How I Want My Wikipedia Page To Be Edited After I Die
Summon a miniature conclave of Russian Orthodox priests to a laptop. Ask them how they are. Ask them if they had an appropriately holy commute. (Don’t pause for laughter.) If the laptop isn’t working, then the flock of Russian Orthodox priests might have to see if there is a computer available at the public library. Make sure they all sign the clipboard. Ask them to chant for the successful opening of the web browser. Apologize to the priests for the web browser taking such a short time to load and making it look like twenty bearded men in robes just hiccuped at the same time. Explain to the one zealot that the internet is not the devil’s work. Explain it once again after gogle.com takes you to a hardcore porn site. Pause. Pray.
Open Wikipedia. Ask my wife, son, and daughter to step forward. Have them sprinkle holy water on the computer. Move to the computer next to that when the water causes the computer to short circuit. Repeat the aforementioned process. Open up Wikipedia again. Check to see if Roger Federer is still alive and — oh! He was born in Basel, Switzerland? I wonder what Wikipedia has to say about that.
Return to the same computer in a month’s time after becoming consumed with Swiss passion and seeking and obtaining a second citizenship. Open up Wikipedia again. Go to my page. Take a moment to take it in.
Come to the conclusion that the page needs a few corrections. Replace my death date with “???” Add a section called “First Faked Death.” Add a section entitled “Second Faked Death And How His Wife Didn’t End Divorcing Him For Pulling A Stunt Like This A Second Time.” Show photographs of Evan and his family passing a vacation faking their deaths. Check to see if the priests are still okay with this.
Check to see if the “American Women Novelists” page still exists. If it does, turn me into a woman once a month and turn my wife into a man. Make sure to have thorough analysis regarding my writing my novels as a woman and my writing my novels as a man. Speculate as to whether or not I actually felt like this in real life or whether or not I’m pulling a pretty solid troll. Do this for a year.
Once a year has come to pass, the Wikipedia page should be turned into something that — should people wish — they can use as a script for a play. I have no particular demand as to content or style, but I would like to see something that somehow exists simultaneously as both a biographical Wikipedia page and a three-to-five act play. Character-wise, though, I wouldn’t mind seeing an old Uncle Vanya-type, someone who thought they were going to go see “The Book Of Mormon” but accidentally ended up catching “The Pillowman,” a guy running for Mayor on a platform of voter fraud who ends up getting five-hundred million votes (“See? The voters ended up backing my platform after all!”), the third member of Daft Punk (“C’est notre frère, Jerry Punk”), a drone hosting Saturday Night Live (“We have a great show! A band I’m capable of blowing up is here!”), someone claiming to be a Trysttrist (someone who studies trysts, much — we can assume — to the surprise of the two principal characters engaged in said tryst), and a waiter pulled into the theater from the nearest restaurant and told to take the orders of characters throughout the play.
I don’t think I’m asking too much.
After a year of this, you should change the page again.