The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Everybody's Free

(to wear sunscreen)

(Written by Chicago newspaper columnist, Mary Schmich -- recently recorded with music by Baz Luhrmann)

Chicago Tribune



Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’97... wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be IT.



The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.



I will dispense this advice now.



Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.



You are NOT as fat as you imagine.



Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.



Do one thing every day that scares you.





Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.





Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.



Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.



Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.





Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.



Get plenty of calcium.



Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.



Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.



Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.



Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.



Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.



Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.



Be nice to your siblings; they are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.



Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography in lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.



Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.





Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.



Respect your elders.



Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.



Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.



Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.



But trust me on the sunscreen.

It's All About The Pentiums

by Al Yankovic



NOTE: Lyrics in ITALICS are sung by a female vocalist.



Lyrics:



It's all about the Pentiums, baby

Uhh, uh-huh, yeah

Uhh, uh-huh, yeah

It's all about the Pentiums, baby

It's all about the Pentiums, baby

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

Yeah



What y'all wanna do?

Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers

Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?

9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?

Workin' at a desk with a dumb little placard?

Yeah, payin' the bills with my mad programming skills

Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills

I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM

I never feed trolls and I don't read spam

Installed a T1 line in my house

Always at my PC, double-clickin' on my mizouse

Upgrade my system at least twice a day

I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K

I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him "Money" for short

I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support

It's all about the Pentiums, what?

You've gotta be the dumbest newbie I've ever seen

You've got white-out all over your screen

You think your Commodore 64 is really neato

What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?

You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh

Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?

You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette

You're the biggest joke on the Internet

Your database is a disaster

You're waxin' your modem, tryin' to make it go faster

Hey fella, I bet you're still livin' in your parents' cellar

Downloadin' pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar

And postin' "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er

I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller

You're just about as useless as jpegs to Hellen Keller



It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)



Now, what y'all wanna do?

Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers

Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?

9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?



Uh, uh, loggin' in now

Wanna run wit my crew, hah?

Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?

They call me the king of the spreadsheets

Got 'em printed out on my bedsheets

My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks

But it was obsolete before I opened the box

You say you've had your desktop for over a week?

Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique

Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great

If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight

My digital media is write-protected

Every file inspected, no viruses detected

I beta tested every operating system

Gave props to some, and others? I dissed 'em

While your computer's crashin', mine's multitaskin'

It does all my work without me even askin'

Got a flat-screen monitor forty inches wide wide

I believe that your says "Etch-A-Sketch" on the side

In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user

You've got your own newsgroup, "alt.total-loser"

Your motherboard melts when you try to send a fax

Where'd you get your CPU, in a box of Cracker Jacks?

Play me online? Well, you know that I'll beat you

If I ever meet you I'll control-alt-delete you

What? What? What? What? What?



It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

Now, what y'all wanna do?

Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers

Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?

9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?

What??