My Lonely City

Well, my brother-in-laws’ birthday is today. My husband & I got him a card – we’re a card family – that featured the Penguin of Death. There are two things about him that you need to know, the card states. First, he is strangely attractive because of his enigmatic smile (the penguin has a smile; don’t ask me how they drew a smiling cartoon penguin without it looking entirely lenox, but there you go). Second, he can kill you in any one of 412 different ways. Anyway, you had to be there.

So I was thinking, could I think of 412 different ways to die? I mean, I could probably think of 20 or so, but 412?

Let’s see…

1. Shot by gangsters. 2. Forced to listen to … who should I pick on … Hanson for 24 straight hours. Remember Hanson? 3. Fall from a great height, possibly while swordfighting. 4. Speaking of swords, skewered. 5. Burned at the steak. Oops, stake. 6. Too much steak – cardiac arrest. 7. Smothered with a steak. 8. Rotten &/or mad cow steak. 9. Lung disease. 10. Eaten by sharks. 11. Eaten by leeches. 12. Eaten by bucket-vengeful walrus. 13. Severe cat allergies. (Not your little, piddling, stuffy nose and reddened eyes allergies, I mean swelling up like a bullfrog and sqeaking to an uncomfortable end, while the feline smiles its evil smile, preening, in the background.) 14. Drug overdose. 15. Drug Problem political blather overdose. 16. Jogging. 17. On an erupting volcano. 18. Killer spinach. 19. Killer rutabaga.

2. Mauled by a tiger. 21. Or a wildebeest. 22. Or a velociraptor. 23. Or – you never know – a washed-up marketing executive from New Jersey. 24. Battlefield Earth. 25. Eaten, in a genteel fashion, by Hannibal Lecter. 26. Eaten by a Horrible Lecturer. 27. Car crash. 28. While on a cell phone. 29. You likely deserved it. 30. Shot by accident by a “one shot one kill” hunter. 31. Shot while hunting with Dick Cheney. 32. Bubonic Plague. 33. Edgar Allen Poe + High School English Class. 34. Not even going there. 35. Glitter. 36. Bad dates. 37. Bad poetry. 38. Crushed in a trash compactor. 39. Sunstroke. 40. In November (f*ing Global Climate Change.).

3. Murdered by breaking-news- (or possibly severe-weather-) deprived local television station. 42. Poisoned blow dart. 43. Cancer. 44. Back broken by straw-wielding camels. 45. Trampled by wombats. 46. Pulverized over by a Transformer-ing Xerox Copier. 47. Flying wingman to Luke Skywalker. 48. Kidnapped by … whoever we’re marketing as nefarious kidnappers these days. 49. Run over by a tour bus. 50. Full of Canadians. 51. Stoned by rabid, sexually aroused mob of misogynist a**holes. 52. No way to make that funny. At all. 53. Severe papercuts. 54. I’m running out of ideas, here …

4. Let’s be a little more grim, shall we? Hung by the neck. 56. Electrocuted. 57. Firing Squad. 58. Lethal injection. 59. Beheaded. 60. Stoned. Wait, I already said that. 61. Impaled. 62. Knifed in the back. 63. But, having watched the extra footage from The Lord of the Rings, I know the sound one makes. 64. Anorexia/Bulimia. 65. Disco. 66. Suicide. 67. Knifed in the front, or side. Or possibly head, though … 67. Drowned. 68. In pasta sauce. 69. Strangled by a piano wire. 70. Poisoned by your fellow spy. 71. Crushed in a submarine. 72. Eaten by giant squid. 73. Improperly cryogenic-ly frozen. 74. Syphilis. 75. Motorcycle wreck. 76. Tarred & feathered. 77. Human sacrifice. 78. Holiday shopping. 79. Dehydration. 80. Family vacations.

Well, I made it to 80. Whew. Ooh, 81 – trying to fly an airplane upside down, through a barn! Thanks, Secondhand Lions.