Frequently mother forgets to unlock my room in the morning or even for days at a stretch and I must find interesting ways to whittle away at the stick of time. I have abbreviated these ways to “D.O.R.K.,” which coincidentally was a word I heard quite a bit in my thirties and specifically directed at me. Even more coincidentally and strangely enough, it seems to be an epithet.

1) Drink

Whether your choice of beverage is Wild Irish Rose, orange juice fermented behind the toilet, or your own urine, you can pass the hours trying to keep the walls from spinning, counting pi backwards, or trying to remember if Baron Rothschild is your fourth or fifth second-cousin removed and what color are her toenails.

Drinking is the overwhelming choice of all humans when faced with nothing to do because we can’t remember what boring thing just happened. Not that waking up at 4 a.m. covered in glitter and fake tanning cream in the back of a Datsun is all that much fun, but it gets everyone to Monday.

2) Ogle

After mother has turned on the power for the day, I spend my time searching the Internet for photos of women in hats from the 1980’s or investigate rumors in Weather Report forums on whether Weather Report is getting back together or not.

If for some reason you have no power, simply stare at the blank screen of your computer or TV. Imagining the lost photos of Paulina Poritzkova that you might find is inevitably more enjoyable than actually finding them, as the human mind has no low-resolution formats. You can also pretend to order tickets for the upcoming tour of Weather Report, and that your imaginary group of friends want to go with you for real and not as paid “escorts.” Imagine you are posting photos of your three-week eco-tour in Borneo to (Insert Social Media) and that your imaginary (Insert Social Media) friends will be filled with imaginary (Insert Social Media) jealousy.

3) Recite

When boredom begins to fray at the tatters of what doctors might call my soul and the walls begin to close in, I create my own entertainment, either by re-enacting action scenes from The Master (with myself as Timothy Van Patten and a stick as Lee Van Cleef) or reciting Maggie the Cat’s lines from “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof”.

If, unlike me, you went to a state college, then simply decant passages from The Tempest or Donne or a chapter of Kant.

4) Kick

Violence is never an option unless it’s hilarious, says mother, but at this stage of your boredom you may simply be out of ideas and must resort to striking the walls with your head. From personal experience, I strongly advise that you use a body part that is easily replaced such as a foot or kidney. On the whole, breaking things is like a one-night stand in Fresno with a rather overweight lady: lots of fun but later you wonder why you have so many bruises, and in such strange patterns.

There you go! D.O.R.K., my tincture for the road rash of your boredom. Which, seeing as you’ve made it this far down the page, is kicking in about now.