Your drugs

Remember that section in To Kill a Mockingbird where Jem has to go read to the crotchety old woman as punishment, and later on Atticus tells him that the old woman wanted to get off her dependence on morphine before she died so she wouldn't be beholden to anything, and how she was strongest person Atticus ever knew? Well, that has nothing to do with you. On any given day, your bloodstream should be something like 24% ibuprofen/acetaminophen, 24% antacids, 24% caffeine, and 24% allergy medications. (The other 4% should be just enough blood to nurture and circulate your undoubtedly innumerable blood diseases.) This ratio of drugs is what keeps you alive and functioning, so god forbid you attempt to stop depending on any one of them. Because here's the thing about drugs: they're just plain great. They make you feel better and/or make you pass out so you don't feel pain. So as long as you don't suffer from dignity like old Mrs. Whatsherface, there's no reason to stop taking them.

Keeping your fragile body pumped full of drugs is easy: When you first wake up in the morning after your Benedryl-induced night's sleep, grab a large cup of espresso-based coffee and down an antacid with it to help with the heartburn that your incredibly strong coffee will probably cause. If you put off drinking coffee for more than an hour after waking up, make sure you swallow some Advil with your eventual three cups of coffee to stop the headache you're pretty sure you'll be getting soon but haven't actually gotten yet. After looking out the window to see if any trees, animals, or other plant life still exist in the world, take a Claritin to stave off your inevitable pollen allergies (or, in the winter, your lack-of-pollen allergies). If you find you have a slight sniffle, assume that you're getting a cold and take some cold & sinus medication too. The nice is that you'll end up pleasantly woozy, which makes your work day that much more surreal and less painful. To you, drugs shouldn't be about curing pain. They're desperate preventative maintenance based on your fear of all things that might make you physically uncomfortable.

With that said, even though you love drugs, you should confusingly harbor a deep, deep resentment towards drugs that might actually help you cope with life, like antidepressants. As you torture your friends and doctors with stories of how miserable you are, be sure to deliver soapbox speeches about how antidepressants will kill your creativity. Also, even though you constantly argue that everyone else is a bunch of chemical reactions, antidepressants will prove that this fact applies to you as well. When someone inevitably makes the totally invalid point that other drugs you take must also affect your mood, raise your voice angrily and insist it's not the same thing at all. Then go ahead and insult their mother. Later, after downing a beer and someone else's Vicodin, cry apologetically, tell everyone in the room how much you love them, even if you just met them, then pass out with your face in the salsa bowl.

Your dignity

...

Earth Day, belated

You act like you don't really care about any worthy causes, but you sort of do, secretly. Even though this is mostly out of guilt, it's still something. However, at the same time, you can barely be bothered to bathe on weekends or to eat things that are not made of candy, so the chances of you doing something for a cause outside of yourself are roughly the same as those of getting struck by lightning (unless you're in your bed eating ice cream with a metal spoon during a lightning storm, in which case your chances of being hit by lightning increase to roughly 100%).

Earth Day is one of these things that will (and just did) pass you by completely unawares. You were probably told about it at the end of the day, and then made some half-hearted attempt at recycling a bottle or turning off a light, while congratulating yourself for being so green. Truthfully, though, you wouldn't even make the sacrifice of turning off your computer an hour before you usually do to save energy unless you were actually compelled to do so by law. The only way you'll contribute to ecological efforts is by accident -- like by not having a car when you live in New York City, or being too poor to afford an air conditioner for your sweltering apartment. Still you'll shake your own fraudulent hand in secret for being so environmentally friendly, knowing full well that if someone gave you a free air conditioner that was made by Taiwanese slave children and actually worked by stealing delicious, freezing-cold ozone from the atmosphere and replacing it with soot, you'd install it and not ever think about it again.

At some point, you'll begin to see that there actually isn't anything you can do that will help the Earth, and that if it's really come to the point where your actions would make a measurable difference, we're all deeply, deeply doomed. This should liberate you somewhat from a little of your guilt, replacing it with a satisfying dread of the upcoming apocalypse. You should then start to live your life in defiance of the Earth. You should actively choose to throw your empty cans into the trash rather than the recycling bin that's literally one foot away from it. You should also drive your car, if you own one, to places that are so nearby that it actually takes you longer to get into your car, start it, drive there and park than it would to have walked there, thereby truly sticking it to the man (Al Gore). Essentially, you should strive for the largest carbon footprint you possibly can, and begin to think of it as the only legacy you'll leave behind when you die. 

Your appearance

How you present yourself to the world is your key to fraudulence.
There will be moments in life when you believe you're good-looking, but there's a reason for that. You know that ugly friend you have who grows more and more attractive as you talk to them because you've grown used to their third nose and green-tinted skin? Well, you're like your own ugly best friend, only you've had your whole life to adjust to your image in a mirror. Because of this, you might occasionally find yourself strutting around, pimp-like, thinking you're the best-looking human being alive. At some point, though, a friend will show you candid photos of yourself. These inevitably awful photos will destroy any confidence you ever had. Because of course it's not the camera, the angle, or the faces you're making - it's your actual face that's your problem. You're the Vanessa Huxtable to the Denises and Claires of the world.

Try to distract people from your unattractiveness by attempting to be fashionable. Unfortunately, you have no idea what "fashionable" means, but you can always pretend you're one of those people who's so fashionable that they intentionally disregard fashion trends. In fact, because you put kitsch quality on the same level as real quality, go ahead and buy a bunch of the most unflattering shirts and pants you can find. It'll be obvious to everyone that your clothes are excessively ugly, so people will congratulate you on them instead, drawing attention away from the fact that you're gaudier than Michael Jackson's face. As an added bonus, because your entire generation is as fraudulent as you are, your intentionally ugly wardrobe will probably end up coinciding with current fashions anyway.

The important thing to remember is this: Whether you grow a huge beard, wear accessories designed for 8-year-old girls, or cut yourself some thick, grotesquely straight bangs that cover your eyebrows and half your eyes, the purpose of your outward appearance is not to reflect your real self at all. Leave people wondering whether there could be an attractive person hiding underneath the poor hair, clothing, and makeup choices. There isn't, but that enigma will probably get you a couple of fraudulent dates from the same people who would choose the mystery box over the new car. Then, when they end up with a whoopee cushion, they'll only have themselves to blame.

Disasters and you

Because every new day is just a subtly different shade of awful from the last, you long for something new and exciting. Maybe at one point you also included the word "better" next to "new and exciting," but now you don't really care. Better, worse, whatever...just something different.

This is why you secretly hope for disasters. This is why if you're ever in a devastating earthquake it will be the best day of your life. With buildings literally falling down around you and people screaming and running, you'll be almost unable to hide your smile. It's not that you want people to be hurt. It just happens to often be an unfortunate side effect of your joy. Generally.

Other disasters in which you'll find shameful happiness are hurricanes, terrorist attacks and financial collapses. Again, it's important to note that you don't take joy in other people being hurt, killed, financially ruined, or whatever else. But since the only thing you're really good at is surviving in the most literal sense of the word (i.e. continuing to be alive), a world in which that skill is suddenly valued and necessary is super appealing.

So it follows, then, that the best possible disaster you could ever hope for is a zombie apocalypse. Nothing would please and excite your fraudulent little heart more than being able to walk down a street with a shotgun and a bat, shooting former people in the face and fearing for your life at every moment. No more credit card debt, no more work, no more school, no more burdens. Just you, your survival skills, and a horde of hungry, shambling zombies. 

Of course, the only problem with all of this is that you have no actual survival skills, have never fired a gun in your life, and would likely be dead or a zombie within the first day. This is okay, though, because you're already pretty used to stumbling around half-dead and spreading your horrible diseases.

Communication

As you get older and inevitably develop anthropophobia without realizing it, your methods of communication should begin to depend solely on your writing skills and ability to deliver one-liners rather than your abilities to speak or show correct facial expressions. To start, make sure you slowly wean people off of calling you on the phone. An easy way to do this is by never actually answering your phone or checking your voicemail (which might compel you to call back if there's some sort of near-death emergency). When someone does call, text them back immediately with a "What's up?" If you accidentally answer your phone, make sure you cut the conversation short by quickly mentioning how you're almost out of minutes for the month or how you have a burning roast in the oven. Do this every time the same person calls; they'll eventually learn, the way rubbing a puppy's nose in its own poop will teach it to stop defecating on your kitschy new thrift-store couch.

Eventually, your friends and loved ones will become aware that the only way to reach you is via texting or by seeking out any online presence you have. Your real friends will have an instant messenger account; these are the people who will remain your friends and the only people with whom you'll ever communicate in real time again. If anyone else has either a Facebook, Twitter, or similar account on a website where you also have a profile, they should be taught to leave you public messages there, which will not only make you feel popular, thereby sating your deep-seated, pathetic desire for fame, but can also be easily ignored by your claiming you haven't logged in for days. This is, of course, not true, because you log in every ten minutes, but if you're ignoring someone, you have to be careful and not post updates until you feel compelled to answer this person.

But what do you do when you meet a new person who hasn't been taught to avoid you completely? It seems like this could be a problem, but it's not. First of all, you probably met this person online anyway, because you should never be going out and meeting real people in real life. This means that they also have little to no experience speaking or gesturing, unless staring at a computer screen has given them a nervous eye twitch that resembles emoting. This also means they'll never want to call or hang out in person either. Eventually, you'll add each other as friends on Facebook. This is handy for several reasons: Now you can communicate your minute goings-on to everyone at once without actually writing to a single person. You can also test your new friend's devotion by tallying how many responses or thumbs up they give your photos and status updates.

The very best part is you'll never have to write one another again; you can watch each other's updates and event attendings and tragic deaths of pets without having to put forth any effort apart from looking. And when you're finally killed in that freak accident by a falling street light, you'll have one more fake friend mourning your death by posting, "Holy shit! WTF?!!" when they respond to the obituary on your wall. And for you, even though you'll be dead, this one post will help justify your entire existence.

Getting laid off

In these rough economic times, a lot of us are having to face the reality of being laid off from work. Let's examine some good ways to deal with this situation and with all your resultant extra free time. 

First, apply for unemployment. Even though your income from these checks will only barely pay your rent, it's better than nothing. Also, any job you are offered from here on out will have to be weighed against the reality of losing your unemployment and your god-given right to stay up until until 5am eating reduced-fat Cheez-Its and downloading movies you'll never watch to your computer. 

It's also good to remember that, with unemployment rates at double digits, it's actually sort of socially acceptable for you to be out of work. This is in contrast to most of the time you've been out of work and looked down on as a lazy, useless bag of flesh. Now when you tell people you're unemployed, they'll look at you with sympathy rather than that usual mix of confusion and disgust, like they just saw a thalidomide baby.

Spend about an hour a day pretending to look for a job online but getting distracted by pornography. 

You should also take some time to really examine yourself while you're out of work with nothing to do. You should use a large wall mirror and a magnifying glass for this. Since you have no medical insurance, make sure you discover something that will convince you you have cancer or Crohn's disease. Then, calm yourself down about these exotic diseases by remembering that without medical insurance it's far more likely you'll be killed by strep throat.

Birthdays

Once a year you'll have to deal with your birthday. You don't hate your birthday because it marks a year of getting older and, therefore, closer to death. No. You hate your birthday because everyone you know gets weird around you that day and tries to give you things. Since receiving a gift is on the same anxiety level for you as receiving blood test results, your birthday should be something you dread, mentally avoid and, ultimately, start lying to people about.

One of the worst things that happens on your birthday is that someone might try to sing fucking goddamn Happy Birthday to you. If this starts to happen, your body should begin to go through a few phases, the first of which is disbelief. Surely this can't be happening to me, you'll think. Eventually, you'll pass from disbelief into horror, especially if this is taking place in public, like at a restaurant or your office. It's similar to the type of horror you'd experience if someone were stabbed in front of you or if you found out you had Lou Gehrig's disease. Finally, and this will be toward the very end of the song, near the last, excruciatingly drawn-out "Haaaapy biiiiiirthdaaaay tooooooooo........yoooouuuuuu!", you will begin to drown in a potent, acidic shame. Your ears will burn and you'll instinctively look for open windows out of which to pitch your body.

The look on your face while all of this is happening will also, god willing, be caught on camera and shared with you via email or a social networking site. Then you will get to deal with people commenting things like "Why do you look so constipated?"

In order to avoid all of this, it's best to never tell anyone about your birthday, ever. The sad truth is, though, some people already know. And these people will post it all over your Facebook wall, so that anyone you know that didn't know it was your birthday will find out, and then berate you for not telling them sooner. You'll be made to feel like a bad person just because you didn't go around essentially begging for gifts from your friends. Because that's what telling people about your birthday amounts to. Panhandling.