Briefly, Deliberately Unhinged

The idea was ten things to do over the weekend, ranked by nothing in particular, difficulty non-linear, loose sequencing permitted. Professionals encouraged.

First: kidnap the winner of that year’s Germany’s Next Top Model and note, without too much surprise, that nobody comes looking. Second: give your seven-year-old daughter a breast augmentation voucher for her birthday—this one was pulled directly from the news cycle, a story about a mother who had done exactly that, which is the kind of thing that makes satire feel redundant and also mandatory. Third: read a friend’s blog, front to back, then backwards. Fourth: buy an iPhone, because if you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t have an iPhone. Fifth: listen to more reggae—specifically, to listen to more reggae even as the world collapses, friendships sour, and meaning drains from everything. Especially then.

Six involved a piece of toast and a gentleness that was not going to last. Seven: share a bathtub with your closest friends, ostensibly for environmental reasons, and see what secret desires float to the surface. Eight: wait outside a Lady Gaga concert and laugh at her for having unremarkable tits. Nine: have a megaphone physically fastened to your mouth and count the seconds until someone kicks you in the face. Ten required a costume—dress as an oversized EHEC bacterium, the E. coli strain that had the entire country terrified of bean sprouts and cucumbers that summer, and hurl licked vegetables at unsuspecting pedestrians.

The point, insofar as there was one, was that some weekends the only appropriate response to the state of everything is to become briefly, deliberately unhinged. Not as a coping strategy. Just as a statement of fact.