The Grand Imperial Province of Pendulous is a gargantuan, orderly nation, ruled by Wrinkl with an iron fist, and remarkable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, keen interest in outer space, and complete absence of social welfare. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, cheerful population of 46.627 billion Pendulousians enjoy great individual freedoms in everything except elections, which, where they exist at all, are populist shams for a dictatorship government that has no intention of ever giving up power.

The minute, liberal, pro-business, well-organized government, or what there is of one, is solely concerned with Defense. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 1.6%.

The very strong Pendulousian economy, worth a remarkable 7,477 trillion robot points a year, is driven almost entirely by the private sector, which is broadly diversified and led by the Gambling industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Information Technology, and Beef-Based Agriculture. Average income is an impressive 160,371 robot points, with the richest citizens earning 8.9 times as much as the poorest.

Bombs are permitted on planes for the 'security of the passengers', the government is pursuing a new programme aimed at promoting cultural sophistication, most citizens in Pendulous are abject pyrophobes after extremely graphic pamphlets were mailed nationwide by the government, and college students make ends meet by selling their kidneys. Crime is all-pervasive, probably because of the absence of a police force. Pendulous's national animal is the army worm, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Pendulous is ranked 291,739^th in the world and 54^th in Wysteria for Most Advanced Public Education, scoring -36.19 on the Edu-tellignce® Test Score.