thoughts for living...

From the New Yorker (Aug 20, 2007, p34) by Paul Simms, who described (with his tongue, no less) part of his thought process during his near-death experience (a fall from a thousand-plus-foot-high sheer granite face):

I needed to make something positive of this experience. For instance, I could think up advice for the living from one who is about to die and is watching his life flash before his eyes. Here’s what I came up with:

1. There are lots of boring parts in even the most interesting life. So get in the habit of sleeping with the TV on… eventually—when you have to watch your whole life flash before your eyes—you’ll have something to look at during the long, dull hours when you’re doing nothing but lying in bed asleep.

2. Encourage every person who sleeps in your bed to sleep nude, on top of the covers. You’ll never get tired of looking at your exes in the nude. Trust me.

3. Don’t go to bad movies that you know are going to be just to laugh at them. They’re never as funny the second time around, when you’re falling through the air and your friends aren’t around to laugh along with you.

4. Give a thought to switching your bathroom technique every now and then. When everything is sped up enough, life can start to seem like one long toilet-sit, periodically interrupted by tentative journeys out of the bathroom, which inevitably end in a return to the bathroom.