Ten Little Missions

We’re all going to die. Good. With that baseline established, it’s the weekend, and it wants something from you.

Mission one: prepare for gamescom in Cologne by running back-to-back Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and Counter-Strike sessions, then queue eight to twelve hours on site for the Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer demo and feel great about your life choices. Mission two: write to HBO—not MTV, not FOX, definitely not any German broadcaster—demanding a prestige drama series about bloggers. Mission three: find a small child, inform them with full gravity that the world ends in four months, place a cookie in their hand, and hop away laughing. Mission four: take some drugs and paint self-portraits, the way Brian Lewis Saunders did—what comes out when perception warps tends to be more honest than what comes out when it doesn’t. Mission five: send photographs of sucked raisins to someone who will not know what to do with this.

Mission six: buy a used submarine and relocate permanently to the bottom of something. Mission seven: sign other people’s books, magazines, and transit tickets without asking first, then say "don’t mention it, really." Mission eight: win an eating competition—potato salad is the recommended discipline. Mission nine: call the girl you had a crush on in third grade and ask whether she wants to come over and help with your math homework. Mission ten: give some actual thought, during masturbation, to who exactly it is you’re thinking about. Sit with whatever answer comes up.