FOUR RULES TO LIVE BY

ONLY THE COOK GETS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THE FOOD.

For most of the history of your human race, the big question for most of the aforementioned humans themselves was not what but whether they was going to eat today. Today now being 2009, the problem is not starvation but obesity. Not eating much because you don't really like eggs or burnt edges on the toast won't kill you. It'd prob'ly be good for you to cut back a bit. Whereas always complaining leads to a host of illnesses and a shorter life. Shorter and less fun. So stop it. Stop it right now. Just smile, thank whoever cooked it for you so's you could play computer games until food was on the table, say it's just terrific, and eat. With your mouth closed.

ONE SLICES, THE OTHER CHOOSES.

Mothers invented this basic rule to insure fairness in dealings between siblings. And since we is all descended from the same village of 1200 people according to the latest DNA research, we all of us is just a family of kids squabbling over the chocolate cake. So, whether we're talking the office workload or contracts in Iraq, the surest way to keep it fair is to let one party divide it, and the other decide who gets which half.

NOT EVERYBODY LIKES GRAVY.

I'm sure you're a very nice person, but you have no place to think outside your own head. Nobody does. No matter how smart you are, the world is not really the way you see it. Other people have a different idea of what is good, and while you may be tempted to say they are nuts for picketing a)Wall Street b)Planned Parenthood c)the local grocery, that temptation is being held out to you by the little guy in the red suit and horns hovering over your left shoulder and whispering in your ear. As the old saying goes, there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and the wrong way is to try to get everybody to do things the 'right' way.

A LITTLE DESSERT NOW AND THEN CAN'T HURT.

Guilt is good but not always appropriate. Most people who feel guilty about how they live their life are not the ones eating a Meat Lovers Pizza with a six-pack of Bud followed by a bag of Oreos buried under a quart of Rocky Road while watching porn and gambling on the internet. Sadly, many do not even begin to indulge their sweet tooth or fantasy life, so afraid they are of sinking into the hedonic swamp. This desert of worst-case-worrying that keeps you from healthy pleasures is just as sick as the opposite overindulgence to the point of diabetes of the soul. If guilt is keeping you from fun, sometimes you gotta lock guilt in the bathroom with the litter box and enjoy a little Cherries Jubilee, if you catch my drift.