Obesely morbid?

I'll be 37 tomorrow. Not that birthdays mean that much to me - I once turned up a day late to the joint party I was having with my next door neighbour. She was… unimpressed. I'll be celebrating tomorrow though… celebrating my friends' marriage. Needless to say, I'll be live-blogging and tweeting throughout the ceremony, except for the bit where I read John Donne's 'The Good Morrow'.

So anyway,  my thoughts turned to mortality and I decided to check my actuarial future according to various shoddy free online tests. Turns out I'll live to 78 or so. Which is convenient, as my current retirement date takes me to 68, so I won't burden you young folk too much, at least economically.

Your estimated life span is:

78.94 years

The table below shows how each response affects your overall life expectancy.

Ideal weight:	good
Activity level:	average
Stress level:	average
Smoking habits:	good
Drinking habits:	good
Cholesterol level:	good
Saturated fat intake:	good
Blood pressure:	good
Parents' health:	good
Siblings' health	good
Income level:	good
Education:	good
Traffic violations:	good
Use of safety belt:	good

The American IRS thinks I'll live to 83, based solely on my age now and what year it is. Top quality science, I'm sure we all agree.

The most comprehensive test I found is this one (give a fake email address) - it asks about risk, diet, drinking and smoking, environmental factors, how often I floss, how often I poo… It thinks I'll live to 91. Which means more than 50 extra years of this bitter drivel. It also advises me on how to live longer than 91, which begs the question of why I would want to. But if I want an extra 3 months, I should stress less. Daily aspirin supposedly gives me an extra two years' blogging, while flossing daily buys me 12 months. If I hit the gym every day, I might make it to 96. 96 years of boredom and pain, that is.

Bah. My plan is to live until the Book Tower falls on my head. Then my cats can eat my face off until rescued by vandals several years later. Or Michael Gove's Stormtroopers will execute me in a disused toilet for making fun of him. Either way, it beats decades of incontinence and ranting.

All that aside, the real reasons I'll live for a fair while - unless the students get really pissed off - is that I've won life's lottery. I'm male, white, western, highly educated and bourgeois. Bingo - all the fruit lined up as far as this appalling society goes.