Ten Small Crimes Against Good Sense
Friday afternoon arrived and with it the familiar paralysis. I had meant to have this together hours ago, but there was chocolate somewhere with a suspicious crust on it and I couldn’t find a reason not to eat it instead. Fine. Better late.
Some suggestions for the weekend, offered without moral accountability: find the 50 cutest things that have ever happened anywhere on the internet and watch them in one sitting, then grab whoever’s nearest and hold them for an unreasonable amount of time. Follow this by singing your national anthem somewhere deeply inappropriate—a waiting room, a church pew, outside a kebab shop at midnight. Loudly. No shame. These two activities are meant to balance each other.
Start a cult. The projections are solid: money, orgies, a death worth a documentary. Overhead is basically zero.
Think back to the worst random game in the world—the one where you’re always on the losing end—then punch whoever’s nearest squarely between the legs. Hard. Consider it a lesson in probability.
Steal groceries from one supermarket and quietly restock them at the competitor two streets over. This is chaos theory in practice. This is art.
At your next orgasm, try to look genuinely cool. Set up a mirror beforehand. Put on something fashionable first—a jacket, something with a collar. You will fail. The attempt is the point.
Launch a YouTube news channel devoted exclusively to information no one needs: air conditioning units approved for use only on Korean offshore oil platforms; a specific bottle of cloudy apple juice that expired in April 2011; cotton swabs where one end has a statistically measurable cotton surplus over the other. Deliver all of it with the gravity of a foreign correspondent.
Slip a small bag of coke into every neighbor’s mailbox. Unsigned, unexplained. You’ve been taking from this community long enough. Give something back.
Buy a factory-sealed Nokia 3210. This is the most correct use of money available to you this weekend. Nothing else comes close.
And Michelle Jenneke—the Australian hurdler who warmed up for a 2012 race with a shimmy that turned her briefly into everyone’s screen saver—I’d lick her. The optimistic entry. Every list needs one.