Ask Dr. Ding

So. Along the way, Dr. Ding has picked up some good tips on how to ensure a fairly miserable old age. Here are the top five:
1. Stop moving. I mean it. Ride when you can walk. Sit when you could stand, and lie down when you could be sitting. At the first sign of aches or minor pains, slow down and baby yourself. Invest in a cushy recliner and use it every day while watching hours of TV or dozing. Give up on any leisure interests involving physical movement when you first notice you can’t do these things at 100% capacity. Sore shoulders preventing you from casting a fishing line or digging in the garden? Well, clearly it’s time to just chuck in the whole thing and start sitting on your ass. If you’re lucky, maybe your constant bitching will result in a full-blown Vicodin dependence due to your physician just trying to shut you the hell up by writing you a Rx and getting you out of his office.

2. Eat lots of stuff with hydrogenated oils in order to clog up your arteries, cause generalized inflammation throughout body and brain, and ultimately land you a lovely case of dementia or possibly cancer. Or diabetes. Or a heart attack. Or a stroke that leaves you in diapers, unable to move yet fully aware of your predicament. Poopilicious!

3. Don’t bother to repair your familial and social relationships if they’ve frayed over the years. Cut off ties altogether by being perpetually sour, obsessive, misanthropic, critical, stubborn, unforgiving, resentful, self-absorbed or otherwise emotionally stingy. This will ensure no one visits you or stays long when they do. Slowly become disinterested in other people so that your whole word telescopes down to how much your lumbago hurts, how Kids Today Are Good For Nothing, and how much you hate people different from you; this will render your company absolutely stultifyingly boring and nasty to the point where everyone will eventually abandon you, thus giving you even more stuff to howl about.

4. For the love of Christ, don’t ever do anything too mentally stimulating or challenging. Don’t read newspapers, magazines, or books. Don’t to crossword puzzles or Sudoku. Never see a movie or attend the theater. Watch lots of soap operas and trash TV instead. If you do read, read the same genres over and over and don’t indulge in any desires to branch out intellectually. Slowly begin to lose your cognitive functions altogether.

5. Nutrition, schmutrition. Drinking water is for sissies who can’t tolerate urinary tract infections! And the dark-green, choline-rich vegetables that may stave of Alzheimer’s Disease are for people who can’t handle their goddamn Cheetos. You should definitely eschew foods containing B-vitamins or fiber, thus ensuring continually depressed moods as well as the kind of chronic constipation necessitating gloved fingers up yer butt. Impacted feces, oh golly gee! Get lots of preventable diseases by eating a nutrient-poor diet, and deplete your savings entirely in the process of trying to reverse said disease with pills and surgery. Enter a nursing home prematurely. Die before your time.

Neato!