No one is ever going to believe me now, but there are a few of you who can corroborate that it is my long-standing wish to have my dead body shot out of a canon. Now that my excellent and carefully crafted funeral plans have been stolen by none other than Hunter S. Thomspon, it is no longer necessary to keep them a secret.

There is one important difference that will still make my funeral distinctive. Thomspon wants his ashes to be shot out of a 150-foot canon shaped like a double-thumbed fist. A pyrotechnic expert was quoted saying that he could blow him up in a 600-foot-wide explosion 800 feet in the air, by first packing Thompson's remains into a 12-inch-diameter shell.

I, in contrast, wish to have my intact body doused in flammable liquid and packed into a canon. This canon will be set up on the beach. My flaming body will then be shot out of the canon toward the ocean, in which will be floating a giant wooden ship full of all my possesions, like a Viking funeral, except that I will be the flaming arrow. My flaming projectile body will strike the ship and then me and all my stuff will ignite in a giant explosion, preferably with many of what I just learned are called "secondary explosions."

Hunter S. Thompson, you bastard. First, you made any hack who wanted to take drugs and behave destructively at organized events and then write about it while making inflammatory, vaguely violent remarks about the government appear to be imitating you. Now, anyone who wants to be shot out of a canon upon their death is imitating you, too!

It's the disease of our generation. What can we do that hasn't been done before?