I knew a man in Winona that used to say things like "Strap-on love is a dime a dozen." I didn't know what the hell he meant but it sure sounded cool, his stream of consciousness mantras. "Fuck a duck and save the squirrel," that was another of his sayings. It was hard to get any real information about him. I never found out his name. When I would ask him, he would say "Emasculating Carrot Top should be national goal number one." I would try to catch him off guard, like when he was drunk, or fucked up generally. Always though, "Emasculating Carrot Top should be national goal number one."

Then one day, he was gone. I looked all over town for him. I asked everyone, but have you ever tried to find someone without knowing their name? You say things like, "you know, he was the guy that would always be funny." So I would walk into bars and say things like, "Have you seen the guy that said emasculating Carrot Top should be national goal number one?" And the sad, lonely hearts that occupy bars at noon on Wednesday would look at me like I asked to shit in their mouths. I searched the trails up and down the bluffs that Winona is known for, but still, nothing. I wasn't worried--it never would have surprised me if just up and left town one day without thinking about it, until he actually did.

So after several drunken days of searching through the bars of Winona, I decided to check his house to see if he was there. I knocked on the front door. No one came, but I could hear the TV on so I walked over to the window on the side of the house. He wasn't there, but his dog Ice-T Hangover Pasquali Junior was sitting and watching MTV attentively. It was odd, but very little surprised me by that point in my life. He used to tell me Ice-T Hangover Pasquali Junior was a beacon of stopgap leisure. Now I believed him.

It turns out where he went was the bottom of the river. They found him down near the La Crosse Lock and Dam a couple weeks after he disappeared. And sure enough, the obituary said, "Emasculating Carrot Top Should Be National Goal Number One, age 24, who touched so many lives despite being poured only a small portion for his own." I wasn't sure if that's what his real name was, but it must have been the only thing they found on him. And the odd thing was, people read his obituary and agreed with him, and I stand here today in an America in which Carrot Top has been emasculated, and the national cooperation shown in doing so was inspiring to us all. Now that problem is solved, and we are working on ways to end hunger, poverty and disease around the world. That is the legacy of the strange man whose real name I don't know.