Friday, May 29, 2009

So you want to be a BLOGGER

You know that homeless guy who hangs out on the street corner near your work? The one who doesn't wear a shirt and smells of old fish? Well, his shouty rants about the spiders in his head and the little people who steal his underwear when he's sleeping are far more interesting than your tedious blogs - and they reach a bigger audience too.

No one wants to hear whatever random assortment of noises your stomach makes whenever you open your mouth to yawn. No one is interested in your LOL links to puerile crap only ADD 12-year-olds should find funny. And no one is captivated by your inane commentary on your unbelievably vapid life.

In short, no one cares, including you whenever you finally get bored of this pointless vanity exercise and quietly abandon it.

And don't ever fool yourself into thinking you can make any money out of your half-baked notions and self-serving stupidity. Sure, your fatuous witterings have a potential readership of millions, but back here in reality land that same yelling crazy man will make more money every single day from shaking an empty coffee cup in the face of random, scared strangers than you ever will from Google Ads.

Hey, why not post something about that? Blah blah blah, blog, repeat, etc.

Friday, May 22, 2009

So you want to be a NOVELIST

Hey, if an idiot like Dan Brown can make millions writing shitty books, it can't be that hard, right? All you have to do is follow this laughably easy step-by-step guide to instantaneous literary success:

1. Write a book.
Sure, we all have a book in us, but have you gotten round to the tiresome task of turning that jumble of ill-conceived thoughts in your head into a long line of little squiggly word-shaped things on paper? Thought not. But let's assume you'll soon have the necessary time, discipline, and self-serving vanity to turn your mediocre mess of ideas into middling prose, and skip to the next step.

2. Write a book that isn't shit.
Sure, we all have a book in us, but most of them are incoherent, clichéd, boring, predictable, nonsensical, pointless, crappy excuses for books. But let's assume that one day you'll get round to forming enough understandable sentences that together constitute a story that is somehow, magically better than average, and skip to step three.

3. Get an agent
There are a lot of other people out there who, like you, are determined to inflict their pitiable prose on otherwise blameless printing presses. This means that most publishers won't even glance at your smudged, stained carnival of tedium on its unopened, envelope-clad way into the trash unless you first convince an agent to represent you (and for "represent" read "add a post-it to your manuscript with 'Hey [insert name], this kid's plopped out something great' scrawled on it"). But let's assume that you'll find an agent dumb enough to take you on but also, strangely, clever enough to remember to get up in the morning, and skip to step four.

4. Find a publisher.
Even at this stage, it's still far from guaranteed that your second-rate agent will convince some third-rate publishing house to transform your fourth-rate writing into a fifth-rate book. But let's assume that your deluded agent somehow blackmails some desperate, senile publisher into accepting your spit-soaked excuse for a manuscript and turning it into a book-shaped shitpile of bound pages (or that you've circumvented this whole tedious process via the literary equivalent of public masturbation: self-publishing), and skip to step five.

5. Be a millionaire bestseller.
Congratulations! You're a published author. The bad news? Fame and fortune won't be joining us at your celebration party. Why? Well, every year there are around 50,000 other fiction titles published in the US alone. And that's not counting the 200,000 or so non-fiction titles. Or books published in other countries. Or books published last year, or the year before that. Or even the ones written ages ago by obscure authors with weird names like Twain, Tolstoy, and Twat-Face Austen.

And guess what that means? It means that even if you write your sad little story, even if it is - against all odds - any good, even if you dupe an agent and a publisher into not just reading it but actually liking it enough to turn it into a book, and even if that book achieves the improbable accomplishment of making its sorry way into actual bookstores, chances are virtually no one will either buy it or read it. Which, as outcomes go, is not that different from not bothering to write the feeble thing in the first place.

Friday, May 15, 2009

So you want to win the LOTTERY



Of course you do. Because, for some bizarre reason when faced with odds of 18 million to one, you focus all your attention on that itty bitty one, and completely ignore the big, complicated side of the equation that will occur around 17,999,999 times more frequently.

Why? Because you're a moron.

So instead of trying to explain the finer points of crushing inevitability and statistical certainties to you, we're going to focus instead on the real reason people continue to witlessly donate their money to lottery companies: What if?

What if it was you? What if you really did have a chance of winning the big prize? What if you managed to pull off the impossible and actually got your greasy, grasping, greedy little fingers on that enormous, mega-millions bonus powerball jackpot? Happiness is just a huge windfall of cash away, right? An eight-figure bank balance is your route to joy and contentment. Blissful fulfillment awaits you in deluxe rich-dick nirvana.

Except almost all lottery winners are so stupid that they continue to play their numbers after they win. That's right, they continue to do the thing they think will make them happy, after it has supposedly made them happy. Around 98 percent of them according to one survey – not that such a big, complicated number will likely mean much to you, not when there's that little two percent left for you to focus on. Go on, look at it. Two percent. That could be you.

Moron.

Friday, May 8, 2009

So you want to be a JOURNALIST



It's never gonna happen. Seriously. I mean, are you completely retarded?

First up, the bad news: There are about three million dumb students out there who have the same idea, so you'd better be prepared for a little competition.

Second, the worse news: Newspapers are dying. Haven't you heard? No, of course not. And you want to be a fucking reporter.

My advice? Give up. Now.

But you won't, because you have a dream la-dee-fucking-da.

So here's all you have to do: Sneak into a newspaper office, and start journalizing. It's easy. Anyone can do it, and there are plenty of free desks. You can wear a Trilby hat, and stick a post-it marked "press" to it if you really want. Or you can even sit around in a clown suit and surf for kiddie porn. The few paid staff still there will be too demoralized to even notice.

Of course, you won't actually get paid. Not ever. Welcome to your new life as a journalist.

Friday, May 1, 2009

So you want to build a SKYSCRAPER