I will uh elaborate on this later . . . an entire chapter in my dumb-stupid novel INJURY AND AFTERMATH contains my last will and testament and an explanation of the (likely) future event I am about to briefly outline . . . but my retirement plan, really truly, is to go down to Antarctica and walk to the South Pole with the hope that it kills me, which it most assuredly would. I have been fantasizing about this for years and years. As stipulated in my will, my skeleton is to be collected from the snow and tossed into Mount Terror, which is a volcano on Ross Island off the coast of Antarctica. For the convenience of the poor bastards tasked with trekking across that godless icy wasteland with a team of sled dogs, I have plotted what I guess is probably the quickest route for getting my earthly remains to their final resting place (and of course I used purple stars):

What will the front page of the New York Times say the next morning? I’ll take a stab at it:

LIFELONG LOSER
FINALLY FINDS PEACE
IN AN ICY TOMB
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

About a hundred years ago, during Robert Falcon Scott’s disastrous Terra Nova expedition, he and his dudes reached the South Pole and then started heading back to the shore . . . but a bunch of bad weather and supply shortages eventually doomed them to a tent where they waited for the elements to kill them once and for all. One of the dudes, an explorer named Lawrence Oates, woke up one morning and said to his dying friends: “I am just going outside and may be some time.” With no shoes on he walked out into a blizzard and was never heard from again. They never even found his body!

Hmm. Yeah. That doesn’t sound so bad. It’s probably like going to sleep. That’s how I’ll do it, except the only thing I will be leaving behind is a vacant tent and a lifetime of regret!

IN CONCLUSION: When the time comes, I’ll charter an icebreaker from Argentina and go the hell down there and die. Shoot, man . . . I won’t even need a 401k for that!!!

Anyway: