Suicide is technique as the right tools for the job.

The Final Exit Network teaches one how to die. There are other resources, as well. The Uncyclopedia entry on “How to Commit Suicide” offers step-by-step advice.

Method 6 is “Death by Great White Shark.” It requires a plane ticket, sunscreen, a boat, and a bucket of chum.

Method 8 is called “Overkill.” Freud and Althusser might call it overdetermination. Overkill involves a gun, a tall building, a portable pool, and a shark. Rating: 5 Stars.

< § >

—

Let us recapitulate.

If you have ever been to Old Country Buffet (RIP), or to a little place in a small town that I like to call North’s Chuck Wagon, you know that the long and magical buffet line consists of stations. Always you begin at the essential first station which is not actually food but picking up the not without whiches of a buffet consisting of a cafeteria tray, two plates one large and one small, utensils, and plenty of napkins.

Sliding your tray along those polished rails you arrive immediately at the salad station, which includes Thousand Island dressing and the tiniest cobs of corn you have ever seen. Leaving the salad station you pass through a series of hot dish stations from country fare like chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, to pasta dishes, to deep fried seafood consisting of shrimp and fish sticks. The final station is the gourmet service of direct carvings of meat. Oh!, the ham and roast beast plated for you before your very eyes. But more precisely this final station is the penultimate station, or really the pre-penultimate station, since there is always the drink station consisting of Dr. Pepper, and then the dessert station where you will finish with a towering soft serve vanilla cone after you’ve cleaned your plate. But if we are being mindful of all stations there is also the condiment station where you fill tinily apportioned paper cups overflowing with catsup for your fries and tartar sauce for your fish sticks and cocktail sauce for your deep fried shrimp with crispy tails, and then a station for soup with New England clam chowder and oyster crackers featured on a Friday night. You might even say that the table and chairs in the dining area make up the final final station after all your weary travels, without which people would simply stand around holding trays up to their mouths so they can feed. And wouldn’t that ring both odd and true? In all, these stations comprise the Via Buffetis or the Way of Buffet.