Ten Ways to Not Jump Out the Window This Weekend

Cold, gray, wet—again. The same November as last week, recycled and served slightly worse. The kind of weather that doesn’t just inconvenience you but seems personally committed to extracting whatever animal warmth is left in your body before Christmas arrives to finish the job. Before you do anything drastic involving a third-floor window and a two-family house, here are ten missions for the weekend.

First: barricade yourself in bed with a hot water bottle, a chocolate cake, and whoever currently tolerates your presence. You’re allowed to double the quantity of any one item. Second: find a Lady Gaga song and cover it so catastrophically that the internet takes time out of its day to laugh specifically at you. Third: hit anyone who’s already thinking about carnival season. You know who they are. Fourth: sleep with a man who has a mustache—there was apparently an official designated holiday for this the following week, so consider this advance preparation. Everyone qualifies. Fifth: handle some one-eyed trouser snakes. You know what I mean.

Sixth: invent whatever comes after the internet, then use the resulting fortune to buy Facebook, Google, and whatever cursed corner of the web Olli runs his Tit Fiesta on, all for about three-fifty. Seventh: hug a tree, sincerely—they’re having a difficult autumn and nobody’s asking after them. Eighth: put every Regina Spektor record on repeat and sit with the confusion it produces, the kind that can’t decide whether to come out as laughing or crying. Ninth: sleep with Ke$ha, if you’re brave enough. I’m not saying it would be bad. I’m saying it would be a lot. Tenth: buy every banana in East Berlin and watch the wave of inexplicable reunification nostalgia ripple outward. Those lonely housewives will just have to improvise with zucchini for a while.