Boredom.
Time stretches between you and infinity—a seemingly endless loop of reruns, bottles of cheap wine and not putting on pants unless absolutely necessary. Maybe, you’re even still "lucky" enough to be working. They call you “essential,” but you’re just boxing up giant black dildos at a factory in a bleak, nearlyabandoned industrial zone. Maybe you’ve been laid off, now spending your days overfeeding the goldfish (and, seeing how much solitary confinement it takes before your mind snaps like a twig in the jaws of the void). At first, you posted cute lil’ “quarantine crazy” videos of putting googly eyes on your Roomba, but now it’s—as they say—getting real.
How do you fill the endless, lonely hours? Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s considered going back to school—and, in my hunt for interesting and new ways to broaden my mind, these particular courses and schools popped out to me as most engaging. While some of them may no longer be available, many still are, and if you’re up for learning how to properly apply cake makeup (or, a myriad of other skills that will upset your friends and family), one of these may be for you:
Power & Responsibility: Doing Philosophy With Superheroes
This course panders to those who simply can’t get enough of the action-packed, fun-filled world of spandex tights, patriotic capes, laser beam eyes and…philosophy, I guess? Offered via SmithsonianX and HarvardX, you learn some fundamentals of philosophy, lensed through the quandaries of the modern superhero. I’m not sure how you could make defeating inter-dimensional space monsters boring, but it seems like these guys are sure as hell gonna try.
Based in Faber, VA, this one-of-a-kind paragon of scholastic fulfillment offers courses on how to have an out-of-body experience, as well as how to use hypnosis to experience past lives, perform psychokinesis, tune your chakras and bilk gullible suckers out of thousands of dollars, by using words like “psychokinesis,” presumably.
Available through Udemy, this course is pretty self-explanatory. I’m not sure that I’d get much out of learning to make perverse balloon animal hybrids, myself, but for new recruits to the site, the course runs a mere $12.99, and as I’ve discovered through my extensive research, is giftable. I guess the reason I don’t have very many friends is probably because all of my remaining ones just received vouchers to learn the fine art of nose-beeping. Sorry about that, Hannah, but you should have learned to expect this sort of thing from me by now.
Offering a series of home-based courses, the IGHS (which sounds like coughing up a hairball if you try to pronounce it phonetically) offers ghost researching “certifications”- I’m guessing a hasty thumbs up drawn on a diner napkin. You can sign up for exciting classes, such as ghost photography, taking successful EVPs, becoming a “ghost box specialist” (whatever that is), and most perplexingly, a so-called master course on Reiki. Reiki seemed out of place for a website whose main page is a goofy illustration of a haunted house, complete with Casper-like sheet ghost and tombstones, until I read more about Reiki, and then realized it was sort of perfect.
While these classes don’t offer any sort of questionable certifications or continuing education credits (unlike many of the other “schools” on this list), I felt it was still worth mentioning Scott and Melanie, the couple that claims to be able to teach you to have an 18-hour orgasm…via hugging. Listen, if we’re going to be sequestered away from one another indefinitely, let’s you and me put on our hazmat suits and just have a nice long squeeze, okay? The chance that this is absolute and utter bullshit is 110%, but like every other lonely 40-year-old lady out there, I can’t help but hope—and, I just spent my last $80 on classes. It’s possible that I won’t be able to pay my mortgage, but my optimism that maybe—just maybe—is how these fine folks will pay theirs. Turns out that $80 just taught me to be a better con artist. Does anyone want to take a course on tantric hugging? Only $80 a pop.
Here’s one I can actually get on board with. Learn how to mount everything, from wee beasties to the more hefty beastie. This school offers virtual classes, every weekend, on impressively mounting fish, fowl and a host of miscellaneous wildlife. Procuring what they call “study materials” (carcasses) is up to the student—and, you have to send photos of your completed works to earn your certification. So, if you’ve ever wondered what to do with all those bodies you’ve got jammed into the crawlspace in your basement, wonder no more.
Being around people is just too dangerous in these troubled times, but we all need someone to whom we can pour our hearts out. Welcome this class into your life and you’ll be able to do just that—or, possibly, Udemy’s just gotten another $12.99 from you (and, you’ve merely learned to steer clear of their website). Either way, you will know in your heart of hearts that your dog loves the smell of your farts more than life itself and your cat would eat your dead body immediately, should you perish and no one were there to clean up the mess.
So, why not better yourself during this time of uncertain peril? On the one hand, you could widen your intellectual horizons and open up unique, new career possibilities, or if you DO catch the ‘Rona and die, at least you won’t have to pay back all the dough you spent on bizarre classes and seminars.
Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle is a Tantric hug master, human taxidermist, ghost hunter, philosopher, animal psychic, professional circus clown and out-of-body space traveler. She can be found on MeWe and Facebook by name and Instagram as @EsmeraldaSilentCitadel.
