10 Annoying Immutable Laws of the Universe I Try To Make Mutable
1. Whatever line I’m in is the slow line. As someone who appreciates how truly brief life is, I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste my precious time waiting around, be it on the highway, at the grocery store or for admission to hell.
I have an E-Z Pass (still arguably the greatest invention in human kind), I always use the Deli Express at ShopRite (where you punch in your order and go shopping while the meat-slicing minions tend to your order) and I speak ill of the dead, not only in print but also when composing my annual Dead Pool team—this year I’m out in front of my league with the timely demises of Van Cliburn, Hugo Chavez, Bonnie Franklin, Roger Ebert and Annette Funiccello. I thought I was going to score the coup de grace when Randy Travis was recently in the hospital but he went and got better. Bastard.
2. The grass is always greener …. This is true for a good part of the year as my next-door neighbor Ed is a former landscaper and puts a lot of time, effort and fertilizer into his gorgeous lawn. His yard would be perfect except for a few dandelions he gets every spring on the areas of grass closest to our house, which I’m sure is a *complete* coincidence. I mean, it’s not like the dozens of dandelions and patches of crabgrass that grow unchecked in my yard could somehow just spread into his yard, right?
However, when it gets to the hottest and driest parts of summer—sort of like now—his carefully nurtured grass is mostly burned out while the weeds that I attempt to pass off as a lawn are still thriving and green. Oh sure, it’ll only last a few weeks, but for that small window of time … cliché busted!
3. You’ll hit the green lights when you’re not in a rush, and get all the reds when you’re in a hurry. I’m always in a hurry, especially when I drive—again, I’ll be damned if I waste any portion of whatever allotment of animation I get on this giant spinning rock—so the law of averages washes this one out.
If I do hit a string of green lights, it just gets me to my destination just all that much quicker. And if I hit red lights, it’s just speeding up that aneurysm that I’ll eventually have behind the steering wheel of my car. Winner all around!
4. A body at rest stays at rest. With the number of nightmares and twisted dreams that I have, as well as multiple trips to the bathroom (with my well-documented gastrointestinal issues, I drink *a lot* of water on any given day) it’s very rare that I get a full eight—or even seven or six—hours of straight sleep.
5. What goes up must come down. Since the moment I was conceived, all I have ever done is gain weight. Yes, it might waver from time to time, but overall, the line of that graph continues on an upward trajectory. If I didn’t run 3.5 miles every other day, there’s no doubt I’d already look like this …
… and be washing myself with a rag on a stick.
But let’s be honest: That is my eventual future.
6. Actions speak louder than words. My action track record is pretty lame—let’s say that in general I provide all the dynamic action of a poster print of Monet’s “Water Lillies.”
Ahhh, fine ar ......zzzzzzzzzz......
However, my words have actually carried me pretty far, including getting me a paying gig. I don’t think I would actually say my words have brought me “fame” or “fortune,” but hey, they help to pay the bills.
7. An idle mind is the devil’s playground. I know it sounds weird, but I can’t tell you how much I wish I could make my mind idle. I really do. It’s never, ever quiet in my skull, especially in the middle of the night when it’s supposed to be quiet. I think what disturbs me most is that people talk about “hearing voices” telling them to do things like commit suicide; in my head, whenever I’ve heard a voice making a suggestion like that, it’s always my own, loud and perfectly clear. That’s chilling.
Thus, I would say that my mind is pretty darn active, and it has *never* even remotely been mistaken for the lord’s sewing circle.
8. Can’t have your cake and eat it, too. I’m pretty sure that in all of the 170 years or so that I can recall, there has never been a piece a cake that’s been placed in front of me that I haven’t eaten … you know, with the possible exception of a slice of carrot cake that was once proffered at work party by a co-worker who was notorious for not washing her hands in the ladies’ room and had been eagerly licking crumbs off her own fingers in between cutting pieces.
9. A coward dies a thousand deaths. I think it’s safe to say that I am not anyone that you would ever confuse with any sort of hero, and I haven’t even died once yet—despite thinking about my eventual death pretty much every single day, as we all know I’m wont to do.
10. Can’t judge a book by its cover. I look in the mirror every day and I see a cranky old man looking back at me. Seems to pretty much dead on.