Rule #1: There Are No Rules! (Rule #2: No outside food or beverages...)

Post rules here--rules you've made up yourself, or ones you've come across. I've made up a few over the years, and I've taken things from other people and turned them into rules. Examples:

The Breaking the Waves Rule (mine): that it's okay for a filmmaker to work one of his or her favourite songs into a movie for the thinnest of pretenses, or even (like in Breaking the Waves) to dispense with the pretense altogether.

The Flamingo Kid Rule (mine): that the absolute worst kind of movie soundtrack is one where music is used solely as a time-stamp. "'Purple Haze'--must be 1967."

The George Foster Rule (Joe Posnanski's): you should never spend the decline phase of your career with the New York Mets, because your signing will end up being compared to the terrible contract the Mets gave George Foster in 1982.

The John Waite Rule (Chuck Eddy's, extrapolated by me from something he wrote): John Waite, no more or no less than Bruce Springsteen, makes great records largely as a matter of luck.

The "Time After Time" Rule (mine): Every movie prom scene should be soundtracked by Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time."

The "Don't Look Back" Rule (Scott Woods'): You can't make a bad record called "Don't Look Back."

The "Tell Me Why" Rule (Scott Woods'): You can't make a bad record called "Tell Me Why."

The Rob Sheffield Rule: You can't make a bad record about waiting by the phone.

The Pia Zadora Rule (Greil Marcus's, from an old Pazz & Jop comment): "Pia Zadora could make the best record of 1987, and we’d all (those of us honest enough to admit it) be scurrying to figure out what that meant. It wouldn’t mean anything, other than that the radio is still a good, weird machine."

No one listens to the radio anymore, and no one waits by the phone, so those last two may need some kind of update.

The Mechanic's Fallacy (mine): If you tried to follow every piece of sound advice from every professional (e.g. change your oil every X thousand miles, brush and floss after every meal, rebalance your investments every year, etc.) your life would become a living hell.

The Quick Getaway Rule - always park your car so that you don't have to reverse to get out.

My rule in the 90s was that if a show was exactly titled "The <first name> <last name> Show", it would flop. Examples: The Chevy Chase Show, The Dana Carvey Show, The Ben Stiller Show, The Wayne Brady Show, The Tony Danza Show. The Arsenio Hall Show was the only exception. Since I was young, I was totally unaware of like ten very successful programs from before my time that followed the format: Carol Burnett, Ed Sullivan, Andy Griffith, Mary Tyler Moore, etc...

In college, my friend and I had a rule that when the title of a movie is said by one of the characters in the movie, we say "we have a title!"

Never eat shrimp at a buffet or anything with mayo in the summer

pick up ur dog’s shit if it’s not too inconvenient

The Maximum Meisner Rule - only listen to an Eagles song if it prominently features Randy Meisner vocals, either lead or backing.

xxp -- very happy to break both of those

More of a bechdel-ian test than a rule (but originally the Bechdel test was a prohibition-type rule!)
Gene Siskel: Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?

what if it's a film about the two actors having lunch?

I do think My Dinner with Andre would fail (I couldn't make it through), but not Breakfast with Blassie

Also for the longest time I wanted Wallace Shawn to reprise his Grand Nagus role from DS9 and do an in-character interview show with other Trek guests like a "Luncheon with Nagus", which I'm sure would be way more interesting than most latter day Trek productions.

The Tinnitus Corollary: if it's too loud, it's too fucking loud

Which critic was it who said you can't make a bad record called "Mansion on the Hill"?

Guessing Marcus? I think it was his favourite song on Ragged Glory.

Tombot’s axiom: every forum without a clearly stated and well-enforced code of conduct will inevitably endure the erosion of its most vulnerable participants until only cishet white men are making the majority of the contributions and some of them are wondering where the women and people of color went.

just "the majority of contributions"? too low a bar.

good point. “Overwhelmingly vast majority of contributions”

Outside phenomena are too unpredictable for me to say that a certain thing will always or never be good. All my rules are guidelines for my own behaviour. One of them is that I never listen to a given piece of music more than once in one day (unless I'm learning the music or transcribing the words).

You can’t make a bad record called “the old man’s back again (dedicated to the neo-Stalinist regime)”

Rule #1 - if you text someone to ask their ETA more than once when the other person is not even late, the other person has the right to turn around and go home.

Rule #2 - calling "Idiocracy" a 'documentary' and turning your head expecting everybody to roar at your joke carries a 3-party ban for first offense, 10-party ban for second, lifetime ban for third

Rule #3 - If you shout out a request for a song that has already been played at a concert, you are required to wear a t-shirt that says POSER on it in block text for the remainder of the show. second offense requires wearing to the next 5 shows. third offense is a lifetime ban from concerts.

Rule #4 - if you publicly voice a complaint about people putting the toilet paper on the roll upside down, your speaking voice will be muted for a week.

If someone is on the clock and you aren't, leave them alone, let them be cross and/or wrong without making it about you, let them go ahead of you in line, in traffic, whatever. Delight in these moments when by contrast you are lucky enough to be living and breathing without obligation or responsibility.

Unless they're cops.

Use your vacation days.

Can’t stand the people who brag about all the vacation hours they’ve accrued and can’t use

The Bobby Freeman Rule (mine): it's impossible to do a bad cover of "Do You Wanna Dance?" (This should really be called the Cliff Richard Rule, who just provided me with my final and most persuasive bit of evidence yet, but it'll be easier to remember as the Bobby Freeman Rule.)

an old retired bartender told me to order tall drinks (aka doubles): "order them tall, your wife is probably counting your drinks"

Totally forgot Chuck Eddy's Gladys Knight & the Pips Rule, named, conceptualized, and explained by Chuck in two or three paragraphs found in The Accidental Evolution of Rock'n'Roll:

"Rock'n'roll works best when it seems both good for you and bad for you, nutritious and unnutritious, at the same time."

He expands on that, going on to say (basically) that pop and soul music needs both the soulful/reverent--the Gladys Knight part--and the frivolous, what the Pips supply. One without the other just isn't as good.

The Barney (my partner) rule: if I feed the cat, you're making the coffee. We've had actual arguments over this one bcs I seem to always end up making the damn coffee.

The Law & Order rule: every episode must start with a red herring.

Came across this ‘rule’ on staying guests: “fish and guests ‘go off ’ after three days.”

From an old pal in high school: You can't rock n' roll in shorts.

AC/DC fumin right now

I have a triple constraint for communicating information that I presented about ten years ago at a conference in Berlin.

Imagine a triangle with the points labeled as such: fast, accurate, and comprehensive.

You can be fast and accurate, but lose comprehensiveness. You can be accurate and comprehensive, but that takes time. Or you can be fast and comprehensive, but suffer the risk that some of your information might be bullshit.

I liked something I heard John McEnroe say at Wimbledon today (a variation on "it's better to be lucky than good"): it's better to be lucky and good than to be just lucky or just good. (He was referring to Sinner getting a big break earlier to advance.)

tom's triad sounds very much like the first such triad I heard as a young man: "Good - fast - or cheap; you can have any two of them together, but not all three at once."

Correct, it’s based on the classic cost / schedule / performance constraint.

The Frank Pentangeli Rule (mine): if you're single and trying to make plans with married friends--especially if they have kids, but even just married--you will have to wait till they sort things out and then defer to their schedule. You will have to get used to waiting in the lobby. It's a hard adjustment at first, but then five, 10, 20, 25 years go by and you don't even give it a second thought anymore.

as a parent who gets annoyed when single friends (or ones with grown up kids who have forgotten) expect us to work around their plans (or lack of), i thank you for your patience and understanding.

expect us to work around their plans (or lack of)

You have single friends who ask you to work around plans they don't have?