Eleemosynary Endowments for Éclat

If you have to make a spectacle of yourself to donate to a charitable cause, please take two seconds before posting the humblebraggy video on Facebook or YouTube to reflect on what you’re actually doing.

Yes, I’m talking about the #icebucketchallenge to raise money for ALS. (Wait…what’s ALS? Oh yeah, that’s the thing I support when I write a check or whatever. Does that get me more hits or likes? Will that make it go viral?) I’m willing to bet that 98% of the morons who are doing this don’t have any idea about the cause they’re supporting.

“OMG, Kayleigh, like we totes have to have a wet t-shirt contest video thing and then send money to the LDS!”

“Yes!! What’s LDS?”

“He’s like a Mormon hockey guy or something who got a disease and now he’s an announcer on ESPN who sits next to Kirk Herbstreit on that football show.”

“OMG! I love that guy! I didn’t know he was sick!”

Donate your time at a homeless shelter, volunteer to help some disadvantaged kids, write a check payable to your local church…

Don’t try to get famous on social media by donating to a cause you know nothing about.

Hacktastic Hacktation

If you have to use the term “hack,” make sure you’re either using the denotation or you’re talking about something revolutionary. Reusing a red plastic cup (from which you drank PBR last night) as a pencil holder is not a “LIFEHACK OMG BILLY I’M A FRIGGIN GENIUS.”

Life hack #352: Put cucumber slices in water!

Sorry, Brenda. That little submission to Good Housekeeping just doesn’t cut it. You’re not even selling a stretch version such as: Hate drinking plain water? Trick your palate by consuming two calories (!!) of cucumber-enhanced water. You get the benefits of increased water consumption because you’re drinking something that tastes good without all those extra pesky calories! Ugh, Brenda. Your enthusiasm hurts my soul.

Hack Microsoft Word to give you 1.25″ margins!

You’re not “hacking.” You’re changing settings in Word. And your professor/boss/client CAN tell, you idiot. He/she can also tell that you changed the font size to 10.5. Also? You’re fired.

Acceptable uses of the term “hack”:

You just have to hack the firewall to access the COM ports and disengage the blarg blarg nerd words, and then you can bleep blorp the dongle!

Hack three inches off your ratty hair so we don’t have to look at those split ends!

[Controversial journalist or bad actor like Nicolas Cage] is such a hack. He can’t hack it with [someone awesome like–looks up at Netflix screen–Jason Bateman! …Wait! Is Ben Affleck in this too? And Kristen Wiig! Wow. I need to watch this movie again, even though Mila Kunis is annoying].

In closing, Jason Bateman, Will Smith, and Charlize Theron are my favorite actors, so the movie Hancock is awesome–and don’t misuse the word “hack,” or I’ll throatpunch you.