Five Things Before I Turn Into Napoleon

A quiet Sunday. The good kind of slow—finished the last pages on Napoleon’s life, then spent the afternoon wandering through Undercity with Sune, my sweet undead princess, killing time and a few stragglers. Some ICQ conversations that went nowhere interesting. School of Rock on television in the background. Typical.

At some point the previous night, lying awake in my friend’s place while Irina made her particular nocturnal noises—somewhere between howling and some private dream language—I started running through the things I actually want to do before I die. Not the grand ones. The specific ones. Here’s where I landed: invent a word that makes it into actual usage; sleep with a pair of Siamese twins; have my own television channel; eat an 8,000-calorie burger; and have a daughter named Nami.

These feel right. Going to sleep on it.