By now, everyone is familiar with the concept of a "bucket list." Following the 2007 movie wherein Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman decide to finish off their lives satisfied, the concept has been established as where you cross off items on a list of all the things you ever wanted to do before you shuffle off this mortal coil. However, a lot of the suggestions people have for what you absolutely must experience tend to be bland or trite. Go see Paris, go pan for gold, go visit Mount Kilimanjaro. Stuff like that. Boring!
I’ve got some ideas for final adventures which will really put some Everclear* in your junior prom punch bowl.
Not ranked in any particular order, but if you can do even one of these, you’ll exit this life as a satisfied person.
Skydiving makes it onto a lot of people’s bucket lists, but how many people can say they dropped a fat log while doing so? I’m sure some people have crapped their drawers in fear, but that’s lame. Wear assless chaps (technically, all chaps are assless, but so the phrase goes) and leap from that plane, preferably after having consumed a large quantity of burritos, for maximum impact...once you’re in the freefall, bombs away! I would advise you not to do this in one of the situations where the instructor is strapped to you, as they may not appreciate you unloading your cargo on them.
Before anyone says this sounds like animal cruelty, those things can tote around a massive amount of weight, and they themselves can weigh up to 500 lbs! Assuming you’re not fresh off a filming of My 600 Pound Life or something, the tortoise wouldn’t even notice your weight. The catch is that to do this properly, you gotta go to the Galépagos Islands and do it. Yeah, sure, they have the tortoises at petting zoos and such, but come on. You really wanna go to Aunt Nancy’s Tortoise Farm and ride one next to a bunch of kids, then smell like hay for a week? No. Travel and adventure. I would recommend dressing up like a cowboy and also bringing a tiny cowboy hat for the tortoise as well, so it can feel like a cowboy, too. The singing of cowboy songs while riding very slowly into the sunset on top of your new friend is optional but encouraged.
This one also involves travel and adventure. See, you can go to Cambodia and pay them a modest fee to use old, Soviet-era surplus rocket launchers (RPGs or rocket-propelled grenades, technically) to destroy beat-up old cars and the like. You’ll definitely need a very particular travel phrasebook to figure out how to say, "Where are the rocket launchers?" without accidentally getting involved in the international arms trade. It also doesn’t hurt that Cambodia is quite easy on the pocketbook, though the flight there may be pricy. Travel guides I have read say you could indeed live there comfortably for under $1,000 a month, which leaves money in your rocket launcher budget.
Apart from very high-ranking elected officials with security protection, most politicians can be found just walking around their offices in capitol buildings or other places where they work. If you want to go easy mode, go to Washington DC when Congress is in session, take in the sights, don’t get mugged, and shine up your ass-kicking boots. Then go and literally boot rumps. You may do a stint in jail for this, just FYI, as assault—even a kick in the butt—is still illegal. However, that would be time well served just for the story, and since you’re on your way out of life, it’s one for the kids.
This one has a low barrier to entry, as you can simply do something nobody else would ever do and call the Guinness people to come record it. "Most live crabs kept in a kiddie pool," "longest time spent playing the kazoo in public without getting beat up," or "largest ball of used condoms." Something like that. They’ll do it, and you’ll literally be in the record books. Don’t...don’t try to make the world’s largest pancake, though. I tried to do that once until I found out how depressingly serious other people are about it.
Big companies, well, their employees seldom know what the top dogs actually look like, especially if they’ve got many locations. Do you know what the CEO of Burger King looks like? No, likely you don’t, so it may as well be you. Dress up in a nice corporate style and phone the back office of your local big-box store, saying the CEO, or some adjutant at least, is in town for an impromptu visit. They’ll likely at least cater lunch, so you can cash in on that one. Then, look at the managers and say something in corp speak to the effect of "Brandon, the numbers this location is making simply aren’t meeting with our quarterly projections. It’s with much regret that I must inform you that you are being terminated, effective immediately." Then watch Brandon’s face as he trundles out of the office, and you scoot out the back and drive away in your beat-up Corolla before he realizes he’s actually not fired and that you are an impostor.
Now, with no exaggeration, this would be extremely difficult. Giant squid are one of the most elusive creatures in the briny deep and are only rarely seen except when they wash ashore dead. Punching a dead one in the eye does not count, by the way.
I know I touched on animal cruelty earlier with the tortoises, but fuck giant squid; they deserve to be punched. Tentacled assholes. Now, to actually find one, you would have to search the depths of the ocean, a grand adventure in itself, in order to see a live one trucking along doing...squid shit. Once you do, though, steel up your mitts and get ready. Sock it right in one of its huge, fat peepers. This may cause your death, but it would be a feat of legend, nevertheless. Give that tentacly bastard the what-for!
Yes, this is another one which could get you arrested and is also precipitated on there actually being shopping malls, which are dwindling in numbers due to the prevalence and convenience of online everything. That said, you can fit a golf cart in those doors, easy as pie. Tool through JCPenney at a solid 20 miles per hour with all your friends, slappin’ slacks off racks and mocking security. Bonus points if the golf cart is stolen from some rich-people golf course, and extra bonus points if the mall security also have golf carts, and you get into a golf cart chase through the food court, wherein you make an agreement to pause the chase for a moment so everyone can get an Orange Julius.
It’s fairly easy to change your name. You just go to the courthouse and fill out a form, then have a brief hearing before a judge, wherein you explain why you’re doing so. They don’t care that much to begin with, but if you say you’re gonna die and always wanted your name to be Kevin Kickass, Pamela Punchbeef, Gerald Groinhammer, or Dorothy Dickslapper, they’ll let you. After all, basketball star Ron Artest changed his name to "Metta World Peace," and they let him do that, despite it being the dumbest thing in the world. The only problem is that you have to change the names on all your bank accounts, social security card, and Subway Sub Club card and shit, but it might be worth it for the fun you would have when you show your ID or introduce yourself to strangers. "Nice to meet you; I’m Steve Smith." "I’m Alfred Assfurnace; it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
Put those on the list because if you’re gonna go out, you may as well go out doing something absolutely absurd.
Live a long time, and be happy.
-Wombstretcha
* The grain liquor, not the band. Dear god, not the band.
Wombstretcha the Magnificent is a rocket launcher enthusiast, person with a ridiculous name, squid puncher, writer, and retired rapper from Portland, OR. He can be found at Wombstretcha.com, on Twitter as @Wombstretcha503 and on Facebook (boo!) and MeWe (yay!) as "Wombstretcha The Magniflcent."
