Having a strange sense of humor is a blessing few people seem to be graced with.

And you just have to love those people you actually know who are able to bring a bit of joy into your lives because they are so bizarre.

How do they come up with all of their out-of-this-world thoughts and all of their stranger-than-fiction ideas?

I wish I knew because all too often I am trying, and then miserably failing, to be as neat as these creative people are.

If I were able to use my brain to come up with laughable things to tell the world, then I bet I could be a better writer. But until that time I just have to worship all the crazy souls out there who seem to have mastered this trick.

And now that the semester is coming to an end, it makes me feel all the more depressed. One of my favorite tattooed writers for the Iowa State Daily will be graduating in a few weeks, taking from our college campus his wealth of messed up and wacked-out thoughts and beliefs.

Will there be someone else to take his place? Well, considering his degree of freakishness, I doubt it.

But even though that thought is quite sad, I know there must be other people out there somewhere who have a similar sense of weirdness.

Yes, my little brother is quite strange indeed. I’ve had to live with him for such a long time, while putting up with his endless Monty Python obsession, and I would have to say he is not a stranger to weird thinking.

He often will send me e-mail filled with stories unthinkable to me. I don’t understand how he became so hilarious, but I think it’s nifty.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ll have to share with you a weird thing he wrote to me last month. I don’t really know what to think of what he wrote, but at least it is creatively different. And anything that is out of the norm gets two thumbs up from me.

What follows from this point on is what my little brother wrote.

Before reading this article, please be aware that injuring yourself on purpose or pretending to have an injury and attempting to receive medical insurance or workman’s comp, etc., is still technically illegal aside from what millions of people think and do everyday here in the United States:

First off, at the beginning of one’s journey to establish the above accounted formula, one must initiate all action by giving up or quitting one’s high-paying executive position which may pay six figures plus, to then obtain a common dishwashing position at one’s local restaurant. One must establish him or herself as a hard working individual that has no objection to any particular type or work, like scrubbing toilets, washing the bottoms of trash cans, shining the boss’s shoes, and carrying around large cases of food and drink up and down multiple flights of stairs, etc.

Continuing on as that hard working dishwasher, one must assure him or herself that over-packing the trash bags to a maximum weight can only benefit him or herself in the task of hurling the large fifty gallon bags eight feet up into the dumpster out back.

Once this has been achieved, one should begin to feel slight pain in the morning and in their daily efforts to accomplish their common tasks.

A great way to test if oneself is truly feeling the above described pain is to simply bend over at the waist, keeping the legs straight, and pick up a light object from one’s toes.

If the described sharp pain and soreness in the lower back is felt, objective one has been reached.

The next part of the mission, to destroy one’s efficiency in performing physical tasks, is to go on to your local Army or Marine recruiter and submit oneself to join an infantry unit.

Once accomplishing the strenuous activity of completing basic training successfully and returning to one’s unit, make sure to volunteer one’s help in carrying any equipment necessary.

This would surely include large wooden boxes full of over 150 pounds of communications equipment, fully assembled fifty caliber rifles with tripods, racks of ten M-16 weapons or more, etc., etc. Not to mention one’s own fully loaded rucksack.

Once the above two objectives have been reached, it shouldn’t be long before one should find them self strapped to a bed in a community hospital crying for medical insurance or workman’s comp. and trying to sue someone or something for some amount of money sometime.

Aaron Barstow is a junior in journalism who can’t wait to get back home.