Warm regards to you, my closest friends.

I write this now as a farewell to you. Tomorrow, I venture off into a remote Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota to stay at a cabin owned by my grandparents for the weekend. I have been to this cabin before, and have experienced many wonderful and disturbing things there. After I returned from my cabin trip last summer, I tried to pretend that things were still the same, but alas, it became increasingly clear that I had become a stranger in the strange land of the Twin Cities. The bustling downtown and thriving community atmosphere that I once savored now felt overly urban and repugnant. The characters that I would meet on the street and regard fondly I now feared being raped by. The Timberwolves suddenly sucked. Nothing was the same, and deep in my heart I knew the decision that had to be made.

Now, nearly a year later, the pieces have been put into place, and my destination is set. I am venturing off into the wilderness, up to the cabin that is so dear to my heart. There I will become one with the elk of the forest, and we will live in communion with one another. I will be humbled by their wisdom and tested by their might. I will be challenged by the dominant male, Elklor the Strong, and be forced to wrestle him into the lake and drown him to death. Then I will deliver Strohs beer to the elk-beasts, and we will drink deeply from it and be satisfied. We will discuss the latest Arctic-Cat developments, groom our mustaches and eat the delicious berries of the forest. It will be magnificent.

And so, goodbye my friends and readers. If you see me again, I will be covered in dog pelts and speaking a language unfamiliar to you or any other human. I will attempt to stab you in your kidneys before finding your mother and punching her. Consider yourselves warned.

I’m off. Wish me luck!

P.S. Can I borrow some mosquito repellant from any of you?

Bridgette and I are getting married this Thanksgiving weekend. In the past months, we’ve had to make a lot of hard decisions, and have some tough discussions to prepare us for what lies ahead. We’ve struggled with finances, labored over our concepts of marriage, and argued vehemently over my increasingly troubling meth addiction. Through love, compromise, and listening, we have concluded that I am right in all of these matters, and she is just a stupid woman. It seems we are truly meant to be.

There is one issue, however, that we have failed to see eye-to-eye on, and that is the issue of children. You see, Bridgette deeply desires to have kids, but I have a few deep-rooted doubts about doing so. It’s not that I don’t love kids - I do. I think it’s great when they do that wacky thing where they puke on your new shirt and you’ve got to pretend that you don’t care. My hesitation is simply this - I don’t want to bring my children into a world that has no robots.

Why would I want to raise my children to live in a world where robots do not exist, and where there is no demand for robots to be created, perhaps even by some superintelligent madman? Am I really alone in this? Where are all the damn robots that popular science fiction has been promising us for 70 years? According to the Jetsons, we’d all have a robot maid - but here we are in the 21st century, still relying on illegal immigrants for our housecleaning! I personally find the lack of robots in today’s society to be disgusting and wrong. I wish that somebody would stop spending all that money on worthless things like space exploration and education, and funnel it directly into a robot-making program of some sort. Hell, I’d volunteer to pitch in a few hours at the robot-making plant. I’ve got some time on Wednesday nights, and my Saturdays are usually pretty open. I could spend that time making robots. After a while, maybe we’d have enough robots to staff service sector jobs or shoot all the bums or something, I don’t know. Just make the robots first, and we’ll find something for them to do.

It really isn’t that hard. Please, join me in my plea for robots. You will likely not regret it, until they gain self-awareness and violently rise up against us.

For my birthday this year, my fiance demonstrated her love and fidelity towards me by giving me the greatest gift that any man could possibly recieve.

A fat, sloppy Best Buy gift card.

The next day, as I entered my neighborhood Best Buy location, my hands trembled with anticipation and ecstacy. My stomach tightened when I was greeted by the blue-shirted hipster at the front door, and I nearly vomited with excitement when greeted with the store’s patented aroma of plasma televisions and nerdsweat. As I wandered down the ailes of DVD’s, CD’s, and other miscellanious hoo-ha, I tried to weigh my decision. On one hand, I could get a few special edition DVD’s and spend the next 6 weeks wading through the commentaries, documentaries, and scene selections. On the other hand, it might be fun to purchase a dead rabbit instead. These decisions are never easy.

In the end, I wound up purchasing a CD, a couple DVD’s, a mollusk, and 10 units of happiness. Do I regret receiving the happiness units from an rotund, slovenly man in the home appliances aisle? Sure. Would I do it again? Almost certainly not. But was it the correct decision? Absolutely. You see, my friends, you can’t choose life - instead, life happens to you. Sometimes life happens when you get married, or have a child. Sometimes life happens when somebody close to you passes away. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, life happens to you during a Best Buy shopping spree when you are tricked by a wiley gentleman who smells faintly like seafood. Do you catch my drift? Are you reading between the lines? Can you see what I’m trying to tell you?

Because if you do, I’d be curious to know. I certainly have no idea where the hell I’m going with this…

Let me tell you folks a tale about this man:

Bob Shulze is his name, and collecting massive piles of crap in his backyard is his game.

From today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune
Man, 88, Jailed Over Messy Backyard

Robert (Jack) Schulze Jr., 54, helped clean up his father’s back yard in South St. Paul. His father, Robert G. Schulze, 88, was jailed when he failed to comply with a city order to clean the trash.

Under the beating rays of the afternoon sun, Ken Sederstrom and his 18-year-old son Thomas sifted through 60 years’ worth of trinkets and trash in the South St. Paul back yard of a stubborn old man who never threw anything away.

Old car parts. Boxes of decades-old empty beer bottles. Random planks of wood.

It all has to go before 88-year-old Robert George Schulze can come home from Dakota County jail, where he has been held since Tuesday. His back yard was just too messy.

The city of South St. Paul had received complaints from neighbors since before 1992 about the junky yard. Letters from the city turned into notices, then to visits from city inspectors, then to fines and finally to court action.

Dakota County District Judge Leslie Metzen gave Schulze 30 days to clean up, threatening him with jail time if that didn’t happen.

It didn’t happen.

When he showed up at court Tuesday, he was taken to jail for 30 days — or until his yard is cleaned up.

“I was stunned,” said his 84-year-old wife, Mary, who said she has received more than 70 phone calls from strangers offering to help clear the yard and bring Robert Schulze back to his home on Warburton Street.

Robert Schulze takes 12 pills a day for his heart problems, and eats very little, but he loves milk.

Mary Schulze spoke to her husband through the glass in the visitors room at the jail, and the stoic veteran told her his fellow inmates had taken him under their wings after they saw how skinny he was in the shower.

“The young fellows in there are treating him with kindness, because they feel so sorry for him,” she said, bragging that her husband traded an apple with an inmate for some extra milk.

Her husband dabbles in carpentry, and he likes collecting things.

Mary Schulze admitted the back yard was messy. Her husband had shooed away both city inspectors and cleanup crews the city had offered him. He wanted to do it himself.

“He’s a stubborn German, you know?” Jack Schulze said. “Dad’s dad.”

Talk about taking a massive dump!

Wait a minute…was that a pun? I initially thought it was, but now that I think about it, it’s just dumb. How about this: Looks like this time the junk yard dog is the one eating it’s own poop!

Damn it! Again, no pun. That didn’t even make any sense. Why are these so hard today? Okay, I’ve just got to keep on trying…

-This old man’s milk-ridden feces led him all the way to jail!

-That’s the last time Bob Shulze relieves himself in front of his neighbors!

-Looks like his milk spoiled, causing him to vomit junk onto his lawn!

-No use going to jail over spilt milk or contempt of court!

-Too much junk in his trunk, now this man’s taking his dumps in county jail!

I don’t know, I give up. I fricking hate puns anyway…

I am totally exhausted.

Because of some serious craziness at work, I’ve been working 11-hour shifts, doing some very difficult work for a number of days in a row. I have missed sleep, and my body aches. My spine feels like it has been pummelled by truant leprechauns. The bags under my eyes look as if I have glued steamed oysters to my face. My tongue is swollen for some reason. My skin is sallow and moist. The massive level of my earwax buildup is profoundly troubling. Street dogs follow my scent and lick my skin, soothing my open wounds. I cannot remember my father’s face. I see visions of innocent dolphins being ruthlessly slaughtered by aliens and am unable to sleep. My mouth tastes of ginger. I no longer respond to my own name. For a mental picture of how I look right now, take a look at the picture of me below, remove the smile, replace the shirt with a tattered deerskin pelt, and imagine blood draining from my nipples.

Talk to you guys tomorrow.

It’s my birthday!

The celebrations in my honor occurred over the weekend, in order to coincide with the brutal heat wave that melted 19 elderly horses in this region alone. The festivities took place in New Brighton, MN, home of the swarthy duo known as Leroy and Kevin. I purchased large quantities of cheap beer that my friends might imbibe at their leisure, and I invited people to bring their own meat to grill. Of course, I should have known that Ted would take the orders too far and bring two steaks, each large enough to cover a Monopoly playing board.

The patrons of my party had their fill of awkard jokes, strained conversation, and Ted’s filthy meat-slabs. We had a nice time, and it ended up going longer than planned, due mostly to the arrival of the police, troubled by the haggard shouts of Ted’s Call of the Flesh. The police did not at first understand, believing that out party was a collection of drunken bums who had all somehow wandered onto the same patio in search of booze and dog-love. Eventually, however, the whole thing got straightened out, and we talked them down to a few tickets for public indecency.

After the party, Bridgette and I made our way down to Rochester to celebrate with my family. We were greeted with warm embraces and some sweet-ass rhubarb pie.

The pie was as sweet as a newborn mouse dipped in molasses. As we ate the pie, we played Canasta, and told tales of ribaldry and merriment. Also, my dog puked. However, nothing was able to distract me from the delights that my birthday held for me. As gifts, I receieved a flash drive for my computer, a biography on Groucho Marx, a new pair of running shoes, and (strangely) my father’s left eye. They were just what I wanted.

All in all, if my birthday was any indication, 27 should be a nice age for me this year. Unless I die in a car accident, that is.