Complex Numbers

My Canny Vice

I need help building the stock of prompts in the Challenge War Chest! Write four prompts of your own and then choose one to write your entry on

I get burned out on prompts from judging "The Writer's Cramp"  [13+] every week, but I'll give this a shot.

1) If you had to switch places with one other person, who would it be and why? What in particular would you do?

2) Describe your dream vacation.

3) Dogs, cats, both, neither?

4) What one vice do you have that you'd like to quit? Why haven't you?

So, as you might have figured out from the title, I'll pick #4 for myself.

As regular readers know, I have many vices. Hell, I'm probably a one-man vice squad. Fortunately for me, they're all legal. Mostly. Okay, all the ones I'll admit to are legal, and for all you know, that's all of them.

I've come to terms with them, though - one of the few benefits of middle age

Why do they call it that, anyway? The average age at death is something like 75, and half of that is 37.5, so middle age should start in your early 30s and end in your 40s.

is that you've either embraced your vices or forsaken them - at some point, my giveashit broke, and the warranty on it had expired.

So, drinking? Check. Smoking? Only cigars, but check. Gambling? Check. Gourmet food? Check, please.

No, the one vice that I'd quit if I could would be my addiction to Coke Zero. I call it Crack Zero. I won't say how much of it I drink, but it's a lot.

I admitted this to my doctor one time, and she shrugged and said, "Well, at least it's not the high-calorie kind." I, of course, took this as a doctor's recommendation to continue.

Now, look, there's a lot of misinformation out there about aspartame and other low-calorie sweeteners. Most of it is bullshit. Some of it is dangerous bullshit, obviously planted by the sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup industry. Aspartame isn't the problem; it's the sodium ions and phosphoric acid and whatnot.

So why don't I just quit?

Short answer: caffeine. Long answer: lots of caffeine. I don't drink coffee; I can't stand the stuff. Never could. I do drink tea, but even the highest-caffeine teas put me to sleep more than they keep me awake - and believe me, I drink some high-octane teas. And while I'm in a position to sleep when I want and wake up when I want, most of the time, without my caffeine I'm just not alert enough to be arsed to do anything.

So it's caffeinated soft drinks for me. Since sugar and HFCS are really, really bad for me (risk of diabetes and all that), I'm left with diet sodas - all of which taste like dysenteric ass except for Diet Dr Pepper and Crack Zero. I'll drink the former if the latter is sold out, which it often is, thanks to me.

Therefore, no, I'm not quitting anytime soon. Ever run into one of those fucking annoying people who are tired all the time, and when you suggest that maybe they get some sleep, they go "I'll sleep when I'm dead?" They think it's some sort of virtue. And you know this means they'll be dead sooner than they otherwise might? It's kind of like that. I'll quit when I'm dead.