Suicide is a whole lot easier than I thought it would be. It's a little easier than putting on shoes, but not quite as easy as changing underwear. The laces make all the difference, you see. Of course you're asking why I, Yaz Yodle, a normal toxic waste disposer, decided to subject myself to the fatal deceleration experienced upon hitting concrete from a four thousand foot fall. Of course I don't have a whole lot of time to tell you. Gravity waits for no one, but I'll at least begin.

As I said, I used to be employed at Happy Face Toxic Waste Disposal. I was the person who ran around with the heavy duty, lead-lined vacuum cleaner and sucked up things like radioactive sludge, Draino, and the lunch and corner diner. So I continued until I got into a vicious argument with a plate of scalloped potatoes that had received intelligence as a result of being regurgitated by a mutated sea bird just returned from Chernobyl in the Soviet Union. The sea bird had been caught in the meltdown there, and, unable to fly to the United States, had decided to commute,a proposition slightly less dangerous than running through an erupting volcano in Bermuda shorts. Anyway, the radiation had given the bird the ability to animate matter by partially digesting it. After the scalloped potato affair, it went on to create such monstrosities as Dan Quayle and my next door neighbor.

The plate of potatoes so put me off that I was forced to quit my job and see an amateur psychiatrist who doubled as a professional javelin catcher. My first appointment was a complete disaster. The psychiatrist, it turned out, was a close relative of the plate of scalloped potatoes, having been created on the same day. He threw me out and said if I ever came back he would introduce me to his friend Herbert, a six hundred pound gorilla with a thing for dipping people in vats of boiling special sauce from McDonald's.

Needless to say, I took that as a threat and flew to Detroit the next day, launched from a fifty foot slingshot belonging to my friend, Dr. Gonbo.

Upon arriving in Detroit, I was arrested for public decency while helping an old lady cross the street. The old lady turned out to be the mayor's surrogate mother, and the next thing I knew I was in the coop. When it was pointed out by my attorney that I was not a chicken, I was brought up on charges of impersonating a fowl. The clerk who wrote the warrant, however, had a homonym problem and the warrant read "foul", which resulted in me being signed up for Piston's training camp in the fall.

Later I was moved to the state correctional facility where I was tortured by having to sit through eight hours of "The Three Stooges" and six TV mini-series, including both Amerika and North and South. This brutal treatment was continued when Tammy Bakker's album was played to me at eighty decibels. After that harrowing experience, I was moved to my cell.

Much to my horror, I found my cell mate to be Alex Trebeck, thrown in prison for filling out his tax forms entirely with questions. He went into a frenzy because I refused to ask him who Titzling was,so I demanded to be moved to another cell. Eventually, I ended up in a cell with Tom Lehrer and Al Yankovic and had to listen Zanfir, Master of the Panflute, the only music they could both agree to. This music resulted in my having hallucinations of Baryshnikov dancing the polka with Ethel Merman while singing random Pink Floyd songs one octave flat of C minor.

That night, however, I heard about a prison break, and, with many guns, was invited to come along. The only condition was that I had to be gagged and tied up in a sack. Naturally, I agreed and a few hours later found myself a free man swimming in Lake Huron with a cement block for a companion. I managed to slip away from the block by telling it I had a previous appointment with a firing squad, and that, no offense intended, I preferred being shot to drowning. The block was a little hard-headed, but eventually understood, and I swam to relative safety in downtown Detroit.

It was at this point that I decided life was too good and resolved to try to be more miserable. I immediately mailed myself as third class bulk mail to Nome, Alaska, where I achieved my goal of going to the ultimate low. Unfortunately, I got so excited at this achievement that I ruined everything and became elated. I gave it up and became a wandering loiterer in Pulkipsey.

At last I was truly happy, I had a wonderful time getting thrown out of restaurants, public places, and private bathrooms. Then, one day, all this was ruined, when, during a public demonstration for the preservation of the West End outhouse,(which we believed to be a historic monument ---John Tower had once thrown up in this toilet after a big party), I met Henrietta Polochi. Henrietta Polochi was one of those fanatics of Shirley McClaine and she told me that in a previous life I had been her mother. Seeing that Henrietta was clearly suffering under an aesthetic handicap, not to mention a hunched back, I decided it would be best to die.

After the steam roller and jet intake ploys both failed I decided to give up suicide and take a trip to Chicago. I refound my urge for death after running into a mirror on top of the Sears Tower. I faked a stumble backwards to fool the cat who had been until that time eyeing me suspiciously and began my fall. And here I am.n