Get a Life

Get a life! That’s a very cool sort of MTV thing to say. What kind of life am I supposed to get? Do you mean one like yours? How do you define a life and where do you get one? Do they come in nacho cheese flavor? Can you interchange them like the front plates of cell phones? Do people who care about what the fuck their cell phones look like have a life?

I think what people, the MTV-90201 people mean when they say “get a life” is a life like Hollywood people must have. A cool life endorsing products and posing for magazine covers. A life of dating movie stars and TV personalities until you break up and talk about how painful it all was on Oprah. A life of uncontrolled substance abuse and repeated failures at rehab. Did Jim Morrison have a life right before he stopped having a life? Does an Academy Award winner have more of a life than the losers? In their acceptance speeches do they say ‘get a fucking life’ to the runners up? I would. I think that if I had a life I’d be fairly smug about it.

Is it improper to tell the guest of honor at a funeral to get a life? Is it vulgar to shout ‘get a life’ at the top of your lungs while driving by a cemetery? Those things are a lot of fun, especially when combined with drinking, but I wasn’t too familiar with the new ‘get a life’ etiquette so I stopped doing them. I don't mind; it gives me more time for prayer.

Is driving your kids to soccer practice every night a life? Is working 9 to 5 every day until you retire and then fighting off life-threatening illnesses like a kid playing Space Invaders until one finally gets you, it that a life?

Does the fact that you have read this far indicate a lack of a life on your part? If that is true it certainly doesn’t say much for the author, because unless this is being read by a third grade class I probably have spent more time writing this no life project than you have reading it.

I read someone question their ‘life’ because they were on the internet with many windows going at once. My “life’ has about ten windows open at this minute. At least dorking-out on the internet isn’t dangerous to you and the other fifty people who live in your building. At this moment I am writing this piece, listening to the Mariners on the radio, pecking a few notes on the piano, and (the danger) using three gas burners on my stove to cook everything in my refrigerator. That’s kind of like juggling with a tennis ball, a live weasel, an apple, and a running chainsaw.

If you can buy a life can I get anything on a trade-in for the one I have?