Learning to kiss is not optional. It is a mandatory component of adulthood.

If you’re over 21 and you still kiss like a Saint Bernard, you might as well surrender your sex organs. You won’t be needing them.

Many a budding relationship has gone down in flames based on a tragic makeout mishap. If you’ve ever been subjected to full-frontal tongue assault, if you’ve ever had your tonsils swabbed by a warm sea-slug, you know how disastrous a botched first kiss can be.

We’ve all been victims of the salivators, the lip-mashers, the throat violators. I’ve personally experienced some of the worst kissing techniques imaginable (a few of them were so ill-advised that I actually found myself impressed by the perpetrator’s sheer gutsiness and creativity).

As a result I’m offering a few pointers, free of charge. ‘Cause I’m charitable like that.

1. Don’t be all slobbering up in your partner’s grill. If you suffer from juicy mouth syndrome, suck on a towel before you try to probe his/her face-hole with that moist sponge.

2. Don’t lick anywhere outside of the oral region. You might think window-washing someone’s eyeballs is hot—it isn’t. Save the advanced techniques for later, when you know each other well enough that your partner feels comfortable laughing in your face.

3. There’s a rhythm to kissing. It’s ok to pause. Trust me, no great kiss has ever been described as “frantic.” You can come up for air. Take your time, Speed Racer.

There’s a lot more to the mechanics of a good kiss, but this blog isn’t an instruction manual and I’m not a kissing guru. Suffice to say that if you have any reason to suspect you aren’t a great kisser, you’re probably a bad one. And you should seek help immediately.

There’s no time to waste.

UFO sightings seem to get everyone worked up these days, but the fact is that they’re commonplace. Airplane pilots report them all the time. UFOs abound.

But let’s get this straight: there’s a difference between UFOs and aliens.

UFOs are just what the letters indicate: unidentified flying objects. Emphasis on unidentified. Typically, they turn out to be one of the usual suspects–swamp gas, blimps, mirages.

Aliens, on the other hand, are a myth, a silly fairytale perpetuated by people who are terrified of the possibility that we’re alone in the universe. Flying saucers, crop circles, alien abduction…nonsense. No one has ever been abducted by aliens. Let’s face it, extraterrestrials visiting our planet wouldn’t waste their time with that kind of silly horseshit.

We’re talking about creatures who presumably traversed unimaginable expanses of the universe and triumphed over Einsteinian physics—to even make it halfway across our solar system they would have had to discover a mathematical paradigm in which E does not, in fact, equal MC squared—and yet we’re expected to believe that these advanced lifeforms braved the vast emptiness of interstellar space simply to probe the human anus.

The anal probe may be the strangest urban legend ever created. What would possibly explain extraterrestrial fascination with that particular orifice? Why would a spacefaring society choose to send a fleet of stealthy green proctologists to explore the mysteries of the human bowel? What nefarious purpose could they be pursuing? Today the colon, tomorrow the world.

And incidentally, “saucer” is an impractical vehicle shape. The only plausible explanation for transportation via saucer is aerodynamics…except you’d hope that a technologically advanced society would have figured out by now that there’s no air in outer space. Might as well cross the icy void in a rhombus.

I’m not saying that there isn’t life on other planets. I’m saying that if there is, it probably has better things to do than spend its time zipping around earth in glorified dishware, carving cryptic symbols in cornfields and buggering humanity.

But what do I know? Maybe the anal probe is a standard universe-wide greeting, similar to the canine butt-sniff. Encounter a new lifeform, violate its rectum. Nice to meet you.

Regardless, if the aliens ever arrive, you’ll know it. They won’t go sneaking around in corn fields. They’ll descend from the sky majestically, V-style. Crossing the universe is no small feat—you can bet they’ll broadcast the achievement.