So you want to be a GRAFFITI ARTIST

Can you write your own name? Are you sure?

You'd better start practicing, endlessly, on random walls, and cars, and trash cans, and street signs with a big marker pen, until you're really really sure you can spell it right. Otherwise how will you be able to sign your work when you eventually get round to drawing a picture, perhaps of a dog, or a cat on a mat.

But don't, under any circumstances, draw any pictures or anything fun like that YET, not if you want to be taken seriously as an artist.

So you want to be a PESSIMIST

After battling for several months, Balloon Goes Bang's overworked team of in-house psychiatrists have finally managed to identify and document the full extent of our staff's mental health problems. It ain't pretty. Apparently we collectively suffer from a wide spectrum of disorders that together form a whole new classification of extreme negativity they're calling Cynical cuntism.

They've told us that we need to go lie down in a darkened room for a while, at least until we are well enough to type again. Apparently it isn't normal to get electric shocks from your keyboard because you're crying on it too much. They're also advising that we try to stop drinking so many beer and gin boilermakers - especially for breakfast - regardless of the drink's status as official Balloon Goes Bang "Cocktail of the Month" for August. And September.

Spoilsports.

Is this the end of the Bang, or merely a hiatus? Only time and agricultural-grade antidepressants know the answer to that. In the meantime, please send get-well cards, hate mail, and large cash contributions towards our spiralling medical bills to the usual address.

So you want to change your CAREER

Look, over there. Yes, just over there at that different job. Isn't it pretty? Doesn't the grass around it look so much greener? Wouldn't you be so much happier and fulfilled and content if that's where you were right now?

Because no one who does that job ever feels bored or frustrated or annoyed or anything like the burning feelings of gnawing resentment and failure you're feeling in this job. If you did that job, you'd probably become so contented in your daily toil that you wouldn't ever want to take time off again, or even sleep. Not that you get any time off or a chance to sleep in this job either, but that's not the point. In that rainbow-soaked dream job you wouldn't even want to. That's how great that job is.

Sure, you'd still be working, you'd still be getting paid for your time, you'd still be working your fingers to bloody stumps, you'd still be selling little chunks of your soul every day for meager financial reward, but you'd be doing that job, and that's got to be better than this job. Right?

So you want to raise money for CHARITY

Yeah, I can see you standing there with your cheery clipboard and your happy upbeat face all ready to break out into some sort of hilarious and engaging repartee. I can see you desperately trying to formulate some way to stop me from completely ignoring you. I can see you pretending like I've not already decided to walk straight past you with a look on my face that says I just smelled shit on your shoes.

It's not that I dislike the cause you're attempting to raise money for. In fact, it doesn't matter one tiny bit to me which deserving bunch of trendy do-gooders you represent. You could be collecting for puppies starving in Africa, disabled whale children, or abused water pumps with Aids - I just don't care.

And it's not because you're some tiresome student tit who thinks that jumping in front of people and acting like a fist magnet is somehow endearing. (Although, let's be honest, your whole demented children's entertainer impersonation really isn't helping.)

It's not even because you actually expect some sort of response to whichever rhetorical question you're about to ask me. Do I care about deprived children? Do I think that rape is bad? Do I want the world to be a better place? Do I have just a few seconds to spare? Well of course I do. But that doesn't mean I'm going to slow my quickening footsteps to dignify your wretched entreaties with any kind of response.

Why? Well, because today I'm representing a charitable campaign of my own. Its mission? To prevent ordinary pedestrians from being made to feel like uncaring cunts for not handing over a bunch of cash to causes they've barely heard of when all they really want to do is buy themselves a sandwich for their lunch without having to justify their private moral choices to random clipboard-wielding irritants like you. Would you like to make a contribution?

So you want to DESTROY AMERICA

Think Balloon Goes Bang is written by a bunch of dirty cynics? Well it is, but we've got nothing on some of the mentally ill nihilists writing for Slate these days. One particular fatalistic fucknut called Josh Levin has been impressing us with his angst-fueled series The End of America 2009: How it's going to happen.

How indeed? Joshtradamus outlines various cataclysmic possibilities in detail, but our favorite part is the fun Choose Your Own Apocalypse game. Using your skill and judgment, you pick the specific disasters you think will precipitate complete collapse. Unfortunately there's no explicit category for "idiocy," but our own choices of doom-mongering scenarios generated this scarily perceptive piece of psychoanalysis in reply:

"You are a bloodthirsty misanthrope. You believe mankind is stupid and fallible and that America will destroy itself in a bloody mess. You'll know you're right when: The United States succumbs to a torrent of Russian nukes; we clone ourselves, get bum genes, and die."

Yup, that sounds about right.