Bucket List, Schmucket List

Many people talk about making bucket lists, things they want to do before they die. Some also refer to it as “living life to its fullest”. The problem is everyone’s list is kind of the same:

1. go skydiving

2. run a marathon

3. climb a mountain

4. kill a drifter with a gardening trowel

Always the same. Booooooring. Let’s try and liven those lists up. Here are some suggestions to make your bucket list original:

1. wrestle a badger for a piece of string cheese

2. replace your finger nails with thin slivers of Formica

3. eat only watermelon for a month

4. ride cross country with a long-haul trucker named Spider

5. escape with your life from the cab of an 18-wheeler driven by a man named Spider

6. give testimony against Spider in open court

7. weave baskets from your nose hair

8. win a Pulitzer Prize then denounce your life’s work as derivative and obfuscatory

9. fly first class, sitting in your seat naked and clipping your toenails

10. go into witness protection once Spider is released from his supermax prison

11. eat a T-bone steak covered in potato chips, rutabaga and molasses

12. shove 27 nickels in your ears

13. take a photo of your thumb every day for a year and then exhibit the pictures at a local art gallery

14. paint your entire house red, then have a dinner party and greet your guests with the phrase “Welcome to hell.”

15. kill Spider with a Cuisinart blade when he finds you after being released from prison

These are just a few of the things you can do to make completing your bucket list worthy of a story on a TV news show or the subject of one of those annoying internet lists that make you click “next” a thousand times to find out what that one actor from that TV show you used to watch looks like now only to find out he isn’t part of the list anyway and that fucking website tricked you into wasting 26 minutes of your life.

Now get out there and have fun!

A Web of Ridiculousness

I’m sharing my porch with a spider. He’s one of those that spin a web at night and when the sun comes up he’s gone.

I don’t like spiders. I admit they make me scream like a man with his junk caught in a bear trap that’s in a shark’s jaw being sat on by the 600 pound ghost of Haystacks Calhoun.

This spider is spinning his web off my porch roof so it’s up high enough that I can walk by and not get caught in it. The other day though I noticed the web was getting bigger. A few strands of silk were getting close to head height for me so we had to have a talk.

Me: I notice the web is expanding. We talked about this size issue before.

Spider: Sorry but me and the missus just had another brood of kids. I need to catch more food.

Me: How many kids do you have?

Spider: 670 at last count.

Me: They don’t live nearby do they?

Spider: God no! I’d never get any peace if the old lady and the kids were living with me. No, I have them set up across the street in your neighbor’s drainage spout. The rent’s a little high but we need the space.

Me: You pay rent?

Spider: Oh yeah. All the spouting in the area is controlled by the centipede family. Man those things creep me out.

Me: Yeah . . . me too. Anyway, remember our deal. The web stays high enough that I don’t run into any of it and end up dancing around the yard like a loon trying to get it off of me.

Spider: Right, right. I’m trying to only widen it but I had to spin a support beam down farther. There’s still clearance.

Me: It’s close though.

Spider: I’ll watch it. By the way, my wife really likes the way your living room is decorated.

Me: How . . . how would she know . . . ?

Spider: The window! She looked through the window!

Me: Is she in my living room right now?

Spider: No, no!

Me: Ahhhh!

Spider: Margaret! Run!

Oh yeah, that web is coming down soon.