7. Clothes can be reworn as often as the wearer can stand his own stink, which means laundry is basically always optional as long as you can convince yourself the smell of your own waste is less offensive than the idea of walking to the nearest washing facility.

8. If you leave the garbage sitting in one spot long enough, it’ll eventually be able to take itself out.

9. All dishes are like cast-iron skillets: if you don’t wash them, each use adds a new layer of delicious seasoning to your next meal.

10. Don’t listen to what the “experts” tell you. Sponges last forever.

ON NOT BEING THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE

When I was a child, being on TV was the greatest possible thing that could happen to a person.

One summer, while I was at my aunt and uncle’s house, a drunk driver drove into a house down the street, directly through the wall and into the living room. We heard the crash from a few blocks away and went running to see what happened. Everybody was safe, except for the living room set, I imagine, but it was a big enough disaster to attract the local news community, and soon enough, vans with satellites started rounding the corners, parking along the curb, and hauling out cameras and tripods. It was a spectacle. This was the suburbs, after all. Nothing exciting happened here to begin with, and now there was something besides a television set or bonfire for all of us to stand and stare at. There were lights, and microphones, and local news reporters furiously dabbing makeup on their sweaty foreheads. All to look at a car that was sitting motionless halfway through a brick wall. But still, whenever one of the camera’s lights went bright, my cousins and I would walk aimlessly behind the reporter, far enough away to seem innocuous, but close enough so our faces were clearly captured on screen. Even then, I knew how to find my light.

That night, we taped every eleven o’clock news program—who the hell knows which station’s cameras we were standing in front of—and the next morning, we went through every tape until they got to the segment about the car, and while the reporter droned on about the damage and how the car would be removed and what hospital the driver was spending the night in, we looked for a hint of ourselves in the back corner, a wisp of hair or even a shadow. In the end, none of us made it on air. Television cameramen are well equipped to crop out menacing children like us. But still, the prospect of getting our fifteen minutes of fame was tantalizing. We could’ve been stars!