Friday Life Cheats

News flash: Lance Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs.

Now I don't want to shock you, but it turns out that rich people steal and unknown actresses are willing to have sex for walk ons.

All life is a game. And to win some pie for yourself you gotta do a little cheating. A B A B Up Down Left Right Start.

If you didn't get that last joke, you didn't have a Nintendo in 1989, which suddenly made me nostalgic for Super Mario Bros and Round Table Pizza.

Don't you wish you still had the LiveStrong bracelet? I would totally sport that shit right now.

Anyway, if you've found that your lack of success in life is questionable, let me regale you with a few little cheating techniques I learned in my careful study of such things:

1. Be Born Rich.

First and foremost if you want to make a splash in any field your gonna need time, money and connections. The best way to do that is to have parents who have those things already and are willing to share.

2. Drugs.

Can't hit 64 home-runs fueled by Wheaties, can't have a tech boom without cocaine, and neither Cheech nor Chong studied with Uta Hagen at the Actors studio.

3. Be Pretty.

People are willing to give you things because of how ashamed they feel for imagining themselves having sex with you, or for how awkward they were when they did have sex with you, or because you're pretty. Whatever.

4. If you can't be pretty, Be a Dickhead.

When you're an asshole/insufferable bitch, people assume that you know something that they don't and are willing to relinquish power. This one can however back fire if the Dickhead above you knows this little cheat and doesn't want to pee in the executive stall next to you.

5. Blind Ambition.

If you like your couch, or drinking beer, or long pointless novels, playing with your kids, easy-cheese, sweat pants, if you want to spend the extra time getting something right, making something good, expressing what you feel, if you think its not too much to ask if you could be on bottom once in a while, then you clearly don't have what it takes to skip a few levels. There's no shame in taking the bunny slope, but don't forget that the ass hat who lunges for the triple diamond on his first try is going to have a better story to tell. Not to mention getting down the mountain faster.

Hint hint

Photo Finish

Post Vacation

Day One

Flu Shots

So yeah,

Sitting in a crowded waiting room.

Waiting to get our flu shots.

I could make a list of things I'd rather be doing, but I'm honestly not certain if you have that kind of time.

This will be the first time I've ever gotten a flu shot.

In fact I'm pretty much against them. There's just something oddly sinister about how convincing the medical community seems to be regarding their importance. Every interaction with every doctor who says "Are you getting the flu shot?" Makes me feel like I'm trying to be sold the "undercoating" for a used car.

In fact, lately I've been compelled to trust the medical community less and less. They just seem like people who are overworked, underpaid, and dreadfully tired of humanity.

Look at the circles under the eyes of a nurse practitioner and take in the smell of sweat and purelle. This isn't an oasis, it's a truck stop.

So why sit in this dank smelling room sandwiched between bodies more befitting a line at Walmart than a yellow brick road?

Is it cause my wife is making me?

Sort of. But only sort of.

See, I'm around a lot of people.

I'm around a lot of people all the time.

And some of them are bound to be sick. And some of them are bound to breathe in my general direction, and I'm just as likely as the next guy to get sick.

And if I get the shot, and I don't get sick, then all is well. And if I don't get the shot and I don't get sick then all is also well.

But if I don't get the shot, and I do get sick, then there's a good chance I get my family sick, cause I am bound to breathe in their general direction.

And since I love them very much, I should probably get it, because if I get the shot and get sick anyway, then at least I can look my beautiful wife in the face and tell her that I did my best.

And then she's more likely to make me dinner.

Among other things.

Vacation Five

Best parts of my January vacation:

1. West Wing now streamable on Netflix

2. Xmas Scotch

3. No alarm clock

4. Found a book I've been looking for for 20 years.

5. Got to introduce "My Sherona" to a bunch of 20 somethings.

Muh muh muh my Sherona!

Memory of light

My best friend introduced me to this series over a decade ago. The author died before finishing and a new writer took it on, and yet still didn't complete it for seven more years. The final book just hit store shelves and my weekend is now officially booked.

Ha ha.

That was a pun right there.