Give me Strength—The Less-intelligent-than-average American Guide to Staying in the Pink.

Need I remind you of what a klutz my genius cousin Myron is? Just yesterday he missed the curb on Flatbush Avenue and turned his ankle with a sound so loud that all six hundred dogs on his small block in Brooklyn started to howl. When his ankle swelled up to the size of a watermelon, I decided to drive him over to the local hospital emergency room. The hospital had made some small changes. They had installed a gated entry to their emergency room parking lot that requires you to swipe an insurance card to gain entry. It was the same thing with the door to the triage nurse’s station. It turns out that they have to treat you, insurance or no, once you show up at the triage desk—but not until them. That’s nothing. We have learned that the tea-party has decided to replace all forms of health insurance with vouchers. In place of health care, seniors will get a voucher for a half priced “grand slam” (aka The Assisted Suicide) at Dennys and each woman will get a voucher that just says no. The rest of us will each get a voucher redeemable for an audio get well card, with a jingle sung from the heart by the Koch brothers to the tune of “I Ain’t Got a Barrel of Money.”

There is only one solution for troubled Americans—oops, sorry if we scared you—we don’t mean voting, we know you aren’t voting. Americans must simply avoid getting sick—forever. But we are all confused over just how to do that—diet, exercise, a bubble boy suit—so that we at Stevieslaw are proud to publish, Give Me Strength—The LAguide to Staying in the Pink. In the guide you will learn the core techniques, practiced by luminaries as diverse as Dr. Oz, Lance Armstrong, Oprah Winfrey and Betty White, to staying healthy well into your platinum years (older than 150) . In the guide you will learn about the importance of:

1. Eating Right: You will learn that maintaining a proper diet is mostly a matter of timing. If broccoli is good for you on Tuesday, you can be certain it will be really bad for you by Thursday. Here, in a stroke of Stevieslaw brilliance, the guide will give you instantaneous food alerts on whatever smart device is currently occupying your every waking moment, so that you can stop chewing on that once-healthful pastrami sandwich and move on to Greek yogurt with embedded m&ms. In the guide you will also learn which 400 supplements are essential to enriching your urine, why dirt is the perfect food, and why Irish coffee can not only improve your mood but will help make you feel like a veritable superman.

2. Exercise: Don’t. Exercise is for people with health insurance. When people say that sports, like tennis, can be played forever—forever actually means until you break something really important that requires metal rods to fix. By all means you should go to your local gym. There you can watch other people exercise—grunt, sweat, gasp and strain—with the understanding that laughter is not just the best medicine, it is also aerobic. In the guide you will learn just how to laugh effortlessly—so that you don’t bust a gut when someone drops a 400 pound weight that just misses their toes.

3. Sleep: In the guide, you will learn that sleep is overrated. It is worrying about not sleeping that will kill you. You will learn the nearly forgotten technique of near sleep; a coma like existence which people mistakenly believed could only be induced by watching reruns of Liberace or Pat Boone TV specials. We will also open up an entire universe of medicinal near sleep inducing herbs that can be smoked, toked or baked in brownies—oh wow.

4. Stress: Avoiding stress is the key to living healthy forever. Sure, your mortgage is underwater and six months late, your job and your spouse were outsourced to Burma, your daughter with the Ph.D. is working as a cashier at a supermarket, your son is over enjoying non-FDA approved medicinals, and you have no health insurance—but don’t worry, be happy. In the guide, you will learn the age old technique of reality avoidance through song. There are hundreds of songs about blue skies alone: how about— Blue skies smilin’ at me Nothin’ but blue skies do I see or Gray skies are gonna clear up. Put on a happy face… Sing, sing, sing.

5. Good Genes: Wish you were born into a family whose members routinely live to be 100? Or perhaps a family with money dating back to the Reformation? Rejoice! If there is one thing we have learned from the birthers, it’s that there are birth certificates and there are birth certificates. We will introduce you to the new rebirthcertification concept that is sweeping the nation. Be reborn into the family you deserve— completely fool Mother Nature and possibly the voting police.

What are you waiting for? Walk, don’t run, to your local store to buy a guide. The life you save may be your own.