Life is a verb, in case y'all didn't know.

On Monday, at the National Conference on Volunteers and Service in San Francisco, guest speaker Matthew McConaughey discussed his mantra, which sprang from a line of dialogue in one of his first movies, Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993).

"For me, it was a few words that became a sort of a personal mission statement: 'j.k. livin,'" he said. "Where the J is for 'just,' the K is for 'keep,' and there's no G on 'livin,' because life is a verb."

Actually, there's no G because that's the first letter in "good," an adjective that can't be applied to most of the performances McConaughey gives these days. And if he wants to talk about volunteering and giving back, he needs to give me back the 85 minutes I spent watching his performance in Surfer, Dude last December.

In fact, I'd like to propose community-service punishment for movie stars who waste our time on bad performances. Granted, I got to see Surfer, Dude for free because I reviewed it for Popdose, but surely Cameron Diaz should have to pick up trash off the side of the road for 88 hours to make up for the 88 grueling minutes of The Sweetest Thing (2002). But since McConaughey continues to entertain me with the things he says off-camera, I'd only make him complete 42 hours of service, which he could earn by enlightening underprivileged youths about life and how it's not a noun.