old eye. And pinkeye to Ned's nose, it should be noted.

But them foods and decorations is just the beginning to the Next Yesteryear celebration! No Yesteryear has come to town until the clock strikes home and it's for real the Hour of the Misbegotten. Masked dogs take Ned's guests hostages and Neddy Furtado hisself has to hide in the wall outlets, crawling about like ol' 'lectricity in all its glory, dispatching one canine after another until all them guests are back to safeness. Then you know them guests take one big-sized bath together while Nedmiller the New cavorts about in a Saran Wrap diaper as Baby Clamdipper. Only when Nedder's own shadow catches him and pops him back in a bottle of that Kentucky Bourbon is this Next Yesteryear officially kaputs.

Then them post-party depressionations set in, indeedy-Steve. Ned cries hisself into the fourth dimension and back one more time, saying Nedmiller backwards eleventy times to banish away them nasty spirits if needed. Should that falter, Ned either sacrifices a virgin or deflowers a town crier, or both at one moment in stereo, whichever them situation calls. Usually one of them and a yellow pie puts Ned back into high kippers for the brand new year, ready to plan out again the next Next Yesteryear shindig proper.

Ah, tradition.

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Greetings, good homos. Rok Finger here, reporting from the street. Which street isn't important right now, and besides the sign is in a bold font that offends my sensible eyes. Go ask a little bird if you really need to know that detail of my story.

If I've learned one thing from my time on the street, and I have, it's that homos are people too. And by that I mean that everybody's a homo these days. So I hope that's going well for all of you.

Rok Finger, however, is a man cut from a more old-fashioned cloth. Burlap. Most self-respecting men have no time for such a rough, abrasive material, preferring a fabric more pleasing to the touch like Dacron or sponge. Which is why Rok Finger has always sought the company of the female sex. And by that I mean females willing to have sex while I participate or take notes. And thanks to the twin pillars of emotional neediness and parental neglect, these women do exist. Against all odds, especially the steep ones determined by the good people of Las Vegas.

Those unfamiliar with the Finger legend might not know that I built my considerable early fortune on the windfall from a bet I won when my former wife, Arvelyn, slept with me on our wedding night. I had taken action from her parents, a local biologist, and Arvelyn herself, and I am not boasting when I say the odds were low and the payoff large. To this day Arvelyn curses herself for the lack of restraint she showed that night, falling asleep with the key to her chastity belt in plain view on her key ring atop the hotel nightstand. We were married fifteen years before she paid off that debt, after which time I had to learn to use my legs again and adjust to a life of not being carried around all the time.

If I've learned two things from my time on the street, and some would argue that I have, one would be the homo thing, no doubt. But the other thing is that we've really come a long way in bed-making technology since the days when everyone slept in cardboard boxes on the street. You don't realize just how comfortable a real bed is until you've spent a night sleeping in a dumpster full of basketballs behind a sporting goods store. Regardless of slanderous comments I may have made in this very column in the past, those mattress-makers really know what they're doing. My apologies go out to them for any uninformed remarks or calls for bloodshed I may have made previous to now.

If you're waiting for a third thing, you'll have to continue doing so as I haven't learned it yet. To be pathetically, shiveringly honest, I'm tired of learning the lessons the street has to offer. Call me old-fashioned, but Rok Finger prefers his lessons in easily-digestible half hour sitcom form, watching shows like COPS from the comfort of my own home. Or even someone else's home. A friend, neighbor or visually-challenged sexual predator would suffice. I don't claim to be picky, as long as you don't harbor political views or any opinions that differ from my own. Any interested parties need only leave their front door open tonight, with a trail of donuts or pulled-pork sandwiches leading to a warm bed near a cable-ready television.

I'll do the rest.

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