Chuck Palahniuk's Lifehacks

This article is part of the The Great Authors Series series.

The Grail King Anfortas in Eschenbach's Parzival has his testicles destroyed by a poisoned sword. That's one way to do it. Hammers will smash your bad hot dog. Garrotes will cut its throat. Ruin your dick in your dreams. Let it die any way you choose. No more luscious downward dogs ruining your concentration in yoga class. No urge to sniff the hair of the woman beside you in an elevator. Liberate yourself from your animal desires and wake up refreshed.

Fifteen and jocked to the max. Wave of blond and a body on the cusp of manhood. Get the touchdown. Run it in. Tackle some guys and drink beers under the bridge. High five, my man. Do it for coach. Do it for the crowd. Do it for dad. Do it for yell girl with tits like two perfect squid eyes. You're not dying yet. Not yet. Not as long as you're varsity.

Your inbox is killing you. Each new message is another gram of weight sucking you down into the lightless black abyss, faster and faster, to dwell with the slippery slime beasts that make their own light and hunt blind shrimp. Every Power Point. Every birthday party notification. Adding to that ballast until one day you get up too fast from a chair and your heart gives out. Is that what you want? Is that all you want?

The spam folder is full of beautiful lies someone doesn't want you to know. Those lies are a paisley Technicolor paint to cover the walls of your prison with pills and MILFs and Chinese job opportunities and cock hungry teens and windfall after windfall of money. Each offer is a scam, each link wants your password and each attachment is a mystery, where even the worst still opens a new world to you where you are connected to a Bulgarian trade of stolen credit cards. We're all going to die. But not everyone has lived by the spam.