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About the Authors

Noel Boivin lives in Thailand where he writes for and is the chief sub-editor of the Sunday Bangkok Post and two weekend magazines. Boivin worked previously as an editor for the South China Morning Post, Thailand's Amarin Press, and has written for several publications, including the National Post, CNN GO and the Calgary Herald.

Toronto resident Chris Lombardo has written for the Globe & Mail, National Post and the Toronto Star. He has made appearances on Global National TV, CBC Newsworld TV, CBC Radio and discussed social media on Newstalk 1010. He is currently a media monitor and editor at Cision Canada.

In 2007, Boivin and Lombardo's first book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, was published by Penguin. Tastes Like Human is their second collaboration.

Lists from their website, TheSharkGuys dot com, have been featured on many sites including FARK, Cracked, IMDb, Gorilla Mask, Sports Illustrated, Huffington Post, Mental Floss, Comedy dot com and L Magazine. For rights inquiries, contact Janet Rosen of the Sheree Bykofsky Associates Literary Agency.

Dedications

For Linda Boivin and Inge Lombardo.

In loving memory of my grandmother

Ursula Elsa Denby (1920-2011) CL

Acknowledgements

We had the name "The Shark Guys" thrust upon us by interns ("thrust" and "interns" rarely appearing in the same sentence outside of congressional hearings) working for Penguin, publisher of our first humor book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery. You might need to pass a lung function test to say that out loud, but it's a guaranteed good time.

We started TheSharkGuys dot com to promote that first book. But what started as a site for drunken funnies and book plugs turned into a popular list site ... that'll once again soon have no shortage of book plugs. Things have gone swimmingly since and that is due in great part to links to our lists from sites big and small, friends both online and off and timely tweets by media figures with huge followings.

There are dozens of people who helped bring the madness to the masses and we owe them a debt of gratitude. This isn't everybody, but thanks to: Jason English and Allison Keene at @ MentalFloss dot com; The Book of Awesome author Neil Pasricha @ 1000AwesomeThings dot com; Stephen Handley @ GorillaMask.net; Michael McKean and Roger Ebert, whose tweets not only helped but whose work we've long enjoyed; The Ebert Club newsletter editor Marie Haws; Bill Chinaski @ AlternativeReel dot com; Angelina Anderson @ SnarkysMachine.wordpress dot com; Cary McNeal @ Listoftheday.blogspot dot com; Eric Rogell @ TheBachelorGuy dot com; Matt Gibbs @ TheSmokingJacket dot com; e-book guru Joe Konrath @ Jakonrath.blogspot dot com.

Also two smart salutes snapped off to two people who have helped us look good, and we're not referring to our haberdashers, Emily Carlin at Swank Web Style, Ian Shimkoviak of the Book Designers, who designed the cover for this book, Donna and Alex at Carrick Publishing who handled the e-book conversions and cartoonist Stephane Peray, who drew the shark featured in the banner of our website.

And on a personal note, thanks to all of those who inspired us with their own works and provided encouragement when procrastination was looking for a long-term lease: Chanyanuch Chaisorn, Suzan Krepostman, the Bryan family, Wayne Boivin, Jody Nolan, Stacy Gardner, Jen Moyer, Tim Footman, Stuart Maga, Lovisa Inserra, Brett Debritz, Jim Algie, Mike Sauve and Paul Ruffini. We also appreciate all those who have supported the website and the pair behind it over the years. We are ready and willing to wash your vehicles this very weekend.

Noel Boivin and Christopher Lombardo

Introduction

Lists bring order to chaos, keeping the hoi polloi from lowering the tone at exclusive nightclubs and ensuring that hit men with memory problems don't accidentally snip the wrong brake lines. They also give people who don't follow the news and aren't obsessed with the personal affairs of others things to talk about – top films featuring a fruit in the title (A Clockwork Orange for number one), or top celebrities with whom I would readily fornicate if they suddenly took an interest in poor, unknown people who make up fantasy lists in bars.

We love lists. We've been using them as our main format on our website TheSharkGuys dot com since day one. Well, not quite, but as soon as we realized they meant an online readership beyond friends, family and spambots, we were hooked. That they are custom made for writers who break into a flop sweat when asked to go beyond a few sentences following a bullet point is immaterial.

Tastes Like Human is a list book, but unlike some in the genre it's not crammed with trivia – we list neither the four fattest astronauts to be launched in a lunar probe nor the top 10 people who drowned trying to build a car that floats. The lists here reflect some of our main interests: sloth (Chapter I – Idolizing the Idle); weird animal stories (Chapter II – Man, Goat, Love: Gone Wild Kingdom); the zany happenings in the realms of religion and the occult – with a dash of death thrown in (Chapter III – The Super Unnatural); giving society's seamy underbelly a good rub (Chapter IV – There Oughtta Be a Law Against This Kind of Chapter), and, finally, telling others what to do (Chapter V – The Shark Guys' Guide to Living).

There are lists here on topics such as the world's horniest cult leaders; great feats accomplished while sitting; violent acts tied directly to karaoke; marriages between animals and humans; a study of how mass murderers measure up against the attributes most commonly associated with their astrological signs ... and at least one exploding whale. The Shark Guys take a bite at all of these and more in Tastes Like Human.

Noel and Chris

AKA, The Shark Guys

ONE

IDOLIZING THE IDLE

Top 8 Great Achievements in Sitting

Chances are you’re sitting right now. (We’d like to think not on the crapper, but if so, please disinfect the device before passing it on, as not doing so is how plagues start. If you're reading this at work, we want your job.)

While you kick back, think about how working conditions have improved in the age of the cushy office job compared with the heyday of the railroad dynamiter – hell, even sweatshop workers stitching up a chain store’s fall line get chairs these days. However, this isn’t all positive. Willing your body to amorphous goo with a sedentary lifestyle will shave years off your life and if you smoke while sitting down, the strain of jumping up in shock at just how unhealthy that is might kill you, so we won’t elaborate.

While sitting around all day has been responsible for the early delivery of many couch potatoes to the bone yard, some major accomplishments have been made while folks were seated. Some of the great declarations were signed and some of the great poker hands were dealt while people were sitting, and in the spiritual realm yogic fliers have proven that dragging yourself across a hardwood floor isn’t just for pets with worms. Sitting also brings moments of great clarity: enlightenment through meditation, a brilliant idea whilst on the commode or remembering that key bit of evidence guaranteed to exonerate you as your final call for clemency goes to the governor's voice mail. Here we’re focusing on eight feats involving sitting that, like missionary sex with a devout Christian, could not have occurred in any other position.

8. Children Should be Seated and Not Heard

We were horrified when we read that 722 school kids set a world record for the most people sitting on one chair. Don’t get us wrong, we thoroughly dislike children – they’re good mainly for beer fetching when the fridge is too far from the living room – but even we would balk at seeing 400 of the munchkins crushed in such a stunt (more, possibly, depending on where the heavier ones were situated). As it happens, they took turns sitting on the chair, so big deal really. (Community Free Press, [Missouri] September 2007)

7. Giving a Sit for Charity

Most people change seats after making quick judgment calls – should I get up for this elderly person who might not really be all that old but has just let himself go, or do I really want to wake up to a face like that should I decide to doze off on the bus.

Briton Terry Twining made the mundane marvelous when he changed seats 40,040 times in 48 hours at a soccer stadium in Belgium. It should be said that the stadium was completely empty – free from lager-swilling hooligans who’d likely not take kindly to those making the mundane marvelous in the middle of a game, so points off for deception. (Daily Telegraph, December 2008)

6. No Slouch on the Couch

Although we get as much exercise as the right to vote in a fascist state, our native country of Canada is home to many fine athletes, like this guy we know who can balance a tennis ball on the end of a hockey stick for longer than we care to watch him. Then there’s Torontonian Suresh Joachim, who holds an endurance record for which a long stretch of unemployment would be considered training camp – the most consecutive hours watching TV.

Joachim watched the tube for 69 hours and 48 minutes on Live With Regis and Kelly – that’s “on” Regis and Kelly, not “of”, the man’s experience wasn’t as Clockwork Orange as that. Joachim was given 15-minute breaks every eight hours to apply eye drops, vacate his bowels and pray for another writers’ strike. (Associated Press, September 2005)

5. Blades of Glory

Lawns, like attractive neighbors who always keep the blinds drawn, rob suburban living of joy. Pushing some noisy contraption up and down a patch of sod just to ensure conformity with the rest of the poor slobs similarly ruining their Saturdays is enough to make you want to swan dive on the blade. Riding mowers offer a slight improvement, in that you can swig canned beer and fling the empties behind you while treading the same piece of infertile land like a dustbowl rube.

Gary “Don’t Call me Mad” Hatter escaped this drudgery by hitting the road with his riding mower, a pimped out model with a canopy to guard against rain, and two large storage boxes containing provisions attached to the back. Hatter made it through all 48 contiguous states, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico, a record-setting 23,487.5km (about 15,000 mile) journey, and presumably one he will have to retrace to do the weeding along the edges. (The Daily Triplicate, November 2000, Guinness Records, 2009)

4. That Come Slither Look

Stretching out in a warm bath with a good book or a good person is a luxury accessible even to those who save the water for dishes later on. All that’s needed is a hot water heater, a tub large enough to accommodate and the ability to rouse yourself if you’re in there alone, pass out drunk and loathe clichés. Tubs should never be used in the way that Jackie Bibby, the "Texas Snake Man", used his.

Bibby broke a world record by sitting in a tub filled with 87 rattlesnakes for 45 minutes. Either of us would have gladly accepted a cash-stuffed envelope to do this had the tub been filled with water that the snakes had been held under for a few days, but that wasn’t the case here – the rattlers were dry, alive, and poisonous. Bibby wasn’t bitten, despite his name going so damn well the past tense of that verb. (BBC, November 2007)

3. In Pole Position

Guinness World Records classifies some records as “unbreakable”, ones that are highly unlikely to be repeated. The eruptions on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883, heard as far away as Perth, Australia, probably won't be bested in the loud sound category, even by an upset tourist at a currency exchange booth. And then there are those that people wouldn't even attempt because a Guinness record doesn't come with the sort of rock star cachet that would make the required sacrifice worthwhile. Among these is one set by Simeon Stylites, a Syrian saint who holds the record for pole-sitting, the unenterprising man’s version of pole vaulting.

Pole-sitting was a popular pastime during the Victorian era (as was nursing broken bones from same) and it was briefly revived during the Great Depression, an indication of just how well named that period was. Fifteen-year-old Avon Foreman of Baltimore set the amateur pole-sitting record of nearly 11 days in 1921, but that was cat stuck in a tree stuff compared to Simeon's feat. He hopped up on a pillar in 422AD and stayed there until his death in 459AD (at which time someone presumably climbed up to check things out after complaints about the wind having turned).

Simeon was quite an attraction at the time, and people would climb up the pillar to ask for advice. (Just how badly are things going when you need to seek counsel from a lunatic who has spent three decades hovering above civilization?)

2. Please, Don’t Play it Again Romuald

Exposure to interminable piano playing can be kept to a bare minimum provided the fruit of your loins isn't holding a recital and giving you cause to rethink your plan to one day retire on the kid's showbiz earnings.

George Bernard Shaw once said that hell was “full of amateur musicians”. Here’s an act that would grace the marquee of the devil’s cocktail lounge – a 103-hour piano recital showcase. Polish pianist Romuald Koperski earned a Guinness World Record by accomplishing this very feat, with only one five-minute break every hour to crack each of his knuckles. All the tunes had to be well known hits, so he couldn’t just make like a once-great rock star in hock to the internal revenue service and ice his wrists before banging out B-sides. (Krakow Post, May 2010)

1. If You Like my Bodhi …

Holy men compete with night security guards when it comes to the amount of time spent on buttocks in a fugue state. Sitting is best for meditation in particular, as lying down would probably cause you to fall asleep and if you do it standing up people might get confused and form a line behind you.

Ram Bahadur Bomjon, or “Buddha Boy”, was first spotted meditating under a Bodhi tree in Nepal in May, 2005, where he reportedly stayed until March of the following year. Devotees believed that Bomjon went this entire stretch without eating or drinking despite one piece of irrefutable evidence suggesting otherwise: he was not found dead in a heap in front of the tree.

What is undisputed, thanks to documentary crews who filmed him with a careful eye for any surreptitious plate-spinning, is Bomjon’s ability to remain perfectly still for hours on end ... a skill more commonly mastered by bird-watchers and, say, dead bird-watchers. (The Mirror, December 2006)

10 Reasons to Keep Found Items

When you find something that someone else has misplaced – whether it be cash, a phone or a laptop with state secrets – common courtesy dictates that you do your best to return the item. You get to feel like a star citizen and hopefully the relieved recipient does the right thing and ponies up reward money or perhaps the number of a friendly cop able to fix a parking ticket with one quick call.

We reject that convention. Don’t get us wrong, we are not advocating theft, and if what you found has a pulse and would be unethical to include in a soup, it should most likely be returned. But if fortune smiles upon you, winks, and gives a subtle nod in the direction of a piece of jewelry capable of choking a horse (never test this out), we say check for surveillance cameras, scoop and vamoose.

Some will no doubt take umbrage at this and indeed there is one compelling argument against walking around with eyes cast downward in search of treasure – you could end up under a bus if you stray from the sidewalk. But what we’re proposing here benefits everyone: you, most importantly, but also the individual who lost the item and even society at large. Here are 10 reasons why it is in everyone’s best interest that we all adopt a no-returns policy.

10. Other People’s Money Can Bring Happiness

The prevailing wisdom has it that other people’s money cannot bring you happiness and that satisfaction is attainable only through the fruits of one’s own labor (as in the spiritual and economic sustenance derived from work not whatever you can smuggle out during your shift as a fruit-picker). That is utter bosh. When you can get your hands on a fat sum of cash or a big-ticket item without first having had to murder precious leisure hours or a neighbor, well the ensuing pleasure is just right off the charts.

9. It Teaches the Feckless a Valuable Lesson

Nobody likes to wake up hungover and minus a wallet, phone, keys or whatever else can spill out of your pockets while you’re stretched out in a taxi’s backseat. But there are lessons to be learned from pain, such as the importance of taking better care of one’s belongings and why wine should be consumed by the bottle and not by the box. Or you could reject such strictures on your bacchanalian ways and keep your cash in your socks.

Regardless, what better way to impart a valuable life lesson than one that enriches you?

8. The Found Item/Cash Could be the Proceeds From Drug Sales

If movies have taught us anything (besides that women prefer funny slobs to rich snobs), it’s that money-filled briefcases belong to people with weapons caches larger than your average police precinct, who are just as trigger-happy and corrupt.

Found money is usually of nefarious origin – the payout, perhaps, from a drug deal that required someone to insert something into an orifice without the aid of a medical professional. To ensure that your conscience is clear of involvement in such shady dealings, keep the money and buy your own drugs from a reputable supplier.

7. Strike a Blow Against Materialism

It is unhealthy to develop attachments to inanimate objects, as anyone who has introduced tongue to metal pole during the winter can attest. The wise man should be able to take his favorite piece of furniture – let’s say the futon upon which he first got laid – set it aflame, and float it down the nearest river like a Viking funeral ship. By appropriating someone else’s belongings you are helping to elevate that person to a higher state of being. And their relatives will thank you too when they have less junk to throw out after said individual carks it.

6. You Risk not Getting a Reward

It’s an alarming but true fact: Unless clearly specified in an ad, the chances are less than half that you will be financially compensated for returning a lost item. Of course, you will feel obliged by convention to return the item and hope that the standard three-step reward process follows: (1) shrug off thanks; (2) politely decline the offer of a reward once, and only once; and (3) say, “Now, are you sure?” before accepting the reward, relieved that you didn’t return something to a cheapskate.

If the person to whom you are returning the item veers from this time-honored protocol, the ensuing bitterness is unspeakable. Spare yourself the risk of experiencing it by never returning anything.

5. To Avoid Scammers

When you report a found item, it’s highly likely that some greedy no account will make a false claim for it. From a moral perspective, you tell us what is preferable: rewarding your perspicacity in finding that Rolex in the intensive care unit or potentially handing over an expertly engineered precision timepiece to some lost and found larcenist?

4. The Person who Lost the Item Could be a Real Prick

This individual is obviously careless and irresponsible for having lost the item in question. To what extent do these traits carry over into this individual's life and spread like a poison to those nearest? Have the gills of this person's pet fish been permanently stilled by neglect? Is he or she a checkout line small change counter? Perhaps we're dealing with a hit and run parking lot murderer or a national parks cigarette-leaving arsonist. Do you really want to support someone of that ilk?

3. It's Like Pay it Forward Only Without All That Sappy Bullshit

The movie Pay it Forward was based on the concept of doing a good deed for someone in response to a kindness that you were shown by another person. It's kind of like Fight Club, except the trend that catches on nationwide involves letting hobos sleep in your garage rather than bashing up cubicle jockeys in subterranean dungeons.

Many people, however, are too selfish, lazy or busy to go about doing this kind of thing. By leaving belongings behind they are unintentionally entering themselves into a "pay it forward"-like system. You are the beneficiary and you will invariably lose something soon enough, thus the cycle continues. The world may not end up being a kinder place, but at least you finally get to know what it's like to own a product produced by Apple.

2. You Might Have Finder’s Remorse

Picture this: You’re in an international rowing regatta (don’t worry if you can’t swim, this is a thought experiment). Your team loses. The winning team then stages an impromptu pier party, complete with "air hump" taunts directed at you and your teammates. As this spectacle is taking place, you notice the wallet of one member of this team fall out while he's using one hand to do a headstand and the other to crotch chop in your general direction. You might consider it your ethical duty to point out the dropped wallet, but some pricks deserve to be taught a lesson. Therefore it is okay to snatch the item or kick it into the drink as the situation dictates.

1. Found Valuables Can Make Excellent Gifts

This is especially true if they fail to light up eyes at the pawn shop. Items such as these can come in handy when special occasions sneak up, like the anniversary of the birth of someone you might have played a key role in conceiving, or a meeting held abroad to grease the wheels of commerce in the developing world.

Top 5 Unlucky Lottery Losers

Some believe the very concept of luck is a holdover from the days when a home remedy for the common cold was to coat the sufferer’s throat with honey and tie him upside-down to a stake stuck in an anthill. (To be fair, that might have taught said sufferer to think twice about mentioning petty ailments.) Despite the persistence of such learned spoilsports, the concept of luck has taken hold in the popular imagination and, like a toilet-originating communicable disease, it is hard to shake.

Luck is a convenient way to explain the hard-to-swallow fact that life’s miseries are as random and unpleasant as the music on a cab driver’s radio. How often have we heard things like, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all,” trotted out by people who believe, deep down, that cruel unseen powers have conspired against them covering the spread?

Lotteries keep such misery mongers from clogging up the canals by speaking to a common dream: living in luxury without having to be part of a class-action lawsuit over something that would keep you from enjoying the money much anyway (like being exposed to so much toxicity that a Budweiser sign wouldn’t be the only thing glowing in a dark bar with you in it). Indeed, the prospect of ditching work and taking up residence in a country with ample coasts, bosoms and tax loopholes is the cubicle reverie of many a solitaire champ.

You are statistically likelier to be touched inappropriately by a person dressed as your favorite cartoon character than to win a lottery jackpot during your lifetime. Perhaps it is better just to be content with a win that provides you with just enough to purchase the next losing ticket than to end up like these people for whom close encounters with the lottery meant more ruin than riches.

5. One Man’s Trash is Often Just That

It’s hard to put a price on one’s dignity, but there are times when it clearly has been marked for a discount. Such was the case when an unemployed Seattle carpenter realized too late that the rules governing lottery number combinations had changed after he had already tossed a winning $10,000 ticket in the trash at a local store. The man paid $200 to have the garbage, all four tons’ worth, dumped out onto a relative's driveway. This was followed by a fruitless – though probably not in terms of rotten fruit found – “grimy four day search”. (New York Times, February 1983)

4. Ain't No Sunshine When it's Gone

While the Seattle carpenter was the victim of a change in the rules governing the lottery, a 69-year-old Florida man, like many a many a Final Jeopardy! renegade before him, lost his fortune all on his own. If you win the lottery, it's advisable to take good care of the ticket – stick it between your teeth on the drive to cash it in if need be. The Florida man did not exercise such caution and lost his winning $500,000 Gold Rush ticket en route to the lottery office. According to the man, the worst part was that without his signature, anyone who finds the ticket could turn it in as his or her own. Yes, losing it due to his own carelessness was not the worst part – knowing that someone else could benefit was. Prick. (Palm Beach Post, August 2009)

3. The Shallow End of the Pool

Workplace lottery pools lift employee morale, offering a fantasy right up there with violent ones involving a bag of doorknobs, a just-promoted rival and a dark room with a door that locks from the inside and, of course, those of the sexual variety involving the most action the photocopier has seen since the toner was replaced.

Office dwellers, their souls slowly sucked out like discount liposuction as they realize it would take 145 years of eating cat food at their current salary to bank a million bucks, find it hard to pass up the lottery pool. A woman in Queensland, Australia contributed to her office’s lottery pool faithfully every week – until she didn’t, and, you guessed it, her colleagues hit it big, scooping up a cool $11 million. Worse, the payout, in the hundreds of thousands apiece, wasn’t considered enough for them to retire on, so this woman had to go on working with, and no doubt despising, these people. (Sunday Mail, October 2000)

2. The Newspaper Regrets

Being a regular lotto player means shouldering the derision of those who say that you are far likelier to get flesh-eating disease than win (especially given your personal hygiene habits). Still, you continue to plunk down your “lucky” numbers, which grow less deserving of that appellation with every draw, in the hopes that one day your ship will come in and you’ll be able to live on it with beautiful people in tax-free waters.

A 62-year-old Montreal man thought this was the case when he opened his newspaper, checked the lottery numbers against his picks and found that they matched for – mon dieu! – $42 million, the second largest jackpot in Canadian history. Things turned ugly a few hours later when he learned that the newspaper had printed the wrong numbers. (Canadian Press, August 2006)

1. Scratch That

In the case of the Montreal mug above, the newspaper made the mistake, not the lottery provider. More sympathetic is the case of a 58-year-old in Florida who purchased what she thought was a winning $500,000 scratch lottery ticket. Scratch tickets are one of the simplest forms of gambling imaginable, requiring only a long fingernail or a coin and the ability to spot matches. Still, the woman presented the card to lottery officials who told her it was a misprint – the ticket was missing an authenticating serial number, and hence no fortune would be forthcoming. (Lottery Post, May 2010)

7 People Who Should Not Win the Lottery

Stories of those who’ve just struck it rich in the lottery inspire – only the folks who hand out government arts grants do more to reward the bone idle – and it’s nice to hear a rags to riches tale that doesn’t celebrate pimping and terrorizing innocent people for decades like every Hollywood gangster film ever made. But there are some lottery winners out there who just don’t deserve it. When they win a jackpot it taints the entire enterprise. Lottery officials would do well to rewrite some of the fine print on the backs of tickets to ensure that the types listed here are banned from claiming prizes.

7. Really Old People

Lotteries should have a maximum age limit for players, say 65, or a decade less than the average life expectancy in the country where the tickets are sold. Optimally, lottery winners should be between 25 and 35: old enough not to squander the money on charitable or social causes tied to the ideals of youth, and young enough to still have many years left during which they can frivolously piss away their winnings. It could be argued that although the elderly might well be on the verge of hearing their final numbers called, they could still pass on their winnings to family, but most people despise the recipients of inherited wealth.

6. Strip Club/Gambling Aficionados

If you enjoy an afternoon spent plugging away at a casino’s nickel machines before rushing off for a happy hour lap dance at the local Gawk and Grope, then chances are winning the lottery will not put you on the noble path. As terrific as a bottomless pot of money from which to pull out wads of cash while pursuing the right and true cause of debauchery seems, these stories more often than not end up in newspapers with lurid headlines like: "A Lusty Lottery Winner’s Plunge From Top of World to Bottom of Lake.”

5. People Who Play in Large Syndicates

Playing in large syndicates dilutes rewards to such a degree that it takes the sheen off participating at all. Whereas a handful of people could use a jackpot to pay off loan sharks, student debts, alimony or to finance alimony-negating ploys, spreading the winnings among too many people means the best you’ll be able to afford is a package trip to somewhere lousy.

4. The Overly Charitable

There’s something to be said for spreading the wealth if your personal fortunes have grown from the fiver you filched out of your roommate’s wallet for cigarettes to a number that forces you to recall elementary school mathematics lessons. Decency obliges lottery winners to kick some of their winnings into a charitable cause, say the Hemorrhoid Pillows for the Developed World Campaign, or the Fund to Silence Celebrities Spouting Crazy Theories on Vaccinations. But it’s nauseating when a lottery winner donates the majority or even all of a jackpot to charity. Philanthropy on this scale has no place in what should be the tawdry nouveau riche world of lottery winners.

3. People in Shaky Marriages

It’s a common enough scenario – a marriage goes from teary-eyed wedding toasts to bitter snapping about why one’s partner no longer feels the need to suppress farts. An atmosphere of quiet loathing prevails, tempered only by the thought of what a hassle it would be to hire a lawyer and fill out all the paperwork needed for a divorce. Then one of the parties wins the lottery and the divorce lawyer is staying in the guestroom as a fight more brutal than anything ever sanctioned under MMA rules erupts over the jackpot.

2. Previous Winners

People who have already popped their lottery cherry should be immediately disqualified from further windfalls. There is a reason ugly men latch on to the first good looking woman who gives them the time of day – good things are not meant to happen too often.

1. People who Don’t Quit their Jobs

By far, the most aggravating type of lottery winner is the individual who says – company cap atop his creative dead space of a noggin – that this tremendous good fortune won’t change him, and that he’ll keep his job. While it might be fine to utter such tripe when the cameras are rolling as a face-saving gesture for coworkers consigned to the hell from which you’ve just been given an exit pass, you should be planning to be in another country with another wife. Only the demented keep working after winning a lottery jackpot large enough to keep them in silk undergarments until the grave. Most sane people would let their bosses know, “You’re number one!” with an upraised middle digit and, depending on the person, do something showy on the way out like take a dump in a front lobby potted plant.

Top 10 Easiest College Majors

Job prospects for college arts majors are dimmer than the romantic eateries in which people with more practical schooling can afford to further adulterous relationships. It’s important to choose a college major carefully so you don’t end up like one of Dickens’ grubbier characters, skulking up to cousins at family barbecues, and asking, “You done with that?”

Still there is something to be said for majoring in a subject that will allow you to focus on the glory of college life – four job-free years of introducing a virgin liver to the trials that await and chasing coeds, while your parents rent out your room to parolees. In that spirit, we offer this guide to the easiest college majors.

[Editors’ Note: The two of us hold three of the degrees on this list, so we know whereof we speak.]

10. English

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