I guess everyone should have a bucket list.

I sat down today to write about being a child and having to endure my father being in his underwear at the most inappropriate times. While this is something everybody should know about, before I began I was reminded of a conversation I had with my very patient wife about hoping to see Sir Paul McCartney in concert one day. The conversation led me to think about a bucket list. I told her the top three things I would like to do before my system crashes and I face the big blue screen. So here goes my list. After reading this, you will understand why I praise my wife as being very patient.

1). See Paul McCartney in concert.

2). Hold a baby Sasquatch.

3). Fart rainbows.

4). Have my book, Rise of the Penguins, made into a movie.

5). Wrestle an Aardvark.

6). Throw out the first pitch at an Oakland Athletics baseball game.

7). Become Emperor of the world.

8). Learn how to perform a Hadouken!

9). Become magnetized.

10). Crossbreed a Narwhal with a Horse.

11). Joust while riding a Narhorse.

12). Travel to Antarctica.

13). Use the Force.

14). Convince people that Spic and Span is a cleaning product and not a racist remark.

15). Catch the gingerbread man and devour him.

16). Get drunk then travel to Paraguay; punch a Paraguayan in the throat; escape Paraguay and angry Paraguayan using a jet-pack.

17). Start an annual event in my home town called, “The Running of the Komodo Dragons.”

18). Don’t be a macho man. But I wanna be tough and I’d better do what I can.

19). Beat it.

20). Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

21). Realize that sweet and sour sauce is a lie perpetuated by the Chinese government for the purposes of extending its colonial expansion of the United States via Panda Express.

22). Understand the lyrics to any Def Leppard song.

23). Be a Pepper.

24). Apparate.

25). Eat a Velociraptor.

26). Do something like a mo-fo!

27). Change the way the world sees mathematics. a+b can’t = c because they are letters, not numbers. The best you can hope for when combining letters is to spell a word.

28). Never give a damn about Snooki.

29). Don’t let the world know that I’ve already figured out the Theory of Everything. It’s actually a combination of String Theory and [EDITED].

30). Fight a cold using a bazooka. We’ll see who wins then, tiny virus.

31). Go out in a blaze of glory during a gunfight between me, Angel Eyes and Tuco while Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy of Gold plays in the background. *(if you don’t understand this, you should really watch more movies).

32). Who am I kidding? I write fiction. I want immortality!

So there you have it—the first thirty-two things on my ‘before I fulfill my destiny as transient energy’ list. I could have added time-travel and kill my Grandfather and see how that plays out, but I liked my Grandpa. We’ll talk about my dad’s underwear another day…I promise.