1. Greed

I like the word “greed.” It makes your mouth open into something between a smile and a sneer, showing off your expensive dentistry. When I think of greed, I picture a car cruising around because its driver doesn’t have to go home and do things like fix the spigot or file their taxes. They can just pay people to do it for them. Would they be there without greed? Probably not.

2. Lust

The problem with lust is that it’s often listed as “adultery.” To me, those are two very different ideas. Lust is fun and related to things like alcoholic whipped cream and tantric yoga or whatever Cosmo is into that month. Adultery is breaking up homes and making people sad. If it was just lust it would be number one.

3. Gluttony

Now that babies can learn sign language almost as well as chimps, it’s become normal for the first word a person learns to be “more.” Sorry “mama,” “baba” and “gog [dog].” Wanting more milk turns into more candy, more McNuggets, more wine, more beer, more spirits. The road to fat, drunk and happy, gluttony is.

4. Sloth

The accessories of sloth are simple: pajamas, dirty dishes, weed and possibly Macaroni & Cheese. College is essentially a crash course in sloth. In its wake come a lot of really good naps.

5. Pride

Pride is what helps your self-image remain a shiny, new quarter, instead of the kind that is covered in gum and tobacco in the bottom of my purse. It’s the thing that made me put “lust” before gluttony to seem more sexual than fat. It’s the thing that made me choose greed first, because I want to be able to easily support myself someday. Pride motivates us to be crazy and delusional, but sometimes it works.

6. Wrath

Sometimes life sucks and something dumb happens. This is when you choose how you’re going to respond. Do you get sad and listen to Death Cab? Do you get anxious and get addicted to Ativan? Personally, I choose wrath. Wrath gives you energy, instead of deleting it, making you not too bad at kickboxing. And kickboxing is fun.

7. Envy

Everyone gets jealous of this or that. But generally envy is unattractive in our culture. It makes you look insecure, like a C-list character on a sitcom. It might be cooler in other countries. In Spanish, the word for “jealous” is celoso, which sounds a lot sexier, making me think it’s just lust.

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–Becky Lang