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Misery shouldn't be just for the priveleged few, lets open it up to everybody and get the government to help out. Here are some simple things governments could do to help us all get more melancholy.

Sell off green spaces to housing developers, the fewer green open spaces that people have access to the better as they have been shown to lighten peoples moods.

Stop funding public transport where people might have a bit of social interaction and encourage people to travel on their own in cars. You could ban cycle paths too and tax bicycles really heavily, we don't want anybody getting any exercise!

Tax the poor heavily and the rich lightly - any measures that can increase the gap between rich and poor have been proven to reduce happiness considerably.

Tax breaks for fast food establishments, maybe you could sell off bits of the park to McDonalds

You see, with a little imagination, the government could plan for much more misery than we currently have. The present government however doesn't think that their actions have any bearing on individuals happiness/misery and feel that it is entirely up to us to get miserable under our own steam. Maybe we should vote 'em out and start a "Miserable Party"!

 

 

We all love to watch TV. It's one of the things that we enjoy most - but actually watching TV gives us about the same enjoyment level as sitting in a darkened room staring at the wall. Oh sure, sometimes there's a really interesting documentary about the Appollo Missions or Hitler, but most of the time its ads or trailers or the News or a stupid cartoon.

The thing about watching TV is that it is so easy. It requires no effort from us - and gives us no real reward. after watching TV for 3 hours, all you have is 3 hours less to live. And now you want to buy a 4 by 4, a new razor and a half naked woman.

So, if you want to be miserable, watch more TV. Try watching as much TV as you can, time yourself and see if you can break your record. Don't try too hard though or you might start to get a feeling of achievement and self worth!

If you want to be happier, try watching a little less TV and go out and do something less boring instead.

 

 This is a really great way to get miserable. No matter how good you might be feeling about your life, you can always find somebody whose doing better in the pages of OK magazine. Any you will never be as pretty or have such great abs.

Mind you, neither will they! These people are so photoshopped they don't even recognize themselves in the mirror. The they end up having surgery to look like they think they should and you end up with.. Jacko...

On the other hand, if you wanted to be happy, forget celebrities and try and live in the real world for a bit. we might not be perfect, but we can have happy lives even with all our imperfections.

Misery lives not just in the present, but in the past and the future. You can be miserable about your life now, but you can enhance this by dwelling  on bad things that happened in the past - and even by worrying about bad things that might happen in the future. You see how broad the opportunities for misery are when you really put your mind to it! Things are making you miserable and they haven't even happened yet - and might never happen. Don't let that stop you though, let your imagination run riot!

In order to tap the rich resources of the past, just spend a lot of time thinking about something bad that happened to you in the past. The worse the better. Play it over and over again in your mind and it is guaranteed to bring you down. If you are having trouble focusing it might be possible to draught in a professional psychoanalyst to help you stick to the task churning up misery. Long waiting lists or huge charges for these services can help you feel even more miserable.

If the past begins to lose its power over you there is always the future with its uncertanties and potential horrors. You could really go to town on this, death, disease, plague, pestillence, old age and eventually death. It's all possible (almost certain) and even if things continue to run smoothly and without a hitch, that's just going to make it seem even worse once the whole lot goes tits-up.

Or, alternatively, if you wanted to be happy (yuk!), then you could try *not* doing these things. Live in the present and look at the good things that life has to offer. Don't focus on the traffic noise, focus on the bird-song. See what you have, not what you don't.

Grass, booze, hash, speed, crack, heroin, TV, shopping, sex... Whatever your drug of choice is, have loads of it.

People take drugs to change the way they feel, they look for the deep sense of satisfaction that the drug seems to bring. At first it all looks rosey, but after a while the effects start to wear off. The warm rosey glow is now just a normal part of life - and this is where you get the chance to develop some misery!

Because now you've upped the anti, you're habitually taking drugs and they aren't even doing any good. You can't stop because then your life would be really empty, you wouldn't even have the drugs! The only path is to have more. More shoping, tv, weed, crack, food, whatever it is. And if you carry on down this path, then it's a sure fire winner for misery.

My favourite drug was sudoku, it started of innocently enough, a line here, a 3 by 3 there. But soon I was doing mental arithmatic before breakfast and my whole life was ruled by numbers. The only joy was getting a complete solve and all else was darkness... Nowadays, I'm off the 'doku but I will do an occaisional word search at a party. Just to be sociable.

The only way to get those warm cosy feelings with any kind of lasting effect is to build a meaningful life up over a passage of time. Building relationships based on trust takes time and effort but brings great rewards. Our culture is based on advertising which tries to sell you a quick fix to whatever problem you might have. Got a pain? Here's a pill. Feeling inadequate? Here's an Audi 911. Feeling down, here's some drugs... Nobody is trying to sell you prolonged effort - because it won't make them any money.

So, here's my tip, if you want to be miserable, get stoned, if you want to be happy, you're going to need a clear head to enjoy all of the good times.

Sometimes life throws us a curve ball and everything just goes right. Maybe you win the lottery or just the lottery of life and end up with a good job, excellent health and a great social life. Don't despair, misey can still be yours!

All you need to do is to ignore the good things that you have and instead focus solely on the things thatyour life lacks. You may have a great wife/husband, but are they as pretty/handsome as the guy/girl on the front cover of mens health/cosmo? Try and find faults with them and don't keep it to yourself, let them know how dissapointed you are and tell all your friends too.

You might end up with somewhere nice to live, but it sure ain't perfect! Does the decor need work? Maybe your interior designer has let you down - isn't thattypical!

You might end up with everything you ever wanted, but don't be disheartened, if all else fails you can always play your trump card and be dis-satisfied with EVERYTHING. I mean, let's face it, nothing is ever really good enough for YOU because you are just so special.

If you crack a smile, stamp on it and pick faults with something.

Get rich quick off the backs of others. Try getting people to work for you for a pittance and selling the things they make for a fortune, feelings of self-hatred and worthlessness should have you miserable eventually. 

Or maybe you could just steal a load of intellectual property off the internet, sell it on as your own and watch the cashcome flooding in.

The main thing to be careful of is that you don't make any kind of concerted effort or do anything worthwhile. if you do you might end up feeling cheerful and optimistic, like you were a worthwhile human being. And we wouldn't want that to happen.

You've seen the ads, huge 4x4 tears up the majextic mountains, speeds you through virgin rainforest and the kids get to school on time. Looks like the last thing that you'd want to buy if you wanted to be miserable...

Meanwhile, back on the planet earth you are not halfway down the Grand Canyon, but stuck in traffic on a drizzly morning in Heckmondwike. The monthly payments are crippling and the car's value has plummeted in the 20 minutes since you drove it off the forecourt. Perfect, you can now be truly and justifiably miserable.

But there's more, other road users see your flashy new car and loathe and despise you, they take pleasure in cutting you up and not letting you in. Your running to fat because you are sitting still and breathing in the guy in fronts gas emissions instead of walking or cycling. But looking on the bright side, if you really must, unless you are Brian Harvey, you probably haven't actually managed to run yourself over.