"Just Trying to Help"

I rarely give anyone, advice. The reason is obvious, I have never been on the cover of Common Sense magazine.  I’m the guy that sunk my money in a hamburger stand in downtown New Delhi, India. Who knew that in India the cow was sacred?  However, when I see the chance and the need to help my readers by passing along some hard earned wisdom I feel I should. In that spirit and based on this last year living in  New York City, a city that teaches hard lessons daily here are my

“Ten Things to Stay Away From”

     

           Stay away from people that describe their life as “My Journey” or “My Personal Journey” (the redundant version). These are people so taken with themselves that they believe one day their life-story will become a TV documentary.

   

             Stay away from people that tell you, “I don't want any drama”, “Please, no drama” or my favorite 

       “I'm tired of all the drama”. No they're not! First of all these people live for drama, they are drama; no one can out do them for drama. The one thing that is constant in their life is all their drama. If you have to know a person like this just prepare yourself for Act III of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” a lot.

             Stay away from people that cut you off in the middle of your thought/sentence with: “right, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah” It’s become an epidemic in New York. Can I please finish my sentence or my thought before you let me know you already know everything I know?  I’m going to try this, saying “ You know, the flux capacitor during ion recalibration, often emits a non-aural stream of negative grignon particles and if the person does the “right, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,  I'm going to ask them to explain to me what I just said.

              Stay away from any company that sells their product or services in “bundles”. When and where did this annoying, cloying, stupid idea come from? The word bundle had all but disappeared from the English language until some geeky Berkeley MBA grad came up with the idea. Hey Time Warner…….wanna see my "bundle"?

  

             Stay away from any company or product that promises you “happiness”. I saw a car commercial for Manhattan VW yesterday and their catch phrase is “we sell you happiness”. Oh really Freud? The finest philosophers and scholars in the world haven't been able to identify what happiness is, or what makes people happy. So, I guess all the finest minds in the world, Nietzsche, Foucault, Hobbs, James, Heidegger, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Oprah and Tony Robbins should just step aside, the answer to that elusive, great question has been discovered by Manhattan Volkswagen.

    

             Stay away from anyone that asks you for “Just a minute of your time”. The first thing they've done is lie to you. How reliable can they be?  

  

             Stay away from anyone over the age of 50 that still go by the names of: Skippy, Precious, or Willow. They are adolescents that think they are cute but they are just creepy, weird. They mistakenly thought that if they stayed cute, quirky, and a child they would stay young. Now they have become like the characters Dustin Hoffman & Barbara Streisand played in “Meet the Folkers II”.

   

       Stay away from any politician that says, “We just want what’s best for the American people”. If that were true they would have resigned already so we could get someone less grasping and self-serving in there.

              Stay away from anyone that offers you something for free. The last time someone was truly offered something for free, Eve took a bite out of it and I think we all know how that turned out!!

      

        Stay away from anyone that wears suspenders, especially anyone with suspenders and a bow tie(self-explanatory).