However, please keep in mind that you only have one to two years to offend people with Virginia Tech jokes until they also become an accepted, or even outdated, joke topic. Remember the Columbine shootings? If you made a joke about that today, people would probably just roll their eyes. They probably wouldn’t even be offended, because that equally horrendous tragedy is so 1999.

Sadly, that’s how society works. It’s not that different from the business or fashion world. There are trends and crazes, fads and flavors of the month. As offensive joke tellers, we must follow these trends closely. When the Columbine tragedy got stale, people had 9/11 to revive their outrage. Now that the flavor of 9/11 has become as bland as a wad of Dubble Bubble, the Virginia Tech tragedy has given people something new to chew.

And chew they will! This is a golden period for offensive comedy. Make any joke about Virginia Tech, no matter how bland it is, and people will throw a fit. You’ll be called a traitor, scoundrel, coward, and anything else that rolls easily off the tongue during an emotionally charged moment. You’ll be able to offend people without even trying.

“Why don’t you think about the victims!” they’ll shout at you, their faces turning a deep red. This emotion may cause you to momentarily feel regret, but stay strong and remember that their umbrage will pass. In a few years, Virginia Tech will just become “That shooting that happened a while ago.” Some new horror will have taken its place.

That’s what makes offensive comedy so difficult. If people were truly mad about a tragedy, they’d stay mad about it forever, giving us a never-ending supply of material to offend them with. But no one ever stays mad about tragedies. They weep, then get angry, then talk about how it should never happen again, and then become indifferent until it does happen again. And because no one bothered to stop talking and actually fix something, we have to write a whole new supply of offensive jokes. It’s a real pain.

Here’s some tips to help you transition into the Virginia Tech offensive joke era. Begin with something simple, like a joke about how kids will be more willing to fight in Iraq next fall than enroll at Virginia Tech. Add the punchline, “At least the teenagers we send to Iraq get body armor.” If your poor overworked editor doesn’t strangle you to death after being dug out of the avalanche of hate mail your joke caused, move on to deliver the closing line.

The best closing lines turn the tables on the angry audience at the last possible moment. A closer should still offend people, but this time by presenting a serious statement that rightfully fingers the people you’ve angered as the problem. In this case, a statement showing that the real joke is their ineffective process of dealing with these tragedies. Try something like, “Never forget Virginia Tech. Blah blah blah. The only thing we’ve changed since Columbine is the color of the ribbons.”

I don’t know how to respond to that. This is a level of weirdness that, shocking as it may seem, surpasses even my vast comprehension of the genre. Does the reader not like my new column photo? Surely there are clearer ways to express that opinion, like by posting large photocopies of my photo around town with genitalia drawn on my face, or by coming to my apartment and beating me to death.

Perhaps this “faithful reader” was drunk and sent in the letter without realizing what they were doing. Similar to “drunk dialing” an old girlfriend, the act of “drunk mailing” probably happened often in the days before telephones were invented. Only in a place like Duluth would people have enough free time, alcoholism, and general dislike of modern technology to bring back such a trend.

The letter doesn’t seem like a drunk mailing, though. It’s not nearly profane enough. It seems more like a wish list, someone’s hopeful thinking that if they implant the idea of suicide in my mind, the concept will grow on me like a catchy radio jingle, eventually leading to my demise. Wishful thinking, reader. You can chant “Paul Ryan suicide!” over and over again all day long, but it’s not going to make it happen. I’m far too pleased with myself to ever stop writing for this newspaper, no matter how far away I live or how utterly irrelevant my column topics are to people in Northern Minnesota.

Maybe this weird letter was a death threat, a warning that the person plans to “suicide” me. Poor word composition aside, I find this idea ludicrous. If you’re going to murder someone, at least choose a human being who matters a little to the general public. You’ll likely spend 20 to 40 years in prison for murder, so don’t waste it on some volunteer alt-weekly newspaper columnist who’s so poor he tried to pay his taxes with food stamps and erotic self-portraits.

It didn’t work. They loved the effort, though.

The only other explanation is someone wrote that letter to drive me insane. It’s working. Well, either it’s working or I was already halfway there on my own. I’m not sure which. To be honest, I don’t care who wrote it or what they meant, I’m just jealous I didn’t think of such a grand scheme first. I love torturing people. It’s the main reason I fly home for Christmas every year.

I guess we’ll never know what that anonymous letter meant. It’s a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, in an enigma, swallowed by a hobo and coughed up on the floor of a bus. If you’d like to sift through the mess for answers, be my guest. I’ll be hiding behind a dresser in my apartment, aiming a pistol at the door just in case.