Your life is an exercise in balance. How close to rock-bottom can you hover without ever actually getting there? This is a question you strive to answer every day as you make your way clumsily through life. It’s a question that underlines all the decisions you make, both big and small, from who to date to how to manage your meager finances to what poisonous substances to consume. It’s what keeps you up at night and what feeds your generalized anxiety disorder as well as your myriad, troubling addictions. This question is really the ultimate goal of your whole life.

Lucky for you, Fraudulent Living is here to show you the way. The true way. The way of the neurotic, self-obsessed, success-avoiding loser. It’s time to quit pussyfooting around and do this for real.

That’s right, “pussyfooting.”

Welcome to Fraudulent Living.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Your goddamn iPhone


Besides liquor, food and rent, the rest of your paychecks should be spent on gadgets. Or on the monthly bills you've acquired to keep your gadgets running. Your most prized gadget should be your goddamn iPhone.

You should make sure that everyone you know knows about your goddamn iPhone. They should know when you bought it, what new apps you've installed on it, and, if possible, there should be a harrowing story of some kind regarding how you finally acquired it. Maybe you were one of the douche bags that waited in line for over 24 hours. Maybe you spent an almost equal amount of time on the phone with Latwanda in the Houston AT&T call center trying to get them to give you the goddamn iPhone at the $199 price even though you're not eligible for an upgrade for another year. Something.

It's also really important that you be touching your goddamn iPhone pretty much all the time. Especially if you're alone or waiting for something, like the bus, or to be called in from the waiting room at the doctor's office. If you're in the doctor's office, it's also a good idea to double check everything your doctor tells you by bringing out your goddamn iPhone and loading up your WebMD app.

When you're walking down the street with a friend and neither of you knows where you're going, make sure to stop your friend from asking a human person for directions. Instead, insist that your goddamn iPhone will find it. Then, as you wait eight minutes for your "lightning fast" 3G connection to finally locate what street you're on, even though you have a map in your bag and eyes that can see street signs, you can feel really great about being on the cutting edge of such useful, life-changing technology.

At some point, you should realize that "there's an app for that" pretty much applies to everything imaginable. You can pay your bills, order food, entertain yourself, and answer work emails, all from your goddamn iPhone. This should elate you as you discover there's now barely any need to deal directly with anyone at all. Your goddamn iPhone has really (not) changed your life.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Your grand plans

Most days, within the first minute of your waking up, you should torture yourself with the question, "What am I doing with my life?" Of course, the answer is easy, but it's good to remember your nonexistent place in the world every moment you're conscious. You know perfectly well that the answer is, "Absolutely nothing." Or, if you're feeling optimistic, "Not dying. Not dying is what I'm doing. In your face, god!" But those optimistic days should be rare, and as you're taunting the god you don't believe in, you should stop and reflect on the fact that you really are dying, just in a slow, drawn-out, and painful way.

You may find there are times, usually at 3 AM after you're sick of surfing porn sites, when you'll actually find yourself wanting to do more than nothing with your life. As you well know, you're smarter and more talented than pretty much everyone on the planet. Maybe now is the time you should put your own awesomeness into action and improve the things that are wrong with the world, like porn download times and cancer. Yes, that's exactly what you should do. This will be the turning point in your life, where you'll begin living up to your potential and using your intelligence for good things instead of Excel spreadsheets. For the first time in forever, you'll be excited, and in celebration probably take up smoking. Since you're about to cure cancer anyway, who cares?

Eventually, after a couple hours of bad sleep, you should wake up and be momentarily excited again about the prospect of your new life. However, as the day progresses, you'll begin figuring out the logistics of how you can reach the point of being a productive human being. You'll probably have to go back to school. Which means finding financing. Which means taking standardized tests. Which means filling out applications. This will undoubtedly make you shudder, but you'll find yourself surprisingly okay facing these challenges. Then you'll realize filling out applications also means you'll have to get letters of recommendation. As you consider asking anyone you've ever met to write out an essay lauding you as a person, you should will yourself into a panic attack. As you try to recover, remind yourself that you don't have to do this, that it's just a silly idea you had last night, and at least you accomplished taking up smoking. You can stay at this stupid job surfing the Internet all day, and you're still probably better off than most people in the world. Your momentary relief will keep you happy for the rest of the day, and then you can go back to your life of dying in a slow, drawn-out, and painful way. Until tomorrow, of course, when you catch ebola and begin your faster, more physically painful death.