Stuff That Will Kill You: A Pictorial

Smoking



Look, I don't care what you do with your life. It's yours, after all... you're in the drivers seat of that particular big rig and whatever metaphorical highway you choose to drive down, horn blasting, cargo hold full of memories and baggage and experience and boxes of books, doesn't really affect me any. But think about this: Kissing someone who smokes all the time? Gross. The old saw is that it's "like kissing an ashtray," but I'll go further than that (as that is how I roll). Laying a sloppy, deep-tongue soul kiss on a pack-a-day smoker is like jamming your head into one of those bubbling tar cauldrons you see construction workers using on extensive roofing jobs CROSSED with a nasty headbutt from all the pollution in the downtown Los Angeles area that a mad scientist has made into human form so it can, I don't know, help him rob banks or something. Smoking is gross, in other words, and it makes your lungs look like beef jerky roadkill on a sun-baked highway outside Nevada. But hey, it's not like I'm one to judge... with my drinking habits, my liver probably looks like a dead man's loofah or the surface of the moon after a big rock festival or a bombed-out building in Beirut that used to be a school but is now just a pile of sadness rubble.

Sharks



Granted, these are easy to avoid. Unless you spend a lot of time hanging out in the ocean being all delicious with your meaty thighs and KC Masterpiece flavored sunblock; seriously, you KNOW you're going to be swimming in shark infested waters... why would you buy that??? But, yeah... sharks. Crazy eating machines with nine million teeth and they're invincible and some have bazookas, I think, although to be honest I'm not as up on what sharks are all about as you would think a guy who runs a blog with "shark" in the title would be. They're from outer space, right? The aliens landed and these were their pets and this one little alien thought his had died so he flushed it but it WASN'T DEAD and now there's tons of sharks everywhere and they'll bite your face off, give 'em half a chance. Which you won't, because who needs to go outside and swim in the beautiful ocean when it's much easier to just chill on the couch with some Cheez-Its and a stack of DVDs. Because DVDs won't rip your arms off as part of a gang initiation. And sharks will TOTALLY do that.

Psycho Killers



This picture's a little deceiving because Manson didn't actually do any of the killings... he commanded his family of devotees and hangers-on and Squeeky Frommes to do them for him in benifit of his own sick, twisted pleasure... but whatevs. A psycho is a psycho is a psycho, no matter his actual, physical involvement in messing up Sharon Tate real bad with a kitchen knife. ANYWAY, the thing about your average psycho killer is just that... they're average. By that, I mean they don't necessarily LOOK like a psycho killer. They generally look like you or me, just average dudes or dudettes who go to shows and cook pastas and enjoy a nice glass of beer every now and again. So normal, you think, and then suddenly you're locked in a cage in their basement and you can't find one of your hands and they're advancing on you with a one of those electric knives that lazy people use to carve turkeys and they're laughing and laughing and LAUGHING AND LAUGHING. Bad scene, man. But, like, don't worry because it's probably fine. Your boyfriend or girlfriend probably isn't a psycho killer. I mean what are the odds, right? Although... how much do you REALLY know about the person sleeping next to you? Where do they go at night? Why do they collect hammers? Ah, it's probably nothing.

Nuclear War



Kaboom! Ha! Yeah, you're dead and everything but DAMN, what a way to go! All dramatic fire and loud noise and the whole world watching in terror. Pretty sweet, when you get right down to it... again, besides the whole vaporized into another dimension thing. The real suck of nuclear war, though, is SURVIVING an atom bomb blast. Like, being just outside the blast radius so you escape the actual event, but then you get a heavy dusting of radiation like so much powder sugar on a souffle but in this case the souffle is you and the powdered sugar gives you cancer in every part of your body and your skin melts off and your eyes turn into smashed Cadbury Eggs. Not pretty, for sure, and probably painful too. So I guess what I'm saying is if you're in an area that's about to get a fly-over from the Enola Gay, by all means run TOWARDS the high-pitched whistle and looming, growing shadow. Might as well get it over with, ya know?

Kittens



Oh they'll kill you. WITH ADORABLENESS!!! AWWWW!!! AWWWWWW!!! AWWWWWWW!!!

And then your heart bursts out of your chest like an ejecting fighter pilot and your brain turns to butterscotch pudding and the rest of your organs run around and switch places with each other like schoolkids playing a prank on the substitute and all your blood evaporates like pond water in a drought and the kitten...? He just walks away, all evil, to kill again.