Essential Lifestyle Tip #11

House prices. For­eign hol­i­days. Cars. Rela­tion­ships. Chil­dren. Babies. Career pro­spects. Fin­an­cial plan­ning. Once you reach a cer­tain age, these are just some of the most com­mon con­ver­sa­tional top­ics that you will be expec­ted to flit through with con­sum­mate ease in social situ­ations. How­ever, instead of prac­ti­cing your false smile and giv­ing in to the stul­ti­fy­ing bore­dom, insist on sud­denly divert­ing the con­ver­sa­tion onto one of the fol­low­ing top­ics: taxi­dermy, or the finite nature of mor­tal­ity. For max­imum social impact, com­bine the two.