So what do you give a guy who's turning 59, a guy who's really and truly done his best to walk lightly on the earth, to leave the planet as clean as he found it?

Why a Roadkill Cookbook, OF COURSE!!! Sheesh. Waste not, want not. Work with me here, people, work with me.

Yep, yesterday our buddy Ron turned 59 and about 30 of us headed over to help him celebrate his last year in his 50's with a potluck and party. Very wonderful man who's been all over the world and lived with some of the planet's poorest folks as part of different foreign aid projects on which he's worked.

He's an engineer by trade, but instead of designing bridges, he designs stuff like water stills made out of discarded materials so that folks with no loot in some South American country I can't remember don't have to drink arsenic contaminated water. Stuff like that. Right now he's working with Canadian native communities on alternative energy projects.

Darn, I'm making him sound all earnest and goody two shoes, but he's not.

Actually, he and his wife Sue are very evil people who've been known to give Paul and I gifts of appalling and carefully thought out tastelessness. We have been known to reciprocate, but there's been a lull in that for a few years, we seem to have mellowed. Ick.

But then, how many toads molded out of dried cow manure can you foist off on someone? (Marn pauses, blots a sentimental tear. A present like that, a present that puts a whole new spin on the phrase "crappy gift" is hard to find.)

Somehow, Ron and Sue have taken the roadkill cookbook as a challenge to resume Battle Tacky Gifts. Hey, I'm ready to rumble.

Let's see, Sue's birthday is coming up in September ... suggestions, anyone?