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Because being the same is overrated.

Odds are you’re not familiar with a ditty entitled “Different Yet the Same” from a 1984 episode of Sesame Street. I’m talking about a singing British cow named Gladys and a glass-half-full friend of hers, Buster the Horse. Buster knows cows and horses are different (he’s not stupid!), but he maintains: “Yes, in some ways we’re different, oh, as different as can be, but in some ways we’re the same…You can look at the difference if that’s all you want to do, but I’d rather find a way I like you.”

Vaginal dryness: It’s a topic no one really wants to talk about at length, aside from those silver-haired seductresses in the Osphena commercials, but as of late, “cotton vagina” has kind of become a thing. There’s been a fair amount of hype over the fact that smoking cannabis might temporarily dry you out. And all this time we were thinking it was making sex better! Or maybe I’m the only one who’s that oblivious. But, really? As if there’s not already enough to worry about, what with remembering to keep tampons around once a month and trying not to get pregnant.

Commitment can be so overrated! What to do when you’re in the mood for fun over fidelity

1. Know what you want.
Namely, not a relationship, at least not at this very moment. If you’re in that mode, your desired conquest will smell it a mile away, and that kind of desire or desperation acts as an automatic sexual repellent to most humans. Sad but true. On the flipside, you’re doing this for you, so once you get into the thick of it, so to speak, decide this: Who cares what they (the male or female you’re having sex with) think? One-night stands are shallow, sloppy, and just a tad taboo – and therein lies the appeal.

In New York City, different train routes take on different cannabis-smoking personalities. Or maybe I was just really high when I wrote this… 

Back in the early ʼ80s, prior to New York City’s crack epidemic, you could get away with smoking cannabis anywhere, including on public transportation. I know this not because I was old enough to light a joint on the M79 crosstown (although I did pick up a handful of discarded crack vials and put them in my little-girl purse at the age of four), but because my dad told me. Dads are pretty trustworthy, right?

A satirical guide on how to make good choices when you’re already making bad choices

Calling all party stimulators, troublemakers, rebel-rousers, reality-rejecters, and those who prefer not to think about the future! Everyone else, keep it moving. Fact: Drugs are lame and kind of embarrassing, at least if you admit your appreciation for them in the wrong company. Another fact: Drugs can be both fun and useful. They can also destroy your life, but I’m a spiked glass-half-full kind of person. As long as you counter your days and late nights of untamed hedonism, dirty debauchery, and generally illicit behavior with healthiness and balance, your life should remain relatively in tact. And if it doesn’t, disregard everything I say, always.

Full disclosure: I cheated my way through school. From elementary to tenth grade, I prided myself on being sneaky and getting away with it, which included plans as simple as sitting across from the hyper-smart nerd and stealthily swiping answers or hiding notes on the floor of the chemistry lab, as well as those of a more elaborate variety, like scribbling Spanish conjugations on strategic parts of my legs. I knew it was wrong, per se, but I rationalized it takes dedication and cunning to cheat successfully, so I was proving my intelligence in another way. 

How to get down and dirty with your money – or what little is left of it  

Money has never been my forte. Growing up, though, I did impress my parents with my self-disciplined ability to save my allowance. I would put five-dollar bills in my bubblegum pink “safe” box until they’d add up to a hundred and counting. But by the time I was 12 or 13, all frugality, as well as common sense, had gone out the window. Money wasn’t for saving. It was for spending.

How to find your cool, keep it, run with it, and eventually cling to it like grim death

1. Define your own “cool” terms.
Successfully playing it cool isn’t as simple as finding a balance between being a needy bitch and an ice queen, or a desperado and a casanova. It’s emanating a particular brand of appealing insouciance that feels almost unattainable to others.

The fact that the word "selfie" is not only now in our everyday vernacular but the dictionary says it all. We are living in an age when children to grandparents and especially everyone in between is totally comfortable announcing they want attention and they want it now.

When I was 12 years old, my mother hit pause on the VCR player, stopping the movie we were watching. I’m pretty sure it was starring Ashley Judd, and it could have been A Time to Kill, but all I remember is that whatever it was involved rape. She told me, with tears in her eyes, that when she was 23 years old, she was abducted by a stranger, held captive in the Southern California woods, and brutally raped to within an inch of her life.

Stimulate, intoxicate, exhilarate…then vacate!

1. Know the scene. And dress accordingly.
There’s a myriad genre of parties out there, and each one has a specific vibe and an unspoken dress code. Unless, of course, the event is of the engraved-invitation variety, and in that case, the code is pretty direct.

Try as I might, not every ends with a clean, makeup-free face and silken pajamas

Of the 10,080 minutes in the week, 9:00 p.m. on Friday is the most exhilarating. The weekend is full of promise and you don’t know where the night will take you. Cut to twelve hours later, give or take, and you awaken. Groggy, with a stuffed-up nose and a rancid taste in your mouth. Perhaps next to a snoring stranger who looked a lot better through your beer goggles in that bar’s gracious veil of darkness… wait, which bar was it?

Forget faking it ‘til you make it. Fake it ‘til you feel great!

1. Appreciate the difference between fake and phony.
Disregard the negative connotation. Faking it isn’t about pretending you have it all together (the reality is no one in the world really does, anyway) or about sticking yourself with more emotional work, like feigning cheerfulness when you’re having a seriously rough go. There’s a big difference between faking it and being phony. Phony people are the worst. Being phony is not only vaguely deplorable; it’s a grave waste of time and energy.

Social anxiety, and tradition, be damned! Who says you have to have friends or plans to have a killer night?

1. Trust yourself. But not anyone else.
At least not in a genuine manner. Even if you manage to get in with a group (see Tip #7), you must be wary and shrewd, in order to avoid getting roofied, taken advantage of, robbed, attacked, sodomized, and the like. Indeed, there’s a big difference between having a blast and getting blasted. Keep your street-smart skepticism well in tact, while remaining open-minded to what the evening might bring.

So goes the old saying, “If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad…” But what happens when as much as Muhammad would love to go to the mountain, he can’t because he can’t take off work, doesn’t have the dough to swing a pricy plane ticket, or it’s just not the right time to travel because real life is in the way? When a sultry mid-winter escape isn’t within reach, you don’t necessarily have to succumb to a deathly pallor, the warming comfort of whiskey, and the dreaded word pairing “polar vortex.” Invite the pleasures of summer to its opposing season, and remind yourself it’s the little things that count.