General Lordisimo’s Apocalypse

I haven’t written anything in the last couple of days because I have been home for spring break. My parent’s computer sucks a lot so even getting this posting up will probably take an hour or something (slow piece of crap).

The other day I was thinking about how it would be cool to teach a class called “Literary Criticism of Self Help Books.” Now lets admit it, if we are Americans than chances are we have picked up some form of self help book at one time or another. There are lots of them out there. Hell there is a self help book for everything. Anything from how to love Jesus better to how to loose weight faster. I fell like the material is perfect for a Lit Crit class. And the great thing is that people like self help books. I’ll admit that I’ve enjoyed reading some of them. Why do we like them? Because while we are reading them we begin to be convinced. We’re sitting there reading and all of the sudden we find ourselves really motivated and say “hell yeah I can be a millionaire before I’m thirty!” We get pumped and we jump up and dance around like the fools we are and then reality kicks in five minutes later. Here it is folks, the reality is . . . that just reading a book isn’t going to make you loose weight, or make millions of dollars, or win the girl of your dreams. To do these things we actually have to put the books down, get off our asses, and go do something. Honestly though I think that that is what people love about self help books. It is the fact that we can read them and say to ourselves “we can do this,” while in truth most of us know we won’t. Still the belief is a bit up-lifting. I think maybe someday I’ll write an all inclusive self help book titled something like “Stop drinking, loose weight, climb your personal mountain, and make a billion dollars all well getting the man or woman of your dreams and learning how to love Jesus better.” One stop shopping right? It’ll be a twelve step program for good measure. Oh, or I should write a self help book called “Write your own self help book: A helpful guide for the inspiring helper.” Yeah, that would be a good one. Then we can all be self help book writers until the publication market is swamped with manuscripts for books like “Boil Beans Better” or “How to Watch Movies and Love them” (the latter might plausibly already be a book, so I mean no insult).

Yeah, good times. Someday I’ll be rich. I’ve just got a shit load of self help books to get through first.