August 08, 2007 - 12:03 AM.

Self-help yourself to millions (of dollars AND sycophants!)

OK, being a massage therapist is great, what with all the helping people and relieving pain and all, but I think few who actually do the job would argue that it is a fortune-making business. In the interest of getting inflated-level rich, I have decided to follow in the illustrious bossy rude footsteps of the likes of "Doctor" Phil, Larry Lookit-my-Boots Winget, Annie-get-yer-gun Coulter, Jo "Jack" Frost, and Little Johnnie Stossel, and pen my own trilogy of self-help/self-flagellation/self-congratulatory books, to wit:

* All You People Are Idiots,

* Help Your Own Damn Self, and

* You Sure as Hell Don't Deserve Any More Advice!

The books will be released one atop another at such dizzying speed that it will be hard to tell which one came out first, creating that dizzy feeling in the bookbuyer that maybe they missed something? how long has this classic bestseller been out again? (Answer - sixteen minutes, hey look what's that up in the sky?!)

The covers will feature a white glossy ground with the titles lettered large in a primary color (red for the first, then blue, then purple) and a tall Arial font, all caps of course; what little room is left on the cover will be filled with a photo-object of me standing, arms crossed, giving the camera an "I told you so" eyebrows-raised smirk over the rim of my hideously expensive spectacles. (Which my cheap-looking website will mention I designed myself, plus I oversee the production of each of my 300-plus pairs at a facility in Malaysia.)

Apparently neither the content nor the target audience are particularly important, as long as I open with a sentence like "I can't believe the stupid things people say to me every single day." Alternatively, I may open using the Socratic/Stosselian approach, thusly: "Are you tired of watching the 'good life' pass you by? Are you tired of your relationships not working out? Are you sick and tired of trying and somehow not quite making the mark? Well, what if I told you that all these things are happening to you because you're an idiot?"

I can then rant unhindered and unconnected for just shy of 150 pages (won't take much, the print is always large, and at least two chapters may consist of a single abusive - drunken? - sentence), and as long as I finish with a sudden unexpected kindliness and a joke, I'm set. Thusly: "I know this stuff is hard to hear. But once you put the Nine Principles into action, you'll be the powerful person you were born to be, just like I am. I know you can do it. *You* know you can do it. Now just execute! And before you know it, you'll be taking a look around you, just like I do, and smiling when you say to yourself, "All you people are idiots!"

Oh I am already a millionaire many times over. With homes in Sedona and St. Thomas, and a back-flap bio that leaves readers wondering when and where exactly I lived the hard life I constantly allude to in the book's pages. Because it certainly *sounds* like I just got a job as a speaker/trainer right out of college rather than racking up hard knocks as a rodeo clown or an inmate or both . . .

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