Joe Punto and Nikki Salzwedel, both of Cloquet, MN, plan to be married May 24 in St. Mercy’s Church in Cloquet. Joe and Nikki are both horrendously ugly, making them a perfect match for one another. Both have tried to meet more attractive people, but other than some drunken one-night stands at college parties for Nikki, neither has netted someone like the attractive people they see on TV. They both now claim that attractive people are shallow, and they’d rather “be with someone who has a personality.”

Bill Consley and April Denslow, both of Duluth, MN, plan to be married May 4 in St. Mary’s Church in Duluth. Bill and April both have AIDS, and are getting married so they won’t spread the deadly disease to others. Bill is a boating enthusiast, while April enjoys pilates. They plan to give birth to 3-8 children.

Ben Graves of Minneapolis, MN and Jenny Solomon of Cloquet, MN, plan to be married April 25 at the county courthouse in Duluth. Ben is 21 years old, and Jenny is 20. Both are still in college, and have never lived with a person of the opposite sex. Friends, relatives, and other loved ones give this marriage roughly three years before it ends in bitter divorce. Jenny will become visibly ill after seeing Ben use the toilet naked with the door open, and Ben will become increasingly disillusioned as everything he owns is stuffed in the attic in lieu of hundreds of frilly, oversized throw pillows. “Reality shall begin, and may God have mercy on them both” said Ben’s friend, who is less religious than him and has lived with many girlfriends in the past.

George Flenceman and Sally Ferguson, and also Mike Dudworth and Angie Ferguson, plan to be married September 4, 2010 at the family cabin in Two Harbors. Normally, two engagements would call for two separate listings, but the Duluth News Tribune raised engagement announcement rates by 10 cents last month, and the Ferguson family is extremely cheap. The wedding will be BYOB. Sack lunches will be served.

Gabe Scanlon and Megan Wesloh, both of Superior, WI, plan to be married May 14 in St. Mary Poopenstein’s Church in Duluth. Gabe is wearing a hat in this engagement photo. This is crass, but Megan didn’t say anything because she knows Gabe is sensitive about his premature balding. When asked, Gabe refuses to admit this, claiming he’s just “a really big Minnesota Twins fan.”

Paul Davis and Shannon Spiegel, both of Duluth, MN, plan to be married April 29 in St. God Jesus Savior Hallelujah Lord-a-Mercy Church in Duluth. Shannon’s parents are Frank and Ethel Spiegel of Duluth, MN. Paul’s parents are Shawn and Annie Davis of Duluth, MN. We note this in case you went to school with their parents and wish to see how ugly their child ended up being. Not very ugly, as you can see from the photo. I guess you’ll just have to get over it.

Elsie R. Sharpton of Hibbing, MN was maimed beyond recognition in a local tractor accident on April 18. Witnesses say Elsie, age 89, was sunbathing in the nude when her nearsighted cousin mistakenly ran her over with the tractor. Her face was crushed under thousands of pounds of pressure. The funeral service will be open casket, just to make things interesting. Please call for details.

Frank Coznik of Esko, MN and Nancy Hardwick of Superior, WI, never plan to be married. They despise each other so much that they’ve purchased space in this engagements section just to announce their mutual hatred. Nancy says Frank has an “oddly-shaped penis” and repulses her with his excessive butt hair. Frank says Nancy is “as fat as anything; anything at all” and is so slutty that her sweat is 90 percent semen. The two plan to continue hating each other until death from old age or illness ends one of their lives.

I should note that I don’t have two weeks to live. In fact, I’m perfectly healthy and probably have a good 40 to 60 years to live. Which, for some of you who don’t like this column very much, may seem like an unbearable prison sentence from which you may never escape. But sometimes when life gets a little dull, it’s fun to imagine you only have two weeks left to live, and do some of those things anyway.

Maybe you never got the chance to egg someone’s house as a kid. If you only had two weeks left, wouldn’t you? Perhaps you’ve always wanted to crash a stranger’s wedding while wearing an Easter bunny costume. Exactly how long do you plan to wait? Maybe you’ve never seen Japanese anime cartoons, and are curious as to what an octopus fornicating with a schoolgirl would look like. C’mon, man. It’s like three clicks from the main Yahoo homepage. Just do it.

Perhaps you’ve never drank a liter of cognac and then publicly urinated in downtown Duluth. I know there’s only three or four of you in the entire Northland who haven’t, so what’s the holdup? As one of the many who have drank a liter of cognac and then publicly urinated in downtown Duluth – and downtown Superior as well – I can tell you that it’s definitely a rush of adrenaline. It makes you feel like Sid Vicious, or Wilford Brimley when he’s had too much lemonade and the senior shuttle bus is 10 minutes late to pick him up.

One of the greatest things about this world is even if you aren’t capable of doing bad things like egging someone’s house, there are always friendlier alternatives. For instance, as kids my friends and I sometimes would fill water balloons with laundry detergent and throw them at someone’s house. It leaves a hilarious blue splatter all over their front door, but unlike eggs, it’s easy to clean off with a hose. Also unlike eggs, laundry detergent smells delicious.

Gasoline also smells delicious, but that’s another story. And before you add that little gem of information to your theory of why I’m a 30-year-old deadbeat who’s still stuck at a crappy alt-weekly paper, I’ll note that I have never actually consumed or huffed gasoline. Or paint chips. Or skunk urine. All those things are simply rumors.

Anyway, if I’ve learned anything from seeing the movie “Bucket List” – other than that I should really read reviews before going to see a film – it’s that you’re never too mature to do anything. If you’re a lonely 80-year-old woman who has never been with a male prostitute, you should go for it. You should also keep in mind that this male prostitute will probably be gayer than a TV weatherman, but learning is the fun part of trying new things.

You’re also never too exciting to think up new things to add to your “two weeks left to live” list. Goals on my current list include cursing live on a local TV newscast, throwing up on the table at a Denny’s restaurant and leaving without cleaning it up, and getting former Vikings running back Darrin Nelson to personally apologize to me for dropping that touchdown pass at the end of the 1987 NFC Championship Game.

I even have a secondary list, which includes less scandalous goals like catching a foul ball at a baseball game, painting a comically awful picture of my parents and then forcing them to display it in their home for a full year, and writing one humor column that doesn’t include a reference to skunk urine.

Make your own list and start by completing the easiest item, reader. Feel free to steal as many of my ideas as you like, especially the one about throwing water balloons full of laundry detergent at people’s houses. Just please refrain from name-dropping when you’re telling the police why you did it.