Happy St. Patrick's Day, one and all! Granted, circumstances have forced our special St. Paddy's scene to broadcast a smidge late, but since when has any of us been uptight about scheduling? That said, it is a bit of a shame that the holiday didn't happen to fall sometime during last week's "International Week" thingy, because it would have been truly apt on a number of fronts. Again, though, things happen when they happen. Anyone getting old waiting for speed-bumped Power Mac G5s knows all about that.

But we're not getting into the G5 thing just yet, because in honor of the holiday, we're going to Irish things up a little around here, first. In a classic (and rare) example of good timing, faithful viewer Thes Quid forwarded us what purports to be a transcript of a taped "candid conversation" between Kim Jong Il, the poofy-haired leader of North Korea, and a couple of bigwigs from a supporting organization. While we can't really vouch for the authenticity of the transcript, if you're willing to accept that it's legit, you'll be mightily amused by Kim's references to "Japanese devils," "Yankee devils," "South Korean Devils," "Austrian Devils" (who knew devils were so cosmopolitan?), and former South Korean president Kim Young Sam as a "filthy dirt-bag." Well, c'mon... it was a candid conversation, after all.

So what the fuzzy heck does any of this have to do with St. Patrick's Day, you ask? Or, possibly even more to the point, what does any of this have to do with Apple? Well, aside from reports that Kim Jong Il is one seriously talented Riverdancer, scroll way to the bottom of the transcript and you'll spot this excerpt: "American computers made in the United States work better and last longer. But the Macintosh sold to foreign customers are assembled in Ireland and other nations and they are of poor quality and break down often. For a year or two, we thought the machines had no difference and bought them from Ireland. Later we bought some machines from the United States and found that they were different. Even the keyboards were different."

Now, far be it from us to foment unrest between nations, but it sure sounds to us like ol' Jong Il is dissing the hardworking folks in Cork something fierce. True, he never explicitly refers to "Irish devils" ("Western Devils" is the closest he gets), but still, that's some questionably translated anti-Irish smack talk of dubious authenticity if ever we've heard it. Nuclear arms, shmuclear arms; if the man is seriously impugning the Mac-building prowess of the Irish, we anticipate some sort of retaliation-- if not from the Irish themselves, then from St. Patrick's Day-celebrating Emerald Isle sympathizers. We're not experts in foreign relations and the prediction of international incidents, but we're thinking maybe a drunken beating by six or eight frat guys who are plotzed on green Budweiser.

On a side note, Kim's generalization about U.S. customers being sold American-made Macs is apparently rather off the mark in the first place. We just took an informal inventory of a few of our active Macs sitting around, all of which we purchased here in the States, and the iBook and both PowerBooks were all made in Taiwan. Maybe he was just talking about desktops and servers. Our Xserve was made in the U.S.A., as was our Power Mac G4-- but then again, the Power Mac was built-to-order, so that may well have forced an "assembled in USA" situation.

Whatever. In any case, nothing beats knowing that Macs are big sellers to the Axis of Evil. Meanwhile, we've surely doomed ourselves with the label "AtAT devils" in a future "candid conversation" just by bringing any of this up in the first place, but hey, it's St. Patrick's Day (sort of). We'll take the hit for the team.