Ten Small Crimes Against the Ordinary
The to-do list I’m building for this weekend ranges from ecologically sound to technically criminal, and I’m not sure the ordering matters.
I want to present a local government official with a thoughtful gift that turns out, upon close inspection, to contain Nazi marching songs, then claim complete ignorance and watch the polite silence stretch. This isn’t purely hypothetical—Heino, a German folk singer famous for wholesome rural ballads, recently gave a regional minister exactly such a record without apparently checking the tracklist. He set the template; I intend to study it.
I want to dance in a club the way the finalists at the 1979 World Disco Dancing Championship danced—full commitment, zero irony. I want to ask my voice assistant to read out whatever is hiding in the most private folder on someone else’s phone. Earlier versions of Siri would apparently do this cheerfully before anyone noticed the privacy hole and sealed it.
I want to tell my father that mowing the lawn is now ecologically irresponsible—the bees need the long grass, and the research backs this—then watch him decide whether to believe me. I want to stand next to the door staff at Berghain, Berlin’s most legendarily selective nightclub, and tell them one bad joke per minute from a vintage joke book, on the understanding that a single laugh earns entry. They won’t laugh.
I want to sleep with someone who looks exactly like my sister. Moving on.
I want to respond to everything another person says with "why?" and continue until physically stopped—which will happen faster than expected. I want to build a snowman and use a dildo instead of a carrot for the nose, then submit the photo to my local paper. If they don’t run it, I did something wrong.
I want to organize a protest outside city hall for causes that are technically defensible but practically deranged: more water for melons, more children on the moon, more appreciation for airline pilots. Proper signs. Maybe a chant.
And I want to delete my Facebook account. It’s the most mundane item on the list and the only one with real lasting consequences—which probably says everything about the state of things right now.