To my many, many devoted fans:

I know everyone wanted to see me last night. It was strange – I was just standing at the ultra-hip, wildly successful Mark Fair (now weekly) with my devoted press agent Jordan Miller from the Ann Arbor News (a paper I refuse to subscribe to until they post stories about me online for perpetuity and also beam them into space for the benefit of alien races) discussing how thrilling it would be for her readers if she wrote a long front page story about my next trip to the john to take a dump when it hit me – wave after wave of weird feelings – three of the toes on my left foot felt icky and my hangnails throbbed. I couldn’t stand up, but I couldn’t sit down either – I could only manage to crawl backwards humming music from Rent. It was totally different from last week, when, as you no doubt remember, I had impacted boogers and extreme sensitivity on my left nipple and was forced to lie in a bathtub full of warm Ovaltine with two night lights and my Snoopy blanket for comfort.

Then the deafness started. I felt as if an octopus had taken root in my nostrils and its tentacles were dripping Sea Monkeys into my ears. Many of my worried fans came to me beseeching and wailing, but I heard them not. Thanks to my legendary will power I was able to get to my feet and accept a few more mimed compliments, but then the world distorted further. I could see my own face in the mirror but everyone else became meaningless blobs. (This often happens to me.) I called one of my handmaidens, but she was out picking up some Buy Mark posters, so I bravely tried to take a step across the room.

Everyone started yelling at me for being too bold and not letting them carry me so I had to grant them their wish. I was conveyed by many hands to my domicile where I could only gain relief by sitting on my beanbag chair, wearing my fuzzy Snoopy slippers, eating yellow Gummy Bears and watching the first season of Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears.

It sucks that I was so cruelly struck down on my favorite day of the week, Mark Day. So I’m sorry to all my fans, especially those who came all the way from Outer Mongolia and Pittsburg just to catch a glimpse of me at the one of a kind ultra-hip, wildly successful Mark Fair. I know you’ll want to return when we have it again next week.

Of course, as would happen with any terribly important person, there was a lot of conjecture about the possible causes for the tragedy, especially in that front page article by Jordan. (She’s working on a daily Mark section in the Ann Arbor News as I write this.) Right before it happened I was exposed to a buzzing fly for thirty seconds as Jordan interviewed me for MarkWeb T.V., and then a gust of room temperature air unexpectedly struck my elbow, which I am told could have been the triggers by my personal friend John Dingell who has experienced similar symptoms after talking to Nancy Pelosi . However, I also know that with the Mark II Ypsipuppy, the Buy Mark Movement, the Mark of the Beast Severed Head potholders, the Mark Parade, the ultra-hip, wildly successful Mark Fair, and of course this Simply Mark.com blog, many, many concerned fans think that I have been entirely too self-sacrificing and selfless in spreading my Markness too thin.

Yes, thousands beg me to take it easy, be more selfish, and think about myself more, but what can I say? Mankind needs more Mark, and only I can give it.

Your nobly suffering ultra-hip, wildly popular inspiration,

MARK