Ben Stein's How to Ruin your Love Life...yes, that's right, THE Ben Stein. I love this man. From Bueller to giving away his money, he makes me happy. How thrilled am I that his wit and sarcasm can now also tell me how to stay perpetually single? love it.
The book is divided into 44 chapters, each devoted to one rule. Some of my favourites include:
#13: Act moody and sulky when your lover gets home - but don't tell him why you're sulking!
#16: Play phone games - that is, don't return her calls so she can see how cool and aloof you are.
#19: If you're dating someone who has a lot of problems, is generally a mess and all your friends dislike him, get married anyway - marriage will cure all of your problems!
#33: Act out of jealousy any old time you feel like it; in fact, let jealousy rule your life.
...and my favourite...
#44: When things are going really well, start a fight.
There are, however, two super-rules, which, if followed, are guaranteed to keep you single forever:
1) You are better than anyone else.
2) Never forgive and never forget.
Good times.
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job
1) Anonymity: people cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known. People who see themselves as invisible, generic or anonymous cannot love their jobs, no matter what they are doing.2) Irrelevance: everyone needs to know their job matters to someone. Anyone. Without seeing a connection between the work and the satisfaction of another person or group of people, an employee simply will not find lasting fulfillment.
3) Immeasurement: employees must be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for themselves. Without tangible means of assessing success or failure, motivation eventually deteriorates as people see themselves as unable to control their own fate.
...given all this, I see why I tend to be so unenthusiastic about my job (especially now that I'm not working with kids who have a very direct way of saying "thanks for helping me"). I often feel anonymous and replaceable; that my job of answering questions like "I need to know about healing crystals" doesn't change in the world; that budgets and a demanding mayor often take precedence to providing information to the public. Still - those days when I get a thank you candy-cane from the kid who got an A+ on his science project because I helped him... those are good days.
7 comments:
I'd like to know more about these healing crystals...
I promise to evaluate your answer, acknowledge your individuality and say thank you afterwards!
Crystal enlightenment : the transforming properties of crystals and healing stones
by: Katrina Raphaell.
Crystal visions : the healing power of crystals
by Roxayne Veasey.
Color and crystals : a journey through the chakras
by Joy Gardner-Gordon.
These and more can be found in 133.2548
...Look at me! Grade me! Evaluate and rank me! I'm good, good, good and oh so smart! Grade meeeeee!!
Well, the information is well-researched. Congrats on keeping your perspecacity. However, this perpetual motion machine is all wrong...it just keeps going and going!
On this blog, WE OBEY THE RULES OF THERMODYNAMICS!
Hey...put Infidel down and slowly back away...ugh, its like when Somalis get famous they do it in the most annoying way possible....UGH!(did I say that already!?) DOUBLE UGH!
What's wrong with Infidel? I must admit I am only halfway through, but I'm more interested in how she "escaped" over anything else. That, and the war thing (which is interesting to compare to Romeo Dallaire's memoir). The religion stuff is all stuff I've heard before.
The problem I have with Infidel is the writer. My problem isn't a religious one (you know me, I am such a believer in the individualism of religion I couldn't care less if she is an atheist)...although I'm not impressed with her demonization of Islam. It is her statements in the book about the arranged marriage she was "escaping" (also a problematic part for me)...our culture doesn't do arranged marriages. It's honestly something that I've never even heard of (and not even from old schoolers like my grandma and aunts). She talks about escaping Somalia because of that...the truth is, most Somalis have made very calculated and thoughtful decisions about leaving their homes, their country (war, famine, instability). She demonizes the culture using a custom that isn't even culturally accurate so she can play at the Western "oh aren't those Easterns so barbaric" heart strings. It legitmizes her. This is for justification of her refugee claims in Netherlands (the SECOND country she landed in and both of us know you claim in the FIRST country you enter) other than just stating she illegally entered a country for probably more legitimate reasons (see above....but those reasons don't make for good drama...."author/activist/politician running away from arranged marriage, that's so 1854!"). Anyway, I view her as a woman who is dissillusioned with her culture and her faith and has adopted "Westernism". She probably feels alien from her culture and faith and has experience backlash for it. Somalis aren't very quiet about their criticisms (ummm, neither are Muslims), but I feel like she's sacrificed a part of her soul to be accepted by the West. She's a self-hating Somali. She's one of those people who has been indocrinated by the idea that West is better than East, developed better than undeveloped, native better than immigrant. Maybe I can see through it because I'm a woman who is both Somali and Muslim. It's easier for me to listen to her speak, and hear the discrepancies. I've heard her speak, seen her in interviews, watched a CNN mock-u-mentary (God, CNN!? UGH!) on her and was so put off, I can't imagine spending my time reading her book.
Having finished the book, I don't find her accounts completely unbelieveable: she claimed asylum in Holland because her father knew people in Germany and she says she was really scared of being compelled to go back; she changed her name for the same reason (and got her Dutch citizenship revoked over that almost 10 years later); she was excised so I'm assuming she came from a really hardcore family (as excision, any way you justify it IS barbaric); and the arranged marriage thing - I don't know about normacy of that. I come from a country where arranged marriages happen all the time, but not officially and never in my family. Like with excision, perhaps her clan does that but your family doesn't?
The thing is, she doesn't demonise Islam - she just says that the interpretation of Islam causes a lot of problems. Unfortunately, any theocracy is a bad bad idea (as we both know) and she simply says so. Her quotations of the Quran and akin to my quotations from the Bible for justifying why religious books should not be used as legal codes, because they inevitably contradict each other: for every poem of love there seems to exist a commandment of hate (in the guise of evangelism or enlightenment).
She doesn't seem to be a self-hating individual - in fact, she addresses just that label in the last paragraph of her book. She's simply calling it as she sees it through her own experiences. Whether we can relate to those experiences or have experiences that directly contradict her is not really the point. May I simply suggest, as with reading the Bible before I bash it, that you try and read the book? and then write an Op-Ed piece shredding it to bits that garners you a Pulitzer? :) If her accounts are false or misrepresentative of the norm, we need more people (like you) to speak up - but I think it gives you more credibility if you actually read the thing before you pull it apart. At all costs, we have to avoid blind vitriol.
Anyway, my "review" is posted as well. You know I love debating with you, darling Elle.
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