Goodbye Cruel World

The estimable Pinko Punko wonders what sort of obituary I envision for myself. It's something I spend a lot of time thinking about, especially when I'm stuck in traffic. Here's the sort of thing I have in mind.

LONDON BURNS AS THE WORLD MOURNS

Snag passed away suddenly on Wednesday at his home on Snag Island, surrounded by friends and family, the victim of a tragic hula-hoop accident. He was 154.

The child of a freelance vaudevillian and a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Snag seemed an unlikely candidate for the fame and power that would later come his way. His large head and sensitive hearing made the public educational system difficult and his parents sent him away to a North Korean boarding school at the age of eighteen months. It was there he first met Parquet, the boy who would later become his lifelong manservant.

Immediately following graduation ceremonies, Snag was conscripted by the Royal Danish Army, the result of an hilarious series of misunderstandings. His initial shock soon gave way to acceptance and he grew to love the discipline and saunas that were then a daily part of life in the Den Kongelige Livgarde. He ultimately rose to command this historic ceremonial regiment and led it to victory in the famous Battle of the Ham.

Eventually he tired of the demands of constant travel and left military service at the age of twenty-three. He spent several years in a series of odd jobs, including gold miner, tree hugger, and astrophysicist, before settling in as an enforcer and historian for the notorious Acrylic Cartel of southern Ontario. He relied heavily on his commando training in this position and was reputed to have been involved in the killings of at least twelve rival carpet bosses. Those cases were never solved, however, and in later years he would flog anyone who mentioned them in his presence.

It was then he met the woman who would later become his help meet and to whom he always referred as his Lovely Bride. As a world class equestrian in her own right, she was immediately impressed upon their first meeting, as she assisted him in performing an emergency tracheotomy on a police horse in downtown St. Louis. As so often happens, veterinary surgery led to dinner, dinner to romance, and romance to a marriage proposal on a cross-country pontoon trip.

The wedding itself remains the stuff of legend. With an invitation list topping 3,500 and entertainment provided by world-class carnival barkers, the ceremony itself would have paled had it not been for the Dalai Lama's moving presentation of the couple to those in attendance.

After a three-month honeymoon in Wind Cave National Park, they returned to their new home. Mrs. Snag had insisted he leave the dangerous world of flooring, and his bosses there, while saddened, reluctantly agreed to release him from his employment. With a baby on the way, they needed an income and he turned his attention to perfecting the electric spork.

Weeks of tinkering in his garage finally led to a workable design, which he quickly patented and put into mass production, just in time for the Picnic Craze of '09. Building on this initial success, Snag turned his small company into one of the largest employers in the Andes, earning himself the title of Baron Von Cutlery in the process.

By now, he was the proud "father" of three young boys. When the youngest was arrested for trafficking in black market goiters, Snag realized the need to attend more to the needs of his family and sold his company for the then-unheard of sum of $150 trillion centavos (Canadian) in a complicated transaction involving stock swaps and four elk. He turned his attention to youth sports and his children soon developed the athletic prowess that resulted in their winning a record forty-two Olympic gold medals at the Angkor Wat games of 2028.

In the meantime, Snag had discovered the preservative magic of brining and regularly immersed himself for days at a time in a delicious mixture of water, Kosher salt, and a variety of pickling agents. As those around him aged, he retained his youthful vigor and good looks and began to find himself cast in the role of leading man across from many of the era's most attractive animal actors. Leading roles in films ranging from the screwball comedy "Three Men and a Baby and a Moose" to the Oscar-winning battlefield drama "Apocalypse Moose" cemented his reputation as a thespian second to none.

Snag's collection of Pulitzers also continued to grow, finally joined by a Tony for the comedy gold of his musical reworking of "Paradise Lost." Although he enjoyed the adulation, he was tired by the bar fights common in the poetry industry and after several years retired to Snag Manor, the twine mansion he constructed on his private island off the coast of Nebraska.

His later years were filled with family, colonic irrigation, and quiet philanthropic works, such as funding Kentucky's renowned Elizabethtown Community and Technical College (Fort Knox Campus) Institute for the Study of Existentialist Breakfast Foods. His lifelong studies as an amateur lepidopterist led to the successful introduction in the Scandinavian countries of the Death's-head Hawkmoth and the subsequent deforestation of much of the world's northern forests. In his spare time he enjoyed his phlegm collection and strolling the grounds of his estate clad in an ermine swimsuit, accompanied by his flock of prize-winning badgers.

After lying in state through next June at Lowe's Motor Speedway, Snag will be buried on a rotating basis at St. Peter's in Rome, the Wailing Wall, and Thomas Jefferson's grave site. In addition to Parquet, he is survived by his wife, three children, seventy-four grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and his beloved black lab, Katie XVII. Memorials may be sent to the Centers for Pyorrhea or the High Stakes Bingo room at the Foxwoods Resort Casino.