Readers and the rest of you, please take a few minutes of silence right now in remembrance of all the dead people out there. And really take it, because if I find out you just read this paragraph and moved on to the next without taking that few minutes of silence, I’ll be tremendously pissed. Just being quiet while you’re reading doesn’t count. It needs to be a few agonizing minutes, looking discreetly at the clock and hoping like hell it will soon be over. They deserve nothing less.

Thanks for that. I didn’t mean to be so touchy, sir. It’s just that we’ve had a lot of them lately—dead people, I mean. Whether they’ve been killed in floods, hurricanes, mudslides, suicide bombs, or by hanging out on a weekend with Omar Bricks, a lot of people, American and foreign citizens alike, have lost their lives in the past few months. No doubt about—death is the number one killer out there right now.

There are some out there who say you can’t stop death—to which I say, “you’re not the boss of me.” Just because it seems difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try anyway. The first step in our war against death is raising awareness. Sure, you might think everybody everywhere knows about death, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t remind them it’s still out there waiting for them.

That’s why I’ve chosen the perfect symbol to be our constant reminder of death—a peppermint ribbon. Why peppermint? Basically all the other colors are taken. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a perfect choice. I want the peppermint ribbon to be instantly linked to death in the minds of everyone in the world. People lying under some rubble in the Gaza Strip should be able to see a peppermint candy and know that, one day, they too will die themselves.

Actually, it’s hard to believe no one’s pressed this “cure death” agenda more over the centuries. All this “cure aids,” “cure cancer,” “cure heart disease” stuff hasn’t really gotten us anywhere. I say it’s time we take the direct approach. Death is what we’re really afraid of, and it’s about time we stopped dealing with its miserable toadies. Take out death once and for all and we’ll all feel safe. Malignant tumor? Who gives a shit? What’s a tumor going to do to you, if death is already vanquished. You go around for eternity with a headache, maybe, but that’s a small price to pay for living for eternity. Morticians and Goth music stars may go out of business, but let’s face it—these guys were downers at parties anyway.

If you say conquering death is impossible, I’d call you a pessimist. I might feel the desire to call you fatass, too—depending on your physique. But please, let’s keep it about the issue, not personal attacks. It just so happens I have some of the leaders in the field of anti-death research at my beck and call, and whenever I beck or call them, and drop them a few hundred dollars for information, they give me the inside skinny.

Yes, it turns out, the final cure for death is just around the corner, according to my contacts. What will it take? Five million? Thirty million? One-hundred and fifty million? Ten dollars? Is there any price too high to cure death? Let’s put a limit of five billion on it, right now, just for the sake of not going crazy with this thing. But I say, at this moment, less than five billion dollars would be worth it if we could forever cure death. No more sad losses for families, no more fear of the unknown for all the billions of people out there. And you know, if everybody in the world chipped in one dollar (I’m talking to you deadbeats in Central America, too) we’d have the five billion we needed. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

And all I’m really asking for is $25,000 to start making some goddamn peppermint ribbons. When you put it that way, I don’t see any reason you can’t all start sending me the money today.