Life Lessons

Thome Mercedes’ Notes on Life:

1. Venti cups are classless
   Nobody needs a 20 oz. cup of coffee and you just end up looking excessive and stereotypically American. If you seriously need 20 oz of caffeinated beverage, please do your image a favor and get two 12 oz sizes and pretend one is for a friend (if you have any left). Everyone just looks better with a medium – thanks primarily to Nancy Botwin from Showtime’s Weeds. Realistic exaggerations of the rule: venti caramel frappuccinos with whipped cream and extra caramel sauce.  Exceptions to the rule: iced water, fish bowl cocktails.
2. Be unpredictable but have a signature
   The routine is boring so being spontaneous, improvised, and generally unreliable is preferred. However, scattered throughout the chaos, it’s nice to have certain beacons of regularity. Most of mine revolve around beverages or food products. If I’m getting coffee, it’s usually the same drink (iced americano). If I’m at a certain sandwich chain in Chicago, it’s always the chicken salad on white with american cheese. Having these mundane patterns will make other people appreciate and more readily approve of your otherwise whirlwind habits.
3. Never go to breakfast, only go to brunch
   This one is a no-brainer but needs to be put in to print.
4. If you’ve made out with them, never admit to not knowing their name
   It’s time to get clever and figure it out without offending them and making yourself look forgetful or insensitive. Did you sleep with them? Yes. Are you still in their apartment? Yes. Then scan his room for some mail – his name will be in the address field. It takes at least two pieces of mail to confirm a name and be careful that it’s his mail and not his roommate’s. OR Meet him drunk at a bar and now you’re going on a date with him? Yes. At some point coyly ask to see his driver’s license photo. This will be seen as flirtatious because license photos are traditionally bad and you can get his name off the card – as well as scope out if he’s an organ donor. Be sure to make sure it’s not a fake ID.
5. Only update your facebook and twitter accounts from your cell phone
   By doing so, you’ll depict yourself as being on the go, busy, and important. As if you’re never laying around your apartment, aimlessly browsing the internet. As if all of your witty thoughts and/or life updates occur while you’re on the road or in the midst of important and fascinating social engagements and you just happen to have your blackberry on hand to record them with.
6. Don’t be one of those douche-bags that says ‘I don’t watch TV.’
   Even if it’s true, just STFU. I understand that television may be a completely unoriginal, unproductive way to pass your time – and god speed if you spend your down time making art or saving the planet… But nobody sounds cool proclaiming that they don’t watch TV – no matter how self-riotous you may feel as you say it.

1. 

   thome's rules of life closely mimic those of nancy botwin's

this list is always ‘to be continued’…