Life

Personally, I think living is pretty cool. Being alive, for however long a time, enters you into a privileged club. As Richard Dawkins says, "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born."

If you're not having fun with life, you're squandering your precious privilege. Life is a proactive process. If you need some help getting the most out of your existence, here are three simple ideas that will spice things up a bit:

Run everywhere.
Running is a big winner. Little kids will do it for hours, so it's obviously fun. Plus, being in good running shape makes you less susceptible to death by nuclear bomb, hungry predators, or zombies. So the next time you're not even late for class, run there. Don't worry about social norms - sweat actually turns people on. Just run and feel good.

Make everything more exciting.
If something's boring, make it not boring. A good example of enacting this principle is what I like to call 'laundry heist', which I made up while living in the dorms. For this, the busier the laundry room, the better. All you have to do is wait patiently and inconspicuously while your laundry nears the end of its cycle in the dryer, and the moment it finishes you fling the door open and hurriedly pull all your clothes out like you're grabbing handfuls of cash out of a safe. It works best if you have one of those dorm-room laundry sacks with a shoulder-strap, so you can make your escape like you're Robert DeNiro in Heat.

Play games.
I'm always making up games. I can turn most anything into friendly competition, and as every good capitalist knows, competition is good (even if it's competition with yourself, or with someone who doesn't know they're competing). Racing is always a good one, and if often involves the aforementioned running. If you walk into a grocery store at the same time as someone else, see if you can get all your items and beat them back to the registers. The magic of this particular idea was once harnessed in a wildly popular game show. Or how about the next time you're in lecture, take notes with your eyes closed. This is an equally good game for handwriters like myself or laptoppers like everyone else in the world. If you can keep up with the professor, and then make sense of your notes come finals time, you win!

Is smoking cool?

Of course it is. I know that poster on the wall in your middle school gym said it wasn't, and that D.A.R.E. speakers will continue to advocate that it isn't, but it obviously is. I think it's the biggest obstacle that anti-smoking advocates have to overcome. I mean, smoking is a pretty gross habit - it's deadly, expensive, annoying to others, it basically grimes your body up from the inside out, and I (like many people) have little to no interest in doing it or being around anyone doing it - but it's nothing if not cool. Why else would people start doing it when they know all the bad stuff I just mentioned?

Without going beyond 'James' I submit for you the following evidence:



Here's well-known actor James Franco (or as I like to call him, David Lefstein) douche-bagging it up at home, staring at his own narcissistic self in the mirror. It's obvious that no one likes him, and therefore obvious that there's no one on that phone and he's just posing, which makes it even worse.



Then BAM! Next thing you know he's smokin' a J at the MTV movie awards with Seth Rogen in a cool jacket. What could possibly be cooler?



Next, Rick James:





A city council election? Local government is kinda cool, but not compared to this:



That's probably the most badass you can possibly look.



And lastly, there's James Dean, a man so cool that there are hardly any photos to be found of him not smoking, and definitely none of him not being cool to use in a clever juxtaposition. So then, just two cool ones:









I like how someone who thought they were clever added the caption "subliminal message: smoking is cool" to that last one. They were obviously an idiot, because that's the most overt message I've ever seen. It's so overt that it's not even a "message", it's just a fact. It's like saying the 'subliminal message' in the photo is that James Dean is wearing a hat. In fact, that hat blends in with the background fairly well, so you'd definitely be more likely to miss that "message" if you just took a quick glance at the picture. Point being, I didn't even need to write anything or find those other pictures; this one does it all. Case closed.