When Barack Obama last election season visited one of those scary-ass mega-churches, demonstrating a catholicity—you should excuse the expression—that explains why he is President and I am not (plus he's smarter and better-looking than me, and far less likely, when presented with a baby for osculation, to respond, "I am not kissing your monkey, madam") (or to refer to Rush Limbaugh as “that pill-poppin' lardass jackoff”), I was intrigued that the pastor of said S-AM-C had written a bestselling Christian self-help book, until I looked it up on Amazon and discovered that the title was The Purpose-Driven Life (I added the hyphen; you’re welcome, crazy-religious guy) and not, as I had thought and hoped, The Porpoise-Driven Life. (I never really got over the seminal televisual entertainment of my youth, Flipper. I still want to keep a dolphin in my bathtub.) (Note to PETA people, whom I probably already pissed off with that piece on chinchillas: I don’t keep a dolphin in my bathtub.) (He’s in the inflat-a-pool in my back yard.)

Apparently, the point of this book (beside “Yay! God. Boo! Satan,” which, okay, you’re a nutso fundie, fair enough) (and also? “Bite me, Stephen Covey.” Because crazy Mormons just aren’t crazy enough for crazy Christians) is that Gawd has a plan for everyone’s life and it’s your job to find that God-given purpose. (Which reminds me a little of the rules of George Carlin’s airport game Spy: “You know there’s a spy in the airport; your job…is to find him.”) (And also? I keep wanting to type “porpoise.”) Were I the Almighty, I suspect I would—speaking strictly for Myself, the Deity—get a little pissed off at people constantly asking me for their purpose. “Purpose? You want a purpose? Fine. Your purpose is...breeding snails.” “Yay! I got a purpose! Wait... Snails?”

                Personally, I find this whole concept pretty appalling, and not just because of the whole Jebus-wants-you-to-build-a-subdivision-on-a-wetlands aspect. (Or because there are, to the best of my knowledge, no actual porpoises in the book.) (Although I’m guessing there are in cans in the pastor’s pantry…“Krazy Kristian Brand Tuna: Now With Extra Dolphin!”) I mean, the only higher being I’m willing to hand my life over to is Joss Whedon. (What can I say? The finale of Dollhouse rocked.) Sure, I can see how if you’re the kind of person who finds being responsible for your own actions a leetle teensy bit disquieting and who likes to be told what to do by Authority Figures, the thought that someone as important as, like, God has a plan for little old you could be quite comforting. But unless the Almighty’s plan for me involves large amounts of yogurt-covered peanuts, drugs, liquor, spandex and public sex with park statues, I think I might just have to wing it.

                Overall, I don’t think this is a bad thing, the winging it. (Public sex with park statues, on the other hand, is in fact a Very Bad Thing.) (Don’t do statues, kids. Stay in school.) You can’t plan many of the best things that happen to you: that impulsive trip to Avignon where the girl you had that crush on showed up three days late and then pretty much ignored you, but where you learned to love Chateauneuf du Pape (if you are me, and for all I know you are); the guy you dated who you thought was maybe a little too geeky, but who, it turned out, had absolutely perfected oral sex (tuba players have very strong lips); the trannie hooker you picked up and smoked pretty much a whole gram of crack with. (Okay, that last was probably a bad example.) (And my apologies to all the brave transsexual sex workers who brighten our days and nights.) (And all the brave crack smokers likewise.)

Many of the things you plan, on the other hand, turn out deplorable, lame and disappointing: the Iraq War, a career in certified public accountancy, that awesome killer line that will finally get the object of your desire to pay just the tiniest slightest most fucking miniscule bit of attention to you, goddamn it. (Er, not that I speak from personal knowledge; I am writing here only in the most general terms, in the spirit of philosophical inquiry.) Even if your plan succeeds, even if everything goes just exactly right, it all seems a bit like ashes in the mouth; you’ve worked so hard that no outcome, nothing, could possibly fulfill the hopes of reward you’ve created and nourished. When joy trips you and sits on your face (tuba player! tuba player!), you’re too astonished to be disappointed.

                The great, the exciting advances, have largely come of accident and improvisation. “Dude, that mastodon that fell in the fire? Smells awesome! Let’s throw all our mastodons on the fire!” (Yes, cavemen used the word, “Dude.” And also? “Awesome.”) “Mr. Watson, I want you!” (Little known is that the burned-himself-with-acid story is bullshit, and that that sentence actually went on, “...for some of that hot Watson-lovin’,” meaning that Bell in that moment invented not just the telephone but the booty-call.) (True story.) Okay, sure, years of planning on a massive scale got us to the moon, but what if anything do you remember about all those moon flights? Probably, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”—a fuckup; he meant to say “a man.” Or you remember Apollo 13, and not just because they made a movie of it with Tom Hanks that still shows on Showtime. (Though mostly.) When things go according to plan, that’s boring; when your oxygen tank explodes and you have to navigate back to earth by attaching rubber bands and your MIT beanie propeller to the rockets, that’s awesome. When we fuck up the most, we have the greatest opportunity to achieve brilliance.

                In improv comedy, the first thing they teach you is, “Always say, ‘Yes,’ never say, ‘No.’” (Apparently the “No hitting!” rule is understood.) (By, like, everyone but me.) Take what comes, use whatever anyone gives you, and make it something new and different, rich and strange. (Or, you know, a long boring pointless sketch, if you’re on Saturday Night Live.) (How is that show still on?) Sometimes it works, and you make magic; sometimes it doesn’t, and you make a big steaming pile of shit on stage in front of everyone. Mind you, I have a teensy little bit of trouble accepting this myself. I used to act in the actual the-a-ter, with like, plays and scripts and stuff; when, years later, I took improv classes at Second City, I thought it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I wanted to know what was coming next, what the goal was, what the plan was. I wanted to shout, “LINE!” at the top of my lungs. As it turned out, I didn’t continue in improv; instead, I wrote a novel based on the improv game Freeze Tag; for me, that was saying, “Yes.” If I’d believed my purpose was to be the bestest damn little improv-er that Gawd had ever placed on the earth, or, like two-thirds of the class, to appear on Saturday Night Live (talk about aiming low; I think I’d take the snails), I’d have been vastly disappointed. I’ll admit it: I’m drawn to plans and purposes; if I have a saving grace (no, not the TV show; seriously, though, Holly Hunter is way hot, isn’t she?) (but I digress), it’s that I can occasionally, when confronted with incontrovertible proof that we have to go off-script, not be a dumbass and wing it.

                Plans and purpose have a use and a place. For one thing, they give us something to do while waiting to fuck up. (Other than drinking and masturbation, I mean.) (And my apologies to all the brave drunks and masturbators who brighten our days and nights.) If you start looking for accidents to happen, you’re not improvising; you’re planning to improvise. And people who wander through life like some kind of Holy Fool, always talking about living in the moment and making no plans, get on my last nerve; to any of you who have adopted this lifestyle, I can only say: get a job, you fucking hippie. But all in all, thinking you have a purpose—and saying “No” to the accidents and fuckups—makes you miss most of the best stuff, roast mastodon and booty calls and how making decorative ironwork or running a lobster boat—or doing improv—makes you feel alive. I never planned to write this essay, but, for better or worse, here it is. And it’s a pretty decent introduction to Freeze!,  my novel, which I’ll start posting this week.

                And finally, my apologies to all the brave dolphins and tuba players who brighten our days and nights.