mayhem

i was all excited about this year's Month of MAYhem Blogging Challenge™, but as i started to think about it, i realize i have spent a great deal of time shaking things up for causes that matter to me, and a couple years of actual protests against actual things has worn me down a little.

it's not that i've lost my sense of humor, but if you want people to take seriously your protest, it helps if you're not that crazy person who does weird things.

so here's a kind of truncated list of things you might do for your Month of MAYhem™:



1) choose a language invented by someone else. for just one day, write all your communications in that language. or just your blog post. the rest of us won't know the difference. it's funnier if you try to communicate with the government in a constructed language, like idiotish, which is their native tongue anyway.

2) write to your senators and congressmen every week. it's just a month. you can do it.

3) bake something nice for the guys on your town's road crew. all right, buy them donuts if you're not handy in the kitchen.

4) go onto public land at night with a flashlight and make a survey of amphibians. report your findings on your blog and to any handy wildlife preservation group. bonus points if you have to explain yourself to the police.

5) find out which mass surveillance techniques your town is using and make your findings public. paranoia about government surveillance is not just for the tinfoil hatters anymore.

6) get a half dozen five dollar bills and go door to door in a strange neighborhood and give them to people for no reason at all. if pressed to declare a reason, tell them to have a nice day.

7) pick a random person from the phone directory. call them to see if they're at home. if they are, order a pizza to be delivered to their house. this is only funny if you pay for the pizza. remember, paid-for pizza  = funny / unpaid-for pizza = harassment.

8) go to a public place and shout STOP LOOKING AT ME! write about your results.

9) along with several of your friends, drive up and down the street your local police station is on AT OR JUST BELOW THE SPEED LIMIT. do this for as many hours as you can spare.

10) you know those magnetic decals people put on their cars? switch 'em around a little. don't steal 'em or even change anybody's displayed political affiliations. just move 'em from one side of the car to a different side.  let those people scratch their heads.

11) you get tracked through your online search history. search for things you're not interested in, just to throw monkey wrenches. today i googled "online explosive sales", "knitting supplies", "tactical weapons", and "penis toothbrush" sadly, this last thing exists.

12) start a religion. develop and practice faith tenets and rituals and see if you can write or adopt something as holy scripture.  practice this thing until it is a "sincerely held religious belief", which will come in handy later on when you want license to do anything and the law doesn't go your way.

13) shave off a tiny sliver from the middle of one of your eyebrows. it will make you look slightly off-balance and most people will not be able to figure out why.

14) have coffee or lunch with someone you only just met.

15) correct people's grammar. all day long. bonus points if you correct the principal of your child's school.

16) stand at a busy intersection with a sign that says: WHERE SHOULD I GO NEXT? keep standing there until someone gives you a suggestion. then go there.