Flip, flop and fly — not necessarily in that order.
Re-wire all your circuits and don’t ground anything.
Re-calibrate your trajectory every half-second like a butterfly en route to nothing in particular.
Unless you believe in market forces, you will die in your sins. Trust in the rational investor and the invisible hand.
Use the small hammer provided to break the glass.
When called upon to participate in a panic attack, be sure to bring the viable issue of your torrid fling with a goat.
Sew panic buttons into all your shirts for easy access.
Alongside the lyric, dramatic and satiric, pre-Socratic philosophers recognized the importance of the panic mode.
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, you must be some kind of goddamned robot.
Panic, like dancing, worship services and outbreaks of bubonic plague, is best experienced in a group setting.
Love may take you out of yourself, but only panic can save you from the tedium of thought.
Don’t shout “fire!” willy-nilly in a crowded theater. Wait for a quiet moment full of dramatic tension.
Remember, it’s not true that the lemmings in that Disney nature film committed mass suicide. They were pushed.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- How to wake up
- How to eat
- How to walk
- How to listen
- How to wait
- How to breathe
- How to find things
- Manual: How to make videopoems, courtesy of Swoon
- How to lose
- How to dance
- How to procreate
- How to play
- How to listen: the movie
- How to mourn
- How to calculate
- How to grow up
- How to spit
- How to burn
- How to mourn, Belgian-style
- How to make a fist
- How to make a face
- How to sacrifice
- How to take notes
- How to talk
- How to dig
- How to sleep
- How to cast a shadow
- How to teem
- How to fit in
- How to sit
- How to panic
- How to exist
- How to drive
- How to question authority
- How to cook
- How to find things (videopoem)
- How to distress furniture
- How to meditate
- How to be a poet
I must find a purveyor of panic buttons. They will feature henceforth in all my cardigans.
The Wikipedia, as usual, has more than you possibly need to know about panic buttons, real and would-be-humorous:
Actually, that’s brilliant. Old keyboard buttons repurposed as clothing fasteners – P, A, N, I and C. Everything I make shall, from now on, require five buttons. Scrabble tiles might do too.
Or, of course, D,O,N,’,T,P,A,N,I,C. But that requires two Ns and therefore two keyboards.
Also, the joke might be lost at that point.