This is it. My final note to the world. One last goodbye before my fingers freeze, rendering me unable to type. Soon I will become frozen into a block of ice, but perhaps a future world will discover me, like Pauly Shore finds Brendan Frasier in Encino Man. (Even while freezing to death, I still made an Encino Man reference — note that in my eulogy, please.) Why am I freezing to death? What led me to this cold and lonely death? Blame my apartment’s maintenance man, who still hasn’t fixed the heat in my apartment.

Oh, cruel world! For two weeks, I have been without the beloved warmth of nature. The gas pipe in my apartment is leaks, so Juan turned off the pilot completely. I am grateful to him for preventing me from ingesting poison, but he said he’d be back the next day with a fixed pipe, and one fortnight later there is no word. There’s snow up to my ankles, and my main method for keeping myself warm — pretending it’s hotter in here — has ceased being useful.

Oh, cruel nature! You are a beast, with claws clenched tight around my neck, drawing precious life juice in your deadly grasp. Oh why? Why must I perish before I can see another spring? Before I can glance upon the bold flower’s bud, and the brilliant smiles of children? So merrily they shall cavort! Nay, ’tis my destiny to perish by the cruel, scolding hand of Father Winter. No mercy, father? No mercy for your beloved son? No, only a verdict and a furrowed brow.

You might be thinking that because I live in Southern California, my apartment isn’t really that cold and therefore I’m acting like a pussy. You dare challenge my assertions? You dare question this hideous state I am presently enveloped in? If you were surrounded by this monstrous cold, I would not turn my shoulder from you — oh, no! I would call you “pussy” no sooner than I’d call my own mother a shrew! Yet, your jest persists. I am sure laughter warms you, as does your precious, working heating system.

As I said, this is it. I can take no more suffering. I shall type one last pithy paragraph, then die quietly into the dreadful silence. There is no more hope for me. No hope except for comforting thoughts of Brendan Frasier and a world I might be unfrozen into. You are victorious, nature. Now I die. Or buy a space heater from Target, or stay at my sister’s place, or just live with it, because it’s really not that bad.

Yes, now I die.