It’s 10:37pm on a Sunday night.  I’m looking at a clean cut young woman, all of 20.  She’s got a cute short boy hair cut, like a pixie, and is kneeling beside  a young man in his early 20′s, Asian, very fey, and well put together, in a matching cream scarf and rain coat.  What is striking about them?

They are digging in the trash.

They haven’t lost a term paper.  There isn’t a love letter that someone accidentally threw out.  When I walked by, what struck me about her, is that she was eating cupcakes out of the garbage.  This isn’t ironic or kitsch.  Also they aren’t (seemingly) crazy.  No, what I witnessed is Freeganism in action. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: So when we left off you mentioned something about writing and running and Murakami.  Sounds boring.

What?  Oh, you’re being sarcastic.

Q: Am I?

Cute.  Well, when I turned 30, I had a pretty great idea where I would pretend to be an adult and see what that was all about.

Q: What do you mean “pretend?”

Up until this point I was pretty minimalist about adulthood.  I literally was only doing the bare minimum of what was expected of me.  Like, I had a bed, but it was on the floor, because why would I have a bed frame?¹  So around the time I turned 30 I made a list of things that I was putting off until I became an adult or things that I knew would be helpful but I was afraid of committing to.  On that list were the following things:

-write everyday for several hours

-run a marathon

-get an office

Q: Why those things in particular?

Well, I had recently heard that Malcolm Gladwell idea that “genius” is an accumulation of 10,000 hours of working at something.  I don’t know if that’s true.  Or even if he wrote it.  It was just one of those statements that gets thrown around at dinner parties after people hear it on NPR.   Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so after I followed my first group of people, and sat down doing free writes on the set up, I wrote up a draft.  It was filled with Action!  And Suspense!  And Crazy Plot Twists!

Also, it was terrible. Read the rest of this entry »

How do you write a movie?  I’ve written a few¹, and all I can safely say is that each one required a significantly different approach.  Actually, I could say that for most of the stories that I’ve worked on.  There are tons of books on writing movies, some that are very interesting, but I have a guttural reaction against treating writing like a formula.  Plus there is something really exciting about making up the rules for the project at hand.  But to show what a complex and didactic person I am, here is the formula I used to write this movie:

Step 1: Research

One of my favorite writers, Jonathan Ames, has this short story that eventually became the TV show Bored to Death, where the Mr. Ames as himself puts an ad out on craigslist to become a private detective because he’s, well, bored.  He talks about how early in his career he would put himself in awkward situations  as a way of coming up with new ideas.

Now, that’s a great idea, and for me a really inspiring one.  The thing that really struck me in this short story was how you could become a character.  Sort of like what attracts me to Sophie Calles art.  By using research and writing as the hook, you can live inside the work as you make it.

So like Sophie Calle, my first step was to follow people.  Read the rest of this entry »

Before we get started on pills, let’s make a checklist of things to consider:

Price: is your chosen method gonna cost you an arm and a leg?  Because if so, you’re getting ripped off.  Consider this as an idea: the best things in life are free.  Does this apply to your method?

Ease of use: Let’s face it, if it’s too difficult, your probably gonna give up like you did with that ikea shoe nook.  Suicide shouldn’t take all day, nor should it give you a headache.  What’s the point of choosing the easy way out if it’s a pain in the butt?

Pain factor: Is it gonna hurt?  A lot?  For a long time?  This sounds a lot like life.  If your alternative to life is painful, and does’t involve awesome things like cookies and naps, why bother?

Cleanup: This is only for the hyper considerate, but vanity can also play a part.  If you shit yourself, will it have the desired effect of showing that certain someone how much they screwed up by letting you go?  If there is vomit everywhere, will it detract from how much people will miss you?  Yes.  It will. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so another obvious method of killing yourself is the Jumping Off of Tall Things track. One thing we failed to mention in regards to guns is the cleanup factor. Not to be a jerk, but isn’t it just a teensy bit inconsiderate to leave your loved ones one final annoying chore to take care of? If you’ve ever seen Pulp Fiction, apparently cleaning brain and bits of skull is sort of a cluster fuck. But maybe you have no loved ones, hence the suicide idea to begin with. Even still, do you really want to be remembered as the person that Chuck from sanitation was cursing at when he fired up the utility hose?

No, of course you don’t, which is why people have been jumping off of tall things for centuries.

Where to jump?

The benefit of jumping off of a tall thing is that you can do it anywhere and at no cost.  And if you are have roommates, it won’t leave a terrible mess that would force the landlord to keep their security deposit.  That being said, picking the place to do it is important. Read the rest of this entry »

© image courtesy of Gasworth!

So a fair amount of information exists on reasons both pro and con for suicide. Let’s presume you’ve already read the The Myth of Sisyphus, and you are on board with killing yourself. Sometimes when I read existential literature, I want to kill myself too, so I can see the rationale.

But now here comes the tough part. How to kill yourself?  There are practically millions of ways to do it, and any entrepreneurial person can figure one out, even on a budget.  That being said, there are a lot of practicalities to consider.

Number One: Guns!

This is sort of a no brainer, as the primary use for guns is killing people.  You can also use a gun as a hammer if you are in a pinch but I don’t recommend it.  The problem with guns is that, first of all, they are expensive.  Granted, you probably won’t have use for that money when you are dead (I feel like there is a moral in here somewhere) but what if you don’t have that money to begin with?  Maybe that’s why you want to kill yourself, because you are poor: totally understandable.  Or what if, you are too young to purchase a gun.  Then where does that leave you?  Alive.  And that is unhelpful for your purposes, possibly poor, young friend.

But let’s just say you can afford to purchase a gun.  Read the rest of this entry »