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Return of the Self-Help Massacre! |
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Written by CapnIncredible
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Tuesday, 17 June 2003 |
| Being happy and being successful are the North and South Poles of life. As angry middle-aged rockers have taught me, being successful only makes you more and more miserable; so miserable in fact that you have to turn to having sex with supermodels as an escape route from your world of hurt. As Little House on the Prairie taught me, all you need to be happy is a large family and a house built on the desolate plains of fucking nowhere and a young Shannen Doherty. Fortunately for those of us at home who want to find that delicate balance between the obligatory fucking of Courtney Love, Carmen Electra, or Pamela Anderson and milking cows, Dr. Harry A. Olson is here to guide us with his 8 keys. Throughout the years, various celebrities have been expecting us to do ludicrous things to grow up to become successful. Mr. T once preached of days where drinking milk and not doing drugs would cause you to grow up and be something great. I really have no idea what we were supposed to grow up to be as he never really explained that far ahead, so I can only assume it to be a person with strong bones who has never been on The Real World. Fortunately for us, Mr. Olson has 8 keys you can utilize to unlock your doors of self-doubt and help you step into a brand new universe of doing something more productive with your life than reading this web site and sending me stupid e-mail about what you read on this web site.
Cap'n !nc's 8 Keys to a Successful Future
- Avoid testing out homemade date rape medication on yourself
- Learn the way of the flamenco and dance dance dance!
- Ignore step 2.
- If it looks deadly, it probably is.
- Learn how to read, as 90% of what you learn in life will not be passed down in story form. This is why the Native Americans lost.
- Falling Down Stairs: Nature's best after-pregnancy birth control method
- Drugs are ok, just remember that if you ever want to fly to start from the ground first.
- Pants make almost every social activity that much more enjoyable for everyone.
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Everyone knows that getting in touch with the old inner-self is often a brutal war. Some would be so bold as to compare it to the guerilla war currently not going on in Iraq. My personal battle going on inside takes more of the form of Mad's Spy vs. Spy comics in that it usually involves bombs in cakes and that there is nothing at all funny about it. Dr. George R. Bach and Laura Torbet came together to write this book by casting aside their own voices of criticism, terror, and belittlement. Thank goodness for people like this in the world to help us learn the valued lesson of fair fighting with ourselves, as setting bear traps in my own bed has been a problem since childhood. |
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In the very words of the site promoting this book, "Talk to Me, Mom and Dad is a book that clarifies exactly what each child would like to express to parents." Needless to say, selling a book by telling parents that it clarifies the complexities of a child's mind ranks up there with choosing Carrot Top as the posterboy for an ad campaign on the list of dumbest ideas ever. Since the average child of the age one and under's thought processes span the wide gamut of peeing everywhere and eating whatever is forced down his throat, it really doesn't take a book to understand everything behind it. As children age, it becomes more and more vital to keep the lines of communication open so they do not grow up to become horrible menaces to society like smokers or worse yet, kids in anti-smoking ads. The main problem I feel this book probably does not expound upon enough is what to do when your kids won't shut the hell up for five minutes. Granted, it really is swell when your child has an opinion and feels the need to express it, but trust me when I say that nobody outside of your sewing circle really cares about junior's ideas. |
As if it needed to be stated, there are so many self-help books in the world that it's almost shocking to believe that there are still people in the world who make it through life without cracking under the incredible stress in the high-risk and often fast-paced world of not being a douche bag. In fact, knowing that people in the world need to read Lifedance, a novel on the fancy pants ethics of putting your needs above others and vice versa, shows an extreme jaw-dropping view of what an incredibly helpless society we've become. Essentially this book would work better if it operated on the golden rule of playgrounds everywhere:
Golden Rule of the Playground: He who has more than one cupcake should share with his friends lest he be rabbit punched into submission and lose them all.
Lucille Osterweil who I am sure is very well-versed on the act of sharing not only takes us on this voyage into what everyone already knows but also manages to draw this basic principle out into many many chapters complete with chapterly excercises to help you make sure you understand the basic techniques of not letting friends walk all over you. Amazing, simply amazing. |
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Since challenging opposing coworkers who doubt your strength to a death duel is a practice decidedly best left to Vikings and Klingons, people need new ways to deal with annoying bastards. Winning at Work is a piece by Alfred Labowitz that teaches us how to simultaneously succeed in life and love, an equation that I can only imagine ends with blowjobs and blackmail. Sadly enough, I have serious doubts as to this book bringing forth any help in learning how to blackmail my way right into a CEO's desk, and the number of blowjobs in the book are probably at a bare minimum. In other words, I'll never read it and neither should you. |
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