​Assuming you heeded Mayor Bloomberg's every word in regard to Hurricane Irene, you are probably sitting on top of 35 cases of Poland Spring water in a city-run shelter right now, pouring gasoline into a generator in order to power your computer. But being overly prepared isn't a bad thing! That's how wars are won, tests are aced, and procreation is avoided. Assuming you aren't going to store all your hoarded supplies for the next mass weather scare, we have some ideas on what to do with it.

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​Today is 4/20: The holiday for people whose lives are holidays. After spending 364 days a year trying to find excuses to burn trees -- A full moon! A Family Matters marathon! -- Marijuana enthusiasts everywhere celebrate the day that is itself an excuse to get high. Don't be fooled; everyone is stoned today. Your boss, teachers, parents, even that cop pounding at your door -- they're all totally baked. We here at Runnin' Scared have some advice to ensure that you have a safe, healthy and productive 4/20. (Just kidding, there is no way you will be productive today.)

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via ttarasiuk

​Did you hear? The government might get shut down! If the White House and Congress can't come to an agreement on a federal spending-cut bill by Friday, the government will be shut down for the first time since 1996. Back then, museums closed, passport applications went unprocessed, and credit cards became white-hot and burned their way through people's pants (the last one may not have happened). Essentially, this is like that time in middle school when your teacher was sick but they forgot to assign a sub and everyone went ape shit.

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via NYT

​One of the less-discussed changes to the New York Times' revamped Sunday magazine is the changing of the guard in The Ethicist column. For years it was Randy Cohen, who I always imagined as a nebbishy man surrounded by dusty old books, pushing his glasses up his nose as he dispensed wise -- and very dry -- advice to people who are too serious for your regular old advice column. The Ethicist was one of those staples of the magazine that, growing up, I would read five sentences of and be like, "wow, on to Benoit Denizet-Lewis."

Now there's a new Ethicist, Ariel Kaminer, who writes the City Critic column for the Times and who used to be editor of the paper's Arts and Leisure section. So how's she doing, Ethically?

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​This is going to be hard to hear, for everyone. Yesterday, the website Social Times, which touts itself as "Your Social Media Source," published an article called "Five Tips for Successfully Dating a Blogger," with a dash of humor and a healthy dose of no please stop this is so misguided. Bloggers, the advice begins, are "a rare breed." OK! Then it includes a little quiz to make sure your partner -- which the article assumes to be a male, and you a female -- is "a die-hard." Let's start there. The real talk will follow.

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chillihead

​As we mentioned in our morning link roundup, book retailer Borders is filing for bankruptcy and closing a third of its locations after posting losses of $680.6 million since 2007. Reuters reports that "the chain still faces questions about its longer-term survival in the face of competition." In light of all this, we would like to offer some tips on not only how to stay competitive in the cutthroat world of chain bookstores, but how to thrive!

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​Zagat has come out with this "Essential Dating and Dumping Guide" thingie. They surveyed people about their dating habits and came out with a little guide to the best places in New York to go on dates (and to break up with people). Some of the advice or whatever is kind of sound. And most of it is patently ridiculous and I hope real people never follow it.

Here's a good pickup line: "I thought I'd stare at you close up."

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​Salon's Cary Tennis is the craziest advice columnist in the world. Not an easy feat, to be sure, but we're not the first ones to notice. (In fact, it's well documented.) He has extensively chronicled his own issues, including his history of alcoholism and ongoing fight with cancer, but tends to choose almost psychopathic questions, which allow him to expound for hundreds and hundreds of words in amazing nutso-babble, like that time he told a lost twenty-something, "Your soul cries out for the unknown...What dread beast is this?" (Meaning: "Take acid.") But little compares to Tennis' latest, "I'm from India, crazy in love." It's got it all: broken English, chat rooms, phone sex, vague racism, HBO, hipster hunting. OMG.

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​Dress code? We haven't had a dress code since we quit Brownies. But some people do. Some people have to wear, for instance, those leg-compressing torture chambers known as pantyhose, or businessperson skirt and jacket or pantsuits that never really smell fresh after the first wear, despite dry-cleaning. These people likely work at banks like UBS, which, via the Wall Street Journal, is sending a 43-page memo to its Swiss banking staff on how to dress to impress.

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​Now that the holiday season is in full gear, it's time for a friendly safety reminder. Drinking and driving is bad, yes -- we all know that. But don't assume that taking a cab or even using the legs that God gave you will keep you safe. There are many ways you can hurt yourself, drunk fool! And drinking and walking is, apparently, almost as much a scourge to your personal health as is getting behind the wheel after so many bottles of champagne. In fact, drinking and doing just about anything, save lying on your own floor and quietly giggling until you fall asleep, is pretty damn dangerous.

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