3) Read a book. And when you're done with it, donate it to your local public school. Start with "The Origin of Species" and move on through some other tomes sure to expand the minds -- if not the church-sanctioned morality -- of the young. Yeah yeah, make sure to include the standard baddies: Margaret Sanger's "Family Limitations," "Huck Finn" and "Go Ask Alice." But look to some of the lesser knowns for more nuanced inspiration: Pick up Maurice Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen," where Mickey shows his willy, and Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," which covers the poet's sorrow over seeing his nation divided and gay sex! Reread the whole Judy Blume canon (masturbation, sex, periods, erections, birth control, religious questioning, yadda yadda yadda) and then box it up and ship it off to a sixth grade class. You can scare yourself silly all over again by reading Margaret Atwood's "A Handmaid's Tale" and then make a gift of it to the local junior high. If you still need inspiration, take a gander at one of the banned books lists online. I don't know what "Daddy's Roommate" by Michael Willhoite is, but it sounds like something my alma mater in Abington, Pa., could use a few more copies of.

But I don't mean to suggest that you have to be all pious or crunchy. Go with your gut, pick out what feels good, work your way deep into a book -- any book -- and forget the rest of world. Chances are, if you're enjoying it, it's probably pissing someone off. Even Bridget Jones has anal sex. And never forget to laugh: I recommend Woody Allen's "Without Feathers." I have no idea if it's ever been banned, but I can't be the only person whose 10th grade universe expanded -- hilariously -- when she picked it up for the first time. And come on: The man married his life partner's Asian daughter and spends time playing the saxophone in Paris! Yay Woody Allen!

4) Go to the movies. The cinema has taken our minds off of both World Wars, the Depression, Vietnam and Watergate. But please, even though it's really funny and great, don't go see "The Incredibles"! Or Shark Tale. Or anything else that is going to beam a dollar-studded message to the studios that the way to make a buck is to continue releasing good clean family fun.

Slap down money for exorbitantly priced tickets to the transgressive fare currently getting beaten to a pulp at cineplexes: John Waters' "A Dirty Shame" (tag line: "threatening the very limits of common decency") or the totally offensive "Team America," or that Nicole Kidman flick where she takes a bath with a 10-year-old. Celebrate deviance, grotesqueries, cannibalism -- if you can find it in the multiplex.

And you probably can't. But you could rent "Sweeney Todd," or 2000's "Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale." I bet you think you can make yourself feel like you're doing something by renting or buying the "Fahrenheit 9/11" DVD. Please. It may lead you down the path of righteousness, but trust me, it's only going to make you cry more, remembering how you thought it was going to make a difference. And who needs more goddamn crying? Treat yourself right -- and remind yourself that the holidays are right around the corner -- by renting last year's "Bad Santa" with Billy Bob Thornton. When a kid asks Thornton's department store Santa, "Do you and Mrs. Santa have kids?" he replies, "No, thank the fuck Christ." And while nailing someone in the dressing rooms, Santa screams this sweet nothing: "Oh yeah, baby, you won't be able to shit right for a week!" Happy holidays!

5. Give in to the zeitgeist and dumb down. Stop with the Atlantic and NPR and Air America already. They'll still be there when you get back. Just take a couple of days and download images of naked B-list celebrities. We'll help you cheat a little with this video of Tara Reid's dress falling down. You're on your own from there.

6. Start writing your novel, or song, or splattering your canvases with paint. As everyone I know in the entertainment industry keeps telling each other, reassuringly, desperately, sadly: "Bad politics makes good art. Bad politics makes good art. Bad politics makes good art." Whatever. Just don't expect to get any money or anything in return. By next year, NEA reins should be safely in the hands of some of the more "creative" Halliburton execs.

7. Take a walk. Go hiking. Take some pictures of what's left of America's natural landscape. Take several. No one needs to explain why this is important.

8. Forget your big plans to boycott red states: We don't need to become condescending jerks so consumed by our own sense of what's right that we leave the economies of hardworking, thinking people in the middle of the country hanging in the breeze.

All we need to do is boycott Wal-Mart.

9. Get loaded. Quit drinking? Start again. Quit smoking? Congratu-fucking-lations. Light up. It's going to be a long, strange, ugly four years. Nicotine helps.

10. We don't know how to say this, but: Exercise your choice now, girls, while the exercising's good.

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