HOW TO PROCRASTINATE

In response to the overhwhelming demand from fanatical Power Love readers, we are here to present yet another How To Live Life piece. This will also satisfy the community service requirement bestowed upon us by "the courts" as a result of our latest "indiscretion."

I. First. In order to procrastinate properly, you need to have something to procrastinate from and something to procrastinate to. For example, let's just say you have a stack of bills that reach to your ceiling, that's balancing so precariously one on top of another that you have already taken steps to protect yourself from the inevitable collapse (namely, wearing a CPSC standard bicycle helmet and oven mits). In this example, the something you are procrastinating from, the procrastinatee, is the pile of bills (which hate you, incidentally, and, if given the chance, would suck your blood until you died).

II. Two. Now you need something to procrastinate to, the procrastinator. This is where you get to use all that creative energy you keep telling everyone you have. We offer a few suggestions, as follows:

A. Clouds. If it's cloudy outside, figure out where one cloud ends and where the next one begins, then count them. Then try to see what shapes they make. Then smoke 3 joints. Now what shapes do they make?

B. Rollers. What are rollers?

1. One. Those weird, tiny, cylinder-shaped barrels that you can roll into your hair. Known in some segments of Amurca as anti-sleeping devices, they are mostly used as a mode of torture in upscale death camps, euphemistically called "hair salons." So. You could pretend like you're Barbie and play with your hair.

2. HOWEVER, since you're all really reading Power Love for the in depth reporting on the amazingly popular sport of cycling, I think we all know what we really know when we talk about rollers BUT for you noncyclists out there, all you need to know about the odd world of rollers in cycling is that there is actually a machine out in the world that you can spend money on, that you can set up by laying it across the threshold of a doorframe so that once you set your bike on said machine you can hold on to said doorframe, at which point, you are supposed to ride your bike over rolling pins as though this isn't the weirdest thing in the universe, and you will probably be able to do this for about 2 seconds before your bike slips out from under you, driving you into the doorframe and more than likely cracking your nose and/or teeth in multiple places.

The CPSC standard bicycle helmet and oven mits come in handy in an instance such as this. So. When choosing your procrastinator, you may want to go with the bicycle rollers as you will be using your helmet/oven mits combo for two purposes (bill avoidance, cracked body parts avoidance) and this, obviously, is the most efficient manner of use.

III. Ninethly. Now that you have a procrastinatee and a procrastinator, you should contact the dictionary people and tell them to add these words to the dictionary. After that, you should come up with an excuse, which is a word we don't use here at Power Love HQ (we prefer, "rationale").

You will need a rationale for the bill people. They will call you. They will call you repeatedly. You should be aware they don't really care that you just cracked your nose and your teeth while using your cycling rollers and they don't care that you were simultaneously using hair rollers and now your hair is all matted with blood and the curl has gone out--"Just like that!" you may want to say, "Now how effective are these rollers, really? Would they stand up to Chicago humidity?" Don't say that. The bill people won't care.

Explain to them that you are wearing a safety-approved helmet and oven mits with cows on them and tell them you are about to go spelunking through the cave that is your bills (of course, now it's a cave; before, it was a tower, but it fell, because you nailed the doorframe so hard, they fell and now you've got yourself a cave, don't you?) and you will get in touch with them as soon as you find your checks. As an added caution, you may want to see if they can call you back within a day, as the cave could very likely collapse on you and then you will need some help. And they will call you. Yes, they will call you.