http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/2010/12/29/czech-christmas-carp-gets-chuck-norris/?KEYWORDS=chuck+norris

Some of you who are reading this letter for the first time may not realize that we were even an entity.  Who are these guys?  Why did they send me a letter?  Why did they send me nude pictures of their cat?   And that’s okay; sometimes there are products out there that need to be advertised even though you use them on a daily basis.  Like Beef.  ”Why do those commercials even need to exist?” I oft ask myself with a rope-cut string of jerky flowing from spool to mouth.  But just like the Beef industry, we need to get the message out there to the public that we’re working for you, the every day man.

Let’s set the stage somewhat: You come home and you have a slip of paper in your hand.  What type of slip?  An important one that you can’t afford to lose, say a loved one’s pin code to an off shore account or a coupon for that delicatessen where they throw loose meat at unsuspecting customers.  You have this paper in your hand and you want to put it somewhere where you know you won’t lose it.  So you think of the weirdest spot ever.  You place it in a cubby hole in a rolling desk top located in the middle of the garage debris-mountain.  Or you tuck it in between the bread box and the fridge, next to the Kathy magnets.  Or you stick it under the rug.  You’ll never forget it there: it’s such an unusual place!

That’s where our service starts.  Got something you don’t want to lose?  We’re there to make sure that the bizarre places you stick random forget-me-not items are actually a warp-hole to our universe.

And in our vast storage banks we rack up all these items you’ve misplaced purposely in your life: mailbox keys, illegally burned CD’s of Michael Bolton Live, small pets, ambition.  We store these things for you so that when you die, when your soul is heading north or south, we tie up all the clutter in a sack and hit you in your soul-face with all the force we can muster.

We know what you’re asking at this very moment: Why didn’t I think of this brilliant idea?  You did.  We stole it from your brain.  You’re welcome.  Please use us again.

Do you love your family?  Sure, you love them in the ‘I’m going to spend quality time with them and provide meals on the table’ kind of way, but do you love your family in the “Free Range Hot Dogs Way?”

Our Free Range wieners have ample amounts of greenery to lay around and do the things those hot dog wieners enjoy doing: like playing hot-dog wiener limbo with each other and playing hot dog wiener tag.

The benefits of eating Free Range Hot Dogs are not measurable, and you’ll sleep better knowing that your dog enjoyed a good life before being packaged and digested.  You see, Non-Free Range Hot dogs have proven to be more bummed out in general.  Just look at this tube-steak here (camera pans in to a hot dog sitting on a chair), his psychological assessment has shown that he is not only suicidal but has had thoughts of murdering other hot dog wieners. He’s been acting out and listening to Radio Head in his cage all month long.  It’s only a matter of time now, and this was all because he was raised in a tiny cage, with minimal room to wiggle his rear.  (Play Soundgarden’s Break My Rusty Cage, here)

(Pan back to an open field with hot dogs rolling, frolicking, playing hop-scotch), Here at Free Range hot dogs, we let the hot dog wiener’s play freely before they’re knocked out and placed on a conveyer belt to be wrapped in plastic socks and then shipped out like a stack of bodies not unlike a pile of cord-wood.

That brings free-range taste right to your mouth, and that makes your family say: “Thank you for loving us, Father.”  Because, when you don’t buy Free-Range hot dogs, you might as well be buying a bucket of chum with mental health issues.  Go ahead and pour that out on the grill–see what your family thinks of you now–they’re already so disappointed.

Your family judges you based on the quality of meat you bring home, and the happiness that meat enjoyed when the blood was coursing through its veins and nothing else.  Nothing else matters but happy hot dog wieners, repeat that to yourselves as you go to the store tonight, and please visit our website, where you can find user-generated tributes to free-range hot dogs, or watch the free-range wieners on our the hot dog cams.  You’ll not be disappointed.  How do I know this?  Because I’m not only a Free Range Hot Dog commercial director, I’m also a Free Range Hot Dog.

Warning: the legal definition of Free Range means 20 percent more cage space than regular livestock.  The hot dogs you’ve seen in this commercial are paid hot dog actors and the results of their happiness have not been found to be the typical disposition of an average Free Range wiener.  This commercial is a public relations spot to help the general public forget the Free Range Hot dog rising of 2010, where several humans were killed and packaged, as well as hundreds of hot dogs.  Free Range hopes you’ve enjoyed this commercial, and that it helps you realize that eating meat should not be something you should feel guilty for.  These hot dogs would kill you if they had half a minute and dexterous appendages.   Hot Dog Cams are actually animation provided by Pixar.

My team currently consists of myself and my old college roommate Bowman.  I used to be a fairly decent ball player, before I gained that after-college 100.  I literally gained 100 pounds.  Now I mostly waddle.  I can still post up, I can still shoot a hook shot, but we’re going to need to limit my play to half the court.  I can do offense or defense, but not both.  With that caveat, the only other player you’d be sharing the ball with would be Bowman, who is a redneck revisionist whose main love is tiny-scale models of train-wrecks and Civil War history.  Sure, we are red state people but we are color-blind and progressive.  Literally color blind, Bowman has to memorize the order of stop-lights when he gets to a new town, so we’ll have to make sure that we pick jersey colors that are neither red nor green or it will get one sided awfully quick.

Bowman only shoots three pointers, whether guarded or not, so you never have to worry about touches as long as you don’t give that vortex the ball.  Bowman will take the three though, and is not afraid to do so–even on the bench, so don’t hand the ball over unless you want to see an atrocious shot-form of a 6 year old child from some distant country who has never heard of basketball.  I know I sound bitter, but Bowman also married the woman I love, by the way.  So if the tournament doesn’t go well, you could always pick a fight with Bowman and then let him throw the first punch.  Whatever happens…happens.
I’m having a hard time drumming up a situation where you would be more depended upon and lauded by a team than my current Bowman/my fatself combo.

And you want to talk championships?  There are two seasons a year, and mostly they’re won by old men who are really well organized.  And by that I just mean they show up consistently.

Some of the old men do play dirty, I must warn you, but their dirty play may not have an impact on you.  I’ve been elbowed to the throat, pulled by the lobes, and kneed in the armpits after being shoved down, but that’s because I’m a mere man.  If one of these geezers tried such a travesty on you, their bones would shatter on impact, and if not you could rip their old man legs off and club them down.  Your choice.

I’ve even drawn up a play for us, as a sort of enticement, a taster if you will of the soul-purification we’ll produce on the hardwood: First, I hand the ball in and you catch it, then I take two steps in-bounds and then watch you go down the court while old white men bounce off of you in violent ways.  Then, Bowman will be standing on the wing but will be mostly concerned about Marissa’s behavior in the stands.  He will begin wondering to himself in an introspective way why Marissa is so focused on what’s behind him, i.e. my well defined calf muscles, then you cross over OWG #4, sprint towards the basket, alley-oop it to yourself and slam-a-jamma, we win the game and Bowman is emotionally bankrupt.  We share some granola and you give me insight on what it’s like to be successful.  The perfect day for the perfect team.

(This is fiction I should mention: I married the woman I love, I don’t play ball anymore and Bowman actually has nice thee point form.  His lay-up still looks like a wounded duck taking flight, however.  He also just bought a motorcycle)

On the shore line there would be much crying and pounding of the sand by balled up fists and toes.  Possibly I would collect my tears in a leaf to save for drinking water at some later date–and then I would realize that tears are basically the same salt content of the ocean.  He would be surrounded by an ocean of tears.  Who’s tears?  I’m not sure, maybe all the fish who have ever existed.

The coconuts dropping in the forest wouldn’t have bothered me that much, because I probably wouldn’t have been sane enough to actually experience fear any longer.  A few hours alone on an island after my buddies were just dragged  to some bottomless depth would be enough emotional trauma for this little trooper to sit down in the sand and just start scooping fistfuls into said trooper’s mouth.

I’m allergic to seafood so I’d of gotten hungry toot-sweet.  It gives me hives and cross-eyedness. And how inconvenient it would be that the first time in my life I’d actually throw in with cannibalism there would be no one within a delicious arm’s length.

Instead of a Wilson that I had created to pass away the years on the island, barring my untimely death due to bad genetics and food intake limitations, I would have created a small society of tree-men made of twigs and locks of my own body hair to populate a good mile radius.  These twig-hair people would have their own economy and their own god who they were always trying to sacrifice me to.  Before history judges them too harshly it should be known that my part in the hierarchy is basically a monster who comes in just before dawn to snatch up their warriors and snap them on my knee.  I deserve to die.  It keeps me going.

Truth be told, I would have never made it off over the island to have my magical whale moment.  When the quarter section of that  port-a-potty floated in that fateful day, I only set it up to create an actually island themed port a potty (I always felt like the twig people were watching me when I go).