The Seven Signs of The Apoplectic

Who says television doesn't provide us with useful information? Here are seven signs that you will live a long life, according a report by Hoda Kotb on NBC:

1. You will live a long life if your mom was 22 instead of 32 when she had you. That's because her 22 year old eggs are fresher. O-o-o-o, there's a shocker.

2. Do squats instead of push ups. Strong glutes, hammies and quads are better for preventing falls and fractures when you're an old fart. [Assuming you can still squat by then.]

3 Drink five cups of green tea instead of having any diet soda. Drinking stuff that tastes like Chinese furniture lowers your risk from heart disease and stroke. Diet soda, not so much.

4. Dump your housekeeper and do your own cleaning when you're seventy. They say an hour of "movement" is an anti-ager. So sipping a glass of Metamucil while sitting on the toilet could also do the trick. Or you could substitute an hour of sex with a broom. Ooops, has Mrs. L been inappropriate?

5. Eating purple food is better for you than eating green food. Hmmm, how about some pickled beets and a nice Chianti?

6. Deli meats or burgers? Neither -- this was a trick question. They both increase colorectal cancer. Unless you dip them in bleach before serving.

7. Is it better to be a high school graduate or a college freshman? Anyone who has had their dad wake them up on Saturdays to mow the lawn knows that getting out of the house and going to college beats anything in high school. But apparently you live longer if you have more than twelve years of education. Actually, I think you start living longer the minute you get out of the house.

As of today, I've lived longer than a lot of people I went to high school with. So I think that gives me the right to include some of my personal thoughts on how to live past your freshness date.

Here, for your perusal, are Mrs. Linklater's seven suggestions for a long and happy life:

1. Don't fall alseep on a Greyhound bus listening to your iPod.

2. Don't be a young African American teenage boy in Chicago's inner city.

3. Don't make plans to go to the mall with that really nice guy you met on the internet, if you're thirteen.

4. Don't accept an all expenses paid trip to Paris, Tokyo and Rome from a blind date named Abdul.

5. Do not have sex with people who only use one name.

6. Do not marry O.J. Simpson.

7. Floss.

That was easy. Tomorrow I'll give financial advice.