The holidays are a tricky time of year – not only is it difficult to pick out gifts for your loved ones, but you're gift-shopping while everyone else is gift-shopping as well. And just imagine how much worse it is when you're trying to buy something just right … for a bloody, merciless tyrant! Here's Heavy's attempt to solve this particular problem with a little guide which answers the question "What do you get for the man who has the people who disappoint him killed, cooked and eaten at state dinners?"
Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow (a.k.a. Turkmenbashi, a.k.a. Sappo, a.k.a. "The Night Peeper")
First president of the post-Soviet state of Turkmenistan and avid hobbyist. Like many dictators who rose to power in the late 20th century, has the general body-shape of a novelty cookie jar. King of the "impulse purchase", Turkmenbashi ended up with about a bazillion golden statues of himself, so many in fact that they line most residential streets and are used as telephone poles.
One of those infuriating guys who buys himself gifts before you get a chance to. Still, you may find yourself thinking, he's the leader of an impoverished state founded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he ought to be an easy man to buy for. How about naming the month of January after him? Mandating by law that his face be broadcast on every state television channel twenty-four hours a day? An assassination attempt or two? Nope, sorry, he picked up all of these things at Turkmenistani Wal-Mart (a.k.a. Turkmenbash-Mart) for himself. On the plus side, though, he's dead, so you can probably just send flowers and cross him off your list.
Kim Jong-Il
Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea whose birth - according to official state doctrine - was heralded by a talking swallow, a double rainbow over his mountain home and a new star appearing in the sky. So, if you were going to get him meteorological phenomenon, stellar matter or yapping poultry, be warned, he's already got one of each.
Still, much like in an Encyclopedia Brown adventure or when you're trying to piece together where your kidnappers are taking you from the muffled sounds you discern through the walls of the van ("I hear … seagulls! And a foghorn! I'm at the piers!"), just use your eyes. Tubby, bespectacled Kim Jong-Il prefers his own company, has an inflated sense of self-worth, dresses in unfashionably utilitarian clothing, is prone to periods of sulking and prefers playing with his train set. Yes, Kim Jong-Il is a nerd. How about getting him a Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook? Just make sure it's Fourth Edition and not one he already has, or he'll drown your entire extended family.
Adolf Hitler
Austrian-born Totalitarian leader of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and head yamsack of 20th Century Western Europe's biggest band of douchebags. Responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people and the spurious conclusions to a few billion internet arguments. Still, he kind of looks like a cuddler, so you never know.
Hard guy to buy presents for. He's known to favor sweaters, but he's a difficult fit, depending on what body mad Fourth Reich scientists have inserted his brain this time around. Titanic glass-domed Murder Machine? Genetically modified super-ape? Sextet of psychically-linked blonde-haired, blue-eyed clones? Frankly, the sky's the limit. Also, cost of shipping to secret South American super-lab may be prohibitive. Common sense would suggest that he'd probably enjoy a PSP, or possibly a pair of sunglasses like the ones Roddy Piper had in "They Live", only when you put them on instead of seeing raw-faced aliens it just makes all the Jews explode.
Robert Mugabe
The black Great White Hope of Zimbabwe. I have it on good authority that, if you're on his Christmas list, he'll either be getting you a white settler's farm or tortured to death. For your part, you could always get him some a big stack of shiny new race cards, because he goes through those by the bushel.
The biggest problem with getting something good for Robert Mugabe is that every dictator in Africa will want one, too. Last year, Mugabe got a Wii and one of those totally cool remote control dinosaurs, and in response, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea locked himself in the bathroom, Paul Biya of Cameroon threw his sister's pet hamster down the stairs and Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea leveled buildings containing the offices of three newspapers (Bringing Eritrea's total number of buildings to "zero", so there's a possible gift for him. Don't get him any more newspapers, though, he's sick of those ding-dang things).
Libya's eccentric frontman since their prog-rock days, Qaddafi's well-known for his ostentatious outfits, for-show harems and for the "largest tent in the world" (a term which, until recently, he used exclusively to refer to his pants). You know how it is, though, he's not really that into gold-rimmed sunglasses and elaborate military uniforms; it's just that he got one and then at some office birthday party, someone didn't know what to get him but they remembered that he liked that one ostentatious gold outfit, so they got him another one, and before you know it, boom, four hundred gold outfits and enough pairs of old-people sunglasses to choke a blue whale.
At this point, he'd probably appreciate a simple gift, like an Amazon.com giftcard or a Slanket. Perhaps you could make him a mixtape, nothing special, just some songs which you think really represent your feelings for the fifty-year still-reigning leader of Libya. You know, "All For Love", "The Muppet Show theme", songs that mean something.
George W.Bush
A swift kick in the dick.
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