This morning I was reading this article in the NYT about two dudes who are currently trekking Antarctica on foot with no accompaniment, which is apparently a first. Previously we human beings have attempted to reach the bottom of the world in groups . . . but these sorry sons of bitches are going it alone. Needless to say, I am deeply jealous. I scrolled down the page and saw their proposed route:

. . . and then I remembered my own route:

I have never been to Antarctica before. My route is based on practically nothing . . . just a few things I read, or whatever. I’m so dumb I don’t even know how to maneuver around the Ross Ice Shelf. Really, my route could begin where theirs ends: right in that little alcove in the ice shelf. Why do I need to start on that patch of earth way the hell down there? There are two bases right smack dab where my Ross Sea purple star is: McMurdo, which is a US base, and Scott Base, which is owned by the New Zealand government. I guess that’s why I thought that would be a good starting point. By far the most amount of bases are around where these two gentlemen set off from, on that little snake tail near the Weddell Sea. The rest are scattered around the perimeter of the continent.

McMurdo looks nice as hell actually. I found a picture of it at night, where it looks like a little Christmas town, and thus it is much cuter at night:

It’s Ross Sea vs. Weddell Sea I guess, and hell, who knows if they’d even let me within a hundred yards of any of the Weddell Sea bases. Hmm. Maybe by the time I have decided I’m primed for extinction, no countries will exist at all anymore, and I’ll be free to charter some sort of floating ball of garbage from the southernmost point of Chile, and I can begin my death march from wherever it is those seafaring marauders and I make land. And what will I have used to pay for my journey, now that all money is even more worthless than it was before? An eyeball, maybe, and a few bags of irradiated rice. Lord, and maybe even my flea-bitten time-rotten soul as well. . . .

And listen: If you absolutely must mark the place where my skeleton sleeps, make my grave a moderately-sized snowman in my likeness, which is to say a sort of hideous frozen statue. It should stay intact for at least a few months, maybe even a year. Right? There are twenty-four hours of sunlight during the Antarctic summer, though hell, with temperatures dipping well below freezing even then, it should be relatively safe from the sun. . . . it could even exist just long enough for one or two of my more insane friends to make the trek down to see it. No matter what the fate of my death snowman may be, let’s face it: the thing is gonna be an inverted Ozymandias. Instead of a spiritually bankrupt tyrant who lords over an arid wasteland, I will be the nameless idiot nobody who gave up and died somewhere cold and far away from everything I ever knew, to wit: My name is Starsailor, King of Losers, and so on. . . .

Well, that’s enough self-loathing and narcissism for today. Thing is, I’ll probably never get away with any of this anyhow, because there is one person in particular who would sooner stomp my balls out than let me get on that boat, or that military aircraft, or however the hell else you get there, and I know if she knew I was going on down to Skeleton Town so to speak, she would be able to convince me otherwise. I’d sure as shit rather be warmed by her friendship than frozen by the cold winds of absolute indifference! Though hell, sometimes you got no say in the matter . . . most times, even, and who am I to muck with iron-clad fate? I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.