If you cannot figure out what do to with your life, and if you have ruled out being a doctor, a firefighter, an accountant, a ballet dancer, an astronaut, a professional bowler, or the President of the United States – don’t worry. You can become a life coach. 

What is a life coach?  A person who doesn’t know what to do with their life and instead tells everyone else what to do.  The requirements are very simple:

1. You must have ADD or ADHD.  Or at least drink 20 energy drinks a day.  If you are going to persuade someone to do something that they already HIRED you to tell them but really don’t want to do, you better have an arsenal of on-edge nerves and an ability to convert caffeine to jet fuel in your bloodstream. 

2. You must like and repeat the word “level” constantly.  Your clients will want to hear you say things like “take this to the next level,” “success is only a couple of levels away,” “level with me,” “the five levels of money and success and awesomeness are very simple,” ”levels are like stepping-stones,” the next level is where you want to be.”  

Other words and phrases you must memorize are: 1. success is as easy as paying me $140 an hour to tell you things that you could read in a book, 2. rocket past your doubts and touchdown on the moon of your successful astro-blasting potential, 3. don’t rock the boat of goals when you are floating on river of energy and efficiency and knowledge and power. 

3. You must have the ability to say a bunch of words that sound good, are attached to irrelevant analogies, and don’t mean anything.   ”Success in life is like licking a lollipop and knowing that there is a Tootsie roll in the middle of your ultimate level of life.”  “Live life like there is an alligator chasing you through the swamps of your worst nightmares and inadequacies.” And my favorite corny one: “Be the Smartphone among the Blackberries  with their thorns.”

4.  You must write at least four books with five-step plans.  You must allow two of those books to have titles that contain a play on words.  Like — “Urine for Success: 5 ways that the bladder teaches discipline.”

If you have those qualities, you are ready to be a life coach.   Having trouble getting started?  Contact me, and I will give you the five steps to  launching your dreams into the next level of your buzzing beehive of success. 

Favorite life coach quote:  ”Life.  Live it!”

That’s your piece of awesome writing for the day.  It was written by Robert Frost, who also happens to be my great, great, great, great, great, great uncle.  Random?  Yes. What does it have to do with this article?  Nothing.  I just wanted to let you read some good writing before I unleash my corny side.

You have been warned.

Let’s just say this is the reason they create a two drink minimum at comedy clubs.  These are all the stupid one-liners I thought would be good to open my article.

1. Convenience charges….what’s so convenient about them?
2. The only person that receives the convenience is the person receiving the extra $4.50 into their bank account.
3. Convenience charges?  More like INCONVENIENT charges!!! (hardy har har har)
4. What else are we going to be charged for the convenience of doing?  Breathing?  (This one was suggested by a friend.)
5. There is a reason that the word “con” exists in these fees.

So.  Now that I have driven you to drinking, and probably vomiting, I suppose I should bring it all home with a rant of why convenience fees are stupid.  Let me lay it all out with a true story.

This last summer I got two traffic tickets.  Bummer.  When I got the invoice in the mail, one of the tickets came to a total of $400.  They generously directed me to their online payment center where I could “conveniently” take care of my “inconvenience.”  Not wanting to get in trouble with the law, I dutifully visited the site and started the process of paying the darn thing.

Lo and Behold.  They tacked on a convenience fee.  To pay something on a site that they instructed me to visit.  How convenient was it?  Uh…..it wasn’t.

I had to search for the ticket by serial number.  And the system couldn’t find it.  So, I searched by driver’s license.  Still couldn’t find it.  Then I had to figure out what department had written me the ticket.  Definitely not as easy as it sounds.  Did you know that they have a LA traffic department, a LA sheriff’s department, a LA Metro Transportation office, a LA public safety department, a LA county traffic security department, and a LA we just want to make another department to write tickets department?

After writing a logarithm to figure out what greedy government department was getting my money, I proceeded to the checkout.  Where they said due to my convenient online experience they were going to charge me $30 over my ticket.   With this injustice, I wonder….

How in the world did California get broke?

I am declaring a world-wide ban.  No one should like the movie, “Astro Boy.”  No one.  Ever. Liking it is right up there to liking drowning.  Or bacteria.

Now.   I am no movie snob.  I’ll watch just about anything.  As long as there is not too much filth in the movie, I’ll watch it.  To prove my point, I watched three seasons of an 80′s T.V. show about cowboys and Indians and the pony express.   The big drama in that show?  One of the riders was a girl pretending to be a boy so that she could earn money to go save her brother and sister from an orphanage and who got kidnapped by their fake father and she has to go rescue them from a fort.  Then she falls in love with one of the other pony riders.  Oh and all of this was accompanied by 80′s music.  

Now you know why I blog.  To put some sanity back into my life.

But back to Astro Boy.   I work in animation, so I figured that this animated film might be a good way to observe some of the industry techniques.

Allow me to sum up the plot.  The main character is a boy living in a high tech society.    Of course, to make the main character stand out, they make him a genius…..and misunderstood. His father ignores him and his mother is dead. Getting too attached to this poor boy?  That’s okay.   They kill him.  After ten minutes.  With a missile.

Uhhhhhh, WHAT????  That was my initial reaction.  It should be yours too.

They kill off the main character in ten minutes.  Yeah.  Who taught those writers how to craft a good story?  A cracker jack box?  A monkey?  A youtube video?

Then Nicholas Cage, who plays the scientist father, creates a robot boy to replace his son. Why?  Because if he couldn’t have his real boy, he might as well make a robot that looked like him and can shoot bullets out of his robotic butt.  It’s like a modern day Pinocchio without the cute cricket….or any sense and logic.

You might be wondering “how does he give the robot power?”  I’m so glad you asked.     He puts a star in him.  Yes.  A star. Like twinkle, twinkle little star.   Oh and it’s blue.  Because apparently red stars are bad and too unstable.  That’s their big good vs. evil symbolism. 

Of course every story has to have a love angle in it, right?  The boy turned robot falls  in love with a  girl with black and purple hair.  But she doesn’t know he is a robot.  Oh the suspense!!!  When she does find out his oh so dark secret, she decides to love him anyways.  Uh.  Yes, that’s something we want to teach out children….fall in love with robots.

And every story has to have a moral thread, right?  Disney is famous for their “believe in yourself” lines.  Well, guess what this profoundly deep movie was trying to teach.   Robots have feelings.  Yep.  Your coffee pot?  Feelings.  Your lawn mower?  Feelings.

Please.  Never watch Astro Boy.  Because, I’ll save you the moral struggle- robots do not, in fact, have feelings. And the color blue is no more righteous than the color red.  I promise.

I have a confession to make.  I hate my comfort zone.

I know what you are thinking right now.  Everyone loves their comfort zone, hence the name “comfort.”  If everyone loves it, why does it get a dedicated post on a blog that rants and raves about things that no one likes?

Frankly, things like LA traffic, moldy bread and piles of dirty dishes don’t matter when you think about other things.  Kids in Africa.  Do you ever think of them, at least besides the times that your mom demands you clean your plate of week old leftovers?

The person who sits by himself every day in the cafeteria because he don’t have the courage to go introduce himself to a boisterous table of friends.  Does anyone care about him?  What about the slightly strange kid who slightly bugs you?  Do you care about that person?

A very close friend of mine lives by one simple rule.  Live life with no regrets. Can we really live without having a single regret?  Probably not.  But we can die trying to live the best we can with what we have been given.    I feel like we should live life like a movie trailer, living for the big moments that make the rest of the movie worth watching, and perhaps enjoying the small details along the way.

Yes.  Everyone has their comfort zone.  But I want to call you out on something.  Do you really like it?  I know you think you do, because I have deceived myself into thinking I like mine many times.

However, it has been my experience that the times that I feel alive the most is when I am miles and miles away from that zone.  There is another word for the comfort zone.  It’s called a rut.

You go to work, school, doctor appointments, the gym or wherever else the typical day takes you.  And then you go home.  You watch two hours of some pointless t.v. show that will be canceled after the next season.  You read the news about war, corruption, racism, technology advancement and the latest sport scores.  Then you go to bed.

There may be moments where you tip toe out of your comfort zone for a mere second just to see what it feels like outside of your walls.  But then you step back inside, shut the door and close the drapes.

My purpose in writing this is not to guilt you.  We have all created our comfort zones for a reason.  Life is hard, and sometimes it’s easier to get through the day when you are safe behind the walls of fake smiles, shallow conversations and work that gets your mind off the pain.  Some of us have built bigger comfort zones than others.  We build fortresses and dig proverbial moats to make sure that nothing can get past our masks.  In fact, some of us have done such a good job of building walls that we have forgotten to add a door or window.

The world is full of other things besides yourself.  Sometimes we need that reminder.  If you just step outside that comfort zone, you may find that the smiles that you give and the conversations you have become more real.  Life isn’t about building your zone and making sure the gates are locked shut.  It’s about breaking out of there and living.

You’ve only been given one life.  Don’t spend it locked away, trying to avoid the hurts or pains while missing out on the victories. Comfort zones make very lonely places.

So.  Let’s just be honest.  No one likes their comfort zone.

I don’t believe in evolution.  I just had to put that on the record.  But if I did believe in evolution and cavemen and flintstone bedrock ages, I know for a fact that if cavemen had invented child safety scissors instead of clubs and hammers…..mankind would have gone extinct.  Why?  Because when it comes to cutting paper or any other severing activity, child safety scissors do about as well as Lindsey Lohan does with rehab.  But perhaps the child safety scissors accomplish their goal with less alcohol and more apple juice.

I’ve taught enough children’s Sunday schools to know it’s pointless to even pass out the darn things.  It would take the skill of a surgeon to be able to coax those tiny, dull, plastic scissors to cut anything other than water.  None of the kids can ever make them work and it becomes the Sunday school teacher’s job to saw out fifty-four Jesus’ arms to brass bracket to the lesson sheets so that Jesus can wave to a crayon scribbled crowd.

Of course, the goal in the creation of these pointless scissors was to promote children safety.  But really?  What is this?  Prison?  Are we afraid the children will weld the scissors into shanks and start forming their own classroom gangs, like the Crayon Warriors, the Hell’s Doodlers and the ABC homies?

Let’s just think about what Dwight Schrute from the NBC show, the Office would say.  He would say that we should hand out machetes to all the children.  It would weed out the weak ones from the older ones.  Then he would hand out not paper but boards to cut for beet boxes.  All Schrute children probably had to do this.  And we can be sure that none of them had child safety scissors.

If you are really concerned for your child’s safety and education, you would give your kids real scissors.  The safety ones only cause blisters and fatigue, all of which I am sure are considered child abuse.  Real scissors will teach your kids motor skills and the dangers of sharp objects.  If a few fingers are lost in the process, even more lessons will be learned.  Like how to tie a tourniquet.

Say no to child safety scissors, say yes to learning.

Let me tell you.  Our society has its priorities mixed up.  Really.  A person could get shot down on skid row and a report may be filed and the body dragged away, but just TRY to say a double negative.  Just try.

I was in a meeting recently.  In this meeting, I was attempting to express my frustration of not being able to resolve a simple database problem. 

Me: “I can’t hardly enter in the text when….”  

Five heads turned on me like I was Harry Potter confronting Voldemort. 

Person #1:  “WHAT did you say????”

Me: “Uh….I said I can’t har…”  My jaw snapping shut as I realized my linguistics error.  “I mean,  I couldn’t figure out how to enter the text without screwing up the pre-programmed formulas….”

Person #2:  “You do realize you said a double negative, right?” 

Now.  Okay.  Yes, I said a double negative.  Iblame it on the fact that my ancestors are all deep-rooted rednecks with no book learning. 

To rednecks, a double negative just means that you are emphasizing the negativity.  When you can’t hardly do something, it means that you really, really can’t do it.  They don’t understand all those scientific reasons why two negatives such as  -x and -y multiplied together will make a positive xy.   All they know is that marrying your cousin will probably give your children six toes.  Or two heads.

But no one in that meeting cares about that.  To them, my double negative gives them the authority to go after me like the Po-Po in the Ke$ha music video.  And shut me down. 

After a five-minute discussion on why double negatives are the reason society is headed to near destruction, I was allowed to walk away from the firing squad.  I don’t know how those entrepreneurs at “I can’t believe it’s not butter” got away with it. 

Double negatives must be why Albert Einstein had crazy hair.  At least, that’s what I am going to blame.  I’ll also blame rusty nails, splinters and cat hairballs on double negatives.  It’s only fair. 

Have you ever said a double negative?

The almost good song.  It’s like a box of chocolates.  That your boyfriend picked up at the gas station on his way over to your house.  It was a nice thought, but you could have done without the sawdustlike filling and the crumbly, cracked chocolatelike coating.  Just another thing to add to stuff we don’t like. 

 Don’t you just love the feeling when you are the first person to discover a good/potentially soon-to-be popular song on the radio?  It’s like being a record label agent and knowing that you have discovered the better stuff.  Like Snapple.

The worst thing to happen to you on the way to work or on the way home?  Discovering the almost good song.  You know, when the DJ comes on and introduces the newest single from The Shizzlites feat.The  Mad Hot Bodies, “Sugar Daddy’s lil’ Shawty.”  

You get excited.  The bass starts pumping and your car vibrates.  Oxygen rushes through your cells.  You mash on the gas petal.  The singer’s voice breaks through your speakers.

Then.   The singing is off.  The chorus doesn’t jump up and demand you dance.  It just kinda sits there like a limp, cold French fry. 

With no ketchup.  

No car dancing.  No hands in the air.  No screaming about clubs and billionaires and G6s and OMGs and beautiful girls. 

Just lameness that goes on for three minutes and forty-five seconds.    

Yep.  That’s the stuff that no one likes.  Which means it can’t be like Snapple.  Please tell me you know what Snapple commercial I keep referring to.  Please. 

You know what’s even worst?  When the commercial songs get stuck in your head.  Don’t tell me you haven’t hummed the “Keyes, Keyes, Keyes  on Van Nuys” song. 

I won’t believe you like I can’t believe it’s not butter.  Tomorrow’s topic? 

Double Negatives.

(p.s. did anyone notice how much food came up in this post?  I must be hungry.)

When one is writing about stuff no one likes, it’s important to start out strong.  I could begin by talking about dull pencils and Kanye West, but I really need to show my readership that I mean business when it comes to the epitome of “non-likedness.”  I need a universally hated object of hatred and disgust that is hated.  (Yes.  I am aware of the funtional  faux pas of the above sentences.)

Fortunately, the government of the United States of America has created that very thing.  They have made the very stuff that makes every other disliked thing seem very likeable.  What is this monster?   The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

If I were to tell you that I am going to start a company that is centered around sucking the joy out of every  person’s life and make them stand in a two-hour line to then pay me money , just because I can - you would scoff at that business plan.  Guess that shows that you should never underestimate the power of government regulations.

Have you ever seen a happy DMV employee?  They always look like they are on the verge of complete social anihilation.  Who ever dreamt of being a DMV employee when they grew up?  Only serial killers and car hijackers and perhaps disgruntled blues singers.

We do know that it’s the only profession that won’t have their own t.v. show.  Because seriously, who would watch ”The DMV bachelorette.

Have you ever wondered what department handled such operations when cars had not  yet been invented and horses ruled the roadways?

Was there a Department of Horses and Carts?    Perhaps they made up stupid rules too.  Like how many braids could go in a mane before surcharges and extra weight fees were added.  Or having limited liability in case two horses collided.  Er.  Wait.  That was encouraged.  It was called jousting.

Maybe that’s why the DMV is hated so much.  No one jousts any more.  And we can’t braid our cars’ manes.

Why do you hate the DMV?

If you hate $20 CDs with only three good songs, this blog is for you.

If you hate going into a public restroom that’s out of toilet paper, this blog is for you.

If you hate people correcting your grammar in Facebook statuses, this blog is for you.

With the onset of this phenominone of the “Like” button, too many things are being liked.  People like puppies, like songs with catchy lyrics that consist of only three cords and words that repeat over and over, “I’ll throw my hands in the air, air, air, and I’ll dance, dance, dance because my hands are in the air, air, air!”  (Really?  That’s all you could coon about for five verses?)  and even like the ever so highly demanded but never delivered ”Dislike” button.

I am here to save you.  I don’t like everything either.

No one should like tires with leaks, spam e-mails that promise you $100 million inheritance money from your UNKLE FRANKESOTIHE if you just give away all your private information,  the name “John Doe,” or tv shows that have so many seasons that the orginal actors die before the final season.

Jeopardy is getting close to being one of those.  Jeopardy is also the only quiz show that makes you ask the questions.  How lazy is that?  No one should like that.  And no one should like that only smart people can win Jeopardy.  I mean, really?  Dumb people can ask questions too.

If you have ever not liked something – eventually, that thing may show up on this blog.  Because, seriously.  No one likes apples with worms, gassy dogs or overpriced coffee.

What are some things you don’t like?  Who knows, I might feature it.