I’m struggling to write this now, as I’ve just lost a dear friend.  To protect his family’s privacy, I’ll call him Steve Applewhite.  Steve was a video game designer by trade, though his interests were broad.  You were just as likely to find him digging up rare dinosaur fossils in the New Mexico desert as you were to catch him coding a walk cycle.  He was recently hired to work on the video game based on the upcoming movie Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: The Motion Picture, which in turn was based on the video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which was based on the video game Prince of Persia, which was based on realistic physics, falling on spikes, and One Thousand and One Nights.

Details are sketchy, but it appears Steve was trying to figure out how to depict Jake Gyllenhaal’s starry eyes without making his digital avatar look like a character from Sailor Moon.  As soon as he rendered a test animation for the book turned video game turned video game turned movie turned video game, a quantum strangelet condensed from the space between all molecules and devoured Steve in a vortex of temporal confusion.

Luckily, one of Steve’s loves, wax sculpture self-portraiture, will allow us to have an open casket funeral.  The casket itself will be based on one described in Steve’s favorite book, the novelization of the movie version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was based on the film, which was based on the book, which was based on Southern Gothicism and the undiscerning tastes of America’s upper middle class housewives.

Since Steve had a college education and critical thinking skills, he was an atheist.  But, really, this funeral is for his family more than anyone else.  (I, for one, would rather be having sex with Steve’s wife in his memory.)  The service will be held at St. John’s, since his parents are Episcopalians, which are based on Catholics, which are based on superstitious mystery cultists, which are based on an aversion to education.

Some attendees have terrible allergies, so we ask that you bring only artificial flowers, which are based on real flowers, which are based on plant life’s Rube Goldbergian sexual reproduction systems.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to rehearse my eulogy.  I will be reading a monologue from West Side Story, which was based on Romeo and Juliet, which was based on the story Palace of Pleasure, which was based on the poem Romeus and Juliet, which was based on the timeless horniness of pubescent teenagers.  I’m hoping it will make Steve’s wife hot.