While you commune with the Televisionary Oracle

Your lucky number is 3.14159265

Your secret name is Squeeze

The colors of your soul are diamond-hatched and marbled blue

Your special emotion is skeptical faith

The garage sale item you most resemble is an old but beautiful and sonorous accordion with a broken key

Your magic smell is candy skulls being crushed on graves by dancing feet

Your holiest pain comes from your ability to sense other people's cracked notions about you

Your sacred fungus is yeast

Your special time of day is the moment just before the mist evaporates

The shape of your life is oval with soft dark sparks

Your lucky phobia is epienopopontonphobia, or fear of crossing the wine-dark sea

Your power spot is here and there

The flavor which identifies you most is grapefruit smeared with honey

The following exercise is designed to upgrade and refine your screaming skills. It is not meant to be a decadent indulgence, but a means to an end -- a technique for flushing away any resentments, terrors, and rages that might be threatening your ability to feel horny for spiders, museums, lightning, crayons, mountains -- and even the Internet itself!

To begin, curl yourself up into a fetal position, make your breathing shallow, and tense all the muscles in your body as tight as they'll go. Include even your obscure, little-used muscles, as well as those you might not even be aware you have. The hundreds of muscles in the face are especially important.

Tense every muscle in your body for a count of ten.

Hold.

Hold.

Keep holding. Keep holding.

And release.

Now even as you momentarily relax this full-bore constriction, try to keep a massive amount of residual agitation active in the background. Give the command to your subconscious mind to remain on high alert, as if you were in the midst of terrifying danger. Search your memory for distress that might inspire you to conjure up a flow of tears.

For instance, you can visualize a person who hates you. Picture all the terrible flaws he or she attributes to you.

Summon the memory of the worst betrayal in your life, the most traumatic violation, and rehash the anguish you felt.

Envision the frightening scenario you're most likely to dredge up when you're feeling weak, the alarm that pops into your mind most naturally. But exaggerate it with graphic details far beyond the vividness you usually endow it with.

Now, while holding these scenes in the forefront of your awareness, work yourself up into the most galling discomfort you're capable of.

Scrunch up every muscle in your body, every nerve -- even your blood.

Turn yourself into a taught bundle of astringent dread.

Hold for a count of a hundred.

Hold.

Keep holding.

Keep holding.

Now from the depths of your torment, take a deep breath. As you exhale, allow yourself to unleash a low, suppurating whine. Just before you run out of breath, shape the whine into the following magical spell: "'Stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards."

Take another breath and again emit a pitiful, desperate moan that climaxes with the incantation "'Stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards."

Draw yet another breath, and spurt another "'Stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards," infusing it this time with bitterness and rancor.

Begin to uncoil yourself from the fetal position, all the while spilling "'Stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards" from the abyss within you.

Now stand up.

Straight and tall.

Bend and stretch and reach for the sky.

Stick out your tongue and cross your eyes and twist your face into the ugliest expression you can summon.

Wave your arms and leap off the ground and wiggle your butt ferociously.

Take five fast breaths and unfurl a yowling "'Stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards" in protest against all of the wounds life has forced you to endure. Feel nothing but your own juicy, red, oozing, unscratchable pain.

Shake your entire body uncontrollably while slobbering and mussing your hair. Lurch, gnash, writhe, and contort yourself with all the creativity you can muster.

Shriek "'Stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards." Tickle yourself aggressively in the armpits. Raise up the middle fingers of both hands and give yourself a double- barreled "Fuck you!" Kick your own ass.

Wail "'Stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards."

Spin around in erratic circles as you thumb your nose at the world. Hurl imaginary rocks in the direction of heaven. Punch the air crazily.

Faster.

Harder.

Wilder.

And now unleash the caterwaul of a hurricane lashing an erupting volcano.

Ululate the cacophony of an earthquake in a forest fire.

And then scream "'Stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards" until you have emptied yourself of every last hemorrhaging shred of angst.

Everyone in the world

secretly died of disinfotainment

while watching a holocaust

of boring love

on TV

during a nuclear war

back in 1999,

and therefore

WE ARE ALL LIVING IN PARADISE

AT THIS VERY MOMENT!