Ten Little Disasters Before Monday

A new month arrived, and with it the usual irrational conviction that things will somehow improve from here. They probably won’t, but the first few days of May carry a specific ambient optimism I find difficult to resist, so I’m running with it.

The weekend stretches ahead. Lady Gaga just split from her boyfriend, which opens a theoretical window for anyone drawn to performative eccentricity and artistically questionable decision-making—she’s available, the flights to America exist. A woman in New Jersey took her five-year-old to a tanning salon and got arrested for it, which functions as a useful data point on where the floor is. Mix banana milk with cocoa and discover what is, objectively, the holy grail of dairy. Have sex with someone at 5am on a weekday and assess the damage afterward. Get a small cute dog; Miley Cyrus just got one, and whether that’s a reason to or a reason not to depends entirely on your personal relationship with Miley Cyrus. Spend the entire weekend inside a single building that isn’t your home—a 24-hour shop, a train station, the apartment of someone Swedish—and notice what it does to your sense of time. Get a word tattooed across your forehead and use it to bother police officers. Make a funny video and upload it to YouTube, since apparently nobody else is doing this. Resist looking at cat photos online as a form of spiritual discipline. And for the truly committed: shave only the left side of your genitals and let the right develop freely—call it the Two-Face, the innovation that finally dethrones the Hollywood wax from its position at the summit of intimate grooming culture.

That’s ten. Go wreck your weekend.