GifDay
Life is all about learning. We better ourselves as we improve our understanding of the daily hardships and tough truths we encounter. The more we experience, the wiser we become. Sadly, there are some life lessons that we must wait years, decades, to learn.
Screw that. Let’s learn them right now. But rather than simply tell you some things you should know about life, let us learn them more viscerally. And by viscerally, I mean through short, low-fi, endlessly looping images with no sound – GIFs.
There’s so much you can learn from GIFs, such as…
Always Be Prepared For What Lurks Around The Corner
Every day comes packed with new surprises, both big and small. Some days you’ll wake up and be surprised when your significant other forgoes their traditional morning coffee and instead opts for some invigorating morning sex. Other mornings, you step out of bed and into a fresh mound of dog poop in your slippers. Or you’ll be walking out of a shed with what appears to be some rope and a dead stuffed dog, and your friend will attempt to bludgeon you with a large plank.
Life requires us all to be nimble, agile; able to rapidly adapt to an always changing situation. Sometimes life will be standing around the corner, waiting to smack the hell out of you, and you must be ready to channel every Steven Seagal movie you’ve ever seen in an instant and deliver a bowel-shattering side-kick to life’s guts. Then maybe throw some random object at life as it writhes in pain, as if to call life a dumbass.
Be Careful Who You Piss Off – They Might Be Crazy
We all want everyone to be kind and courteous. That never happens. Most people, as it turns out, are monstrous jerks who merrily use your testicles (or boobs, if applicable) as a stepping stool to get ahead in life. This GIF is an example of that. Traffic merging lanes are one of those simple yet beautiful human interactions that let us know we’re going to be alright. I go, then you go. Oh, you want me to go? Oh, no. I insist, please, you go. It’s strangers being kind to strangers in the middle of bumper-to-bumper traffic, the one place you’d expect everyone to de-evolve in to primitive cave people that somehow got behind the wheel of a two-ton death machine. If you don’t let someone merge, the most you’ll get in response from the average motorist is an aggravated honk and maybe a few obscene hand gestures, followed by some screaming you’ll never hear because the person forgot to lower their window. But every once in a while you’ll piss off someone that is a short-fused maniac with a gun. This is the person that thinks a gun can solve most, if not all, problems. In short, they’re crazy and they wear their craziness on their sleeve…or keep it in their lap as they drive so they can easily access their craziness in a moment’s notice.
It’s unavoidable – you will piss off many people as you trek through life. Just be mindful of who you’re potentially pissing off.
Never Begrudge People For Being Naturally Cool
When we can’t get our words our correctly or our social awkwardness has made us look like an ass in public yet again, we can’t help but look at really cool people – people like Elvis or Frank Sinatra – and hate them just a little bit. We all want to be The Fonz, but the truth is most of us have more in common with Steve Urkel.
Coolness doesn’t come naturally to most of us, but we should begrudge cool people for being who they are. Nothing you do or say to the cool person will make you any cooler. In fact, you’ll probably end up looking like an even bigger loser, just as the GIF shows us.
In the GIF, which appears to be set in a restaurant kitchen, we see our cool guy spinning a tray on his finger tip, as cool guys are want to do when trays are around. Then enters the non-cool guy. The non-cool guy sees the cool guy and is filled with jealous rage. Damn it. There goes the cool guy thinking he’s so super cool. I’ll show the cool guy who’s the real cool guy of this kitchen! What happens next is an event so cool it can only be appreciated in GIF form so the footage is looped endlessly, allowing you to soak in every minute detail of coolness. This GIF, dear readers, is a masterclass in cool. Pay attention.
As cool guy spins his tray, the un-cool guy attempts to make the cool guy look uncool. This, as it turns out, is impossible, as dictated by Heisenberg’s Too-Cool-For-School principal. When the un-cool guy disrupts the cool guy’s spin, the cool guy retains his composure, steadies the tray, and then tosses it toward the un-cool guy’s feet like he knew exactly what he was doing. The tray slides directly under the feet of the uncool guy, dropping him on his ass.
DID THE COOL GUY PRACTICE THAT?!?! How do you get so good at that?!
You don’t practice that. If you’re cool and some fool attempts to strip you of your cool, the natural forces of the universe will guide your hand and ensure you remain the cool mofo you were destined to be. Never mess with cool people. There’s some crazy metaphysical hoodoo aura surrounding them that is vengeful, petty, and so much cooler than you.
Sometimes You Won’t Know How Truly Close To Death You Actually Were…
Ignorance is bliss. What you don’t know won’t kill you.
Both of these are common sayings that suggest not knowing much of anything will save you a lot of grief. Both sayings are also so ignorant that they’re entirely oblivious to how stupid they truly are. But there is a teeny, tiny shred of truth to both, and that truth can be found in the GIF to your left, featuring a toddler that is oblivious to the fact that only a piece of Plexiglas separates him from being a tiger’s dinner.
We know the Grim Reaper will come knocking on our door one day, and we all hope when that day comes Death turns out to be an undiagnosed dyslexic and reads your address incorrectly and kills some other poor sap two streets down. One thing nobody wants is to know how all the various ways they could have, and maybe even should have, died on any given day.
That toddler is lucky he has no idea what’s happening. If he did, in that situation he’d act like a mature and responsible adult and he’d soil his shorts while crying. The world is a dangerous place; it’s scary enough as it is. We don’t always need to know how close we were to death. If we knew, we’d become a race so paralyzed by fear we’d never get anything done. All forward progress would be halted because we don’t want to get erased from existence.
…And Other Times You’ll Know Exactly How Close To Death You Were
On the flip side, sometimes death is like your @$$#0!% friend that would have pegged you in the head with a football if he didn’t have such terrible aim. In the (very) final GIF, all that’s needed to complete this picture is the Grim Reaper behind the wheel of the dump truck, shaking his fist in anger as he watches his intended target leap out of the way just as the truck slams in to the ground. It almost feels like the back story to this GIF could have been a plot for the next Final Destination movie. Death has tried to kill this guy in dozens of elaborate ways, but the guy just slips by unscathed every time. So, finally, death swipes some truck keys and tries to mow the guy down – not a particularly well-thought-out plan from a spiritual entity known for creating deaths that look like the culmination of a horrific game of Mouse Trap.
Moments like this one make you immediately aware how of fragile life is – it’s so fragile that a runaway dump truck can smash it in to dirt paste in an instant.
Stockbyte-Thinkstock
Luis Prada’s work can be found on Cracked, FunnyCrave, The Smoking Jacket, and GuySpeed. If you visit his Tumblr page, The Devil Wears Me, he will give you a non-refundable virtual hug. (Subject to geographical limitations, like whether or not you’re near him.)
Now that you’ve mastered this life thing, check out amazing stories of its preservation with Five Times Breast Implants Saved Lives. –>
