Much as I'd love to become a certified recreational blogger, I'm still a couple of months from the three-year mark. So Becks doesn't get any of my money just yet.
Also, I predict Emerson is going to be all over this thread.
Did something specific happen to trigger this insight? Microsoft? A realtor? Visit from Joe the Plumber?
3: The fact that there are so many choices speaks volumes about our society.
4: I was going to say 'lawyer', but the figures are off by a factor of 100.
There's got to be a corollary to history repeating itself as farce. Something about satire that preempts the society's actual devolution?
LOL
What are you, Becks, some sort of actuary? Or a person who trains RealTors?
I got it. Certified Home Energy Audit Technician. Just certified/standardize the guys running around doing energy audits. It's likely to be a growth industry. I'm sure somebody else has tired this, but my plan has a killer acronym.
I'll charge people charge $49.95 for the book and then $555 for the privilege of applying to take my certification exam.
Wow. Only 49.95$? Only 555$ for the exam? Damn, that's cheap. Cisco charges shitloads more if I remember correctly.
I'll require that they take 36 hours of official training that only I can give them
At at least 49.95$/hour.
I won't let anyone who hasn't done the thing I'm certifying them for for three years already take the classes or the test.
Now wait a minute. You should merely require that they have three or four hundred hours of additonal training at 49.95$. And they should have to take all three or four hundred hours even if they've been doing it for two years.
I'll make them take continuing education classes each year (which, again, cha-ching!)
36 hours of continuing education to insure that attendees remain at least at Full Quality©® plus some additional required uh, Quality Enhancement Training©®. Also, if someone lets their cert lapse, you should allow them to retrieve it by paying a fee equivalent to 1/2 the continuing hours for each years slipped, but allow them to take the ReQuality ReTraining©® of 36 hours at half price.
Who wants to buy some of my certification-backed collateralized bond obligations?
Now hold on: first you need to sell some preferred stock, and you need to issue some stock options in lieu of pay to your franchise trainers. After you get a full set of franchisees, then you sell them some collateral debt obligations that are based on increased in future profits created by expanding the franchise. Many fewer legal hassles that way.
You probably should also create... well, I'll hold on to that. It was a good try Becks, but you haven't had much practice at this, so I'll charge you just 99.95$ for this consultation.
max
['Glad to be of help!']
Just tonight my survivalist, Ron Paul, FTW roommates informed me they were planning on getting certified to be on the Sheriff's search and rescue team, with an eye towards increasing their wilderness skills or something.
Maybe just because it's 1:00 in the morning, but my idea seems half-sensible. Maybe Certified Home Energy Audit Professional (to emphasize that we save you money on your heating and cooling bills).
Which are better, FTW roommates or FML roommates?
14: Considering they did my dishes last night, I'm cool with the FTW. I think the FML-types could get all weepy ("My roommate made pad thai and left shit soaking in the sink over night. FML.") vs. helpful ("My roommate left some dishes soaking. He was so nice to watch over our cats and WTO-collapse garden over the weekend while we were away. Let's do him a favor! Too bad he's gonna die, like, next week when the shit hits the fan and we're all left roaming the woods.")
Max, the dollar sign comes before the figure: "$555", not "555$".
Have you learned nothing from this thread? You don't give away advice like that for free. That's grammar gold, man. (Me, I'm looking to become one of max's franchisees.)
After a close encounter with Landmark Forum (Son of EST) I and a close friend discussed founding our own therapeutic cult, but we came to the conclusion that we couldn't take the need for lifelong silence about what a load of crap it all was.
What lifelong silence? After a few years you come clean and explain how you got seduced into believing such nonsense. You publish a book, go on the lecture circuit, and have people hire you to deprogram their loved ones.
To be boring, max is right. You couldn't just securitise the certifications. Or at least it woudn't be worthwhile. Once you got a franchise system up and running, however, you could securitise the franchise payments. Quite a few companies (eg Domino's, Applebee's) have done that.
Which are better, FTW roommates or FML roommates?
Crap. FTM roommates is the answer.
My sisters and I have speculated about doing marriage counseling. Three people, four marriages, four unpleasant divorces.
19: We'd crack eventually and admit it was all a lie.
Admittedly the shame and opprobrium would be easier to take in our lovely villa in the South of France, where we'd live well on our ill-gotten gains.
Ned, LOL is banned.
Issue him a yellow card, BG. Laughing out loud is so gauche.
LQTS (Laughing Quietly to Self) is okay though, as is CCMC.
The problem with this Ponzi scheme business plan is that it only works if it's already established. Most people are skeptical enough about new stuff and stuff being deliberately advertised that they'd take one look at CHEAT, CHEAP or Becks CRB program and realize that it's new and therefore not worth their money.
The trick is to get it established non-obviously, I guess. Get famous people to use it and call it useful. Hmmm, now who do we know who writes for major media like, to choose a couple publications totally at random here, the Atlantic or the Washington Post?
This is really funny. It could be worse, though-- the US is actually not out of control for this kind of thing. ecce Comitology. Also, both US and EU recreational bureaucracy preserves the veil of impersonality.
For real fury, understanding that the BS form which will require three inconvenient office visits exists because the rumpled imbecile in front of you MADE UP the form requirements. She will probably waive them if you leave an envelope on the table and come back tomorrow. US corruption is institutionalized, most cops don't take bribes. Maddening as plumbing or MS cert is, the US works pretty well overall.
Comitology
No more comity until everyone here gets certified!
27: I'll work around CHEAP's lack of institutional history by giving money to some environmental organization that is well-established but greedy. Which means more start-up capital. It's still easy to start a business with a home equity loan, isn't it?
8: Ned, LOL is banned.
I believe that Ned was demonstrating the sort of blog writing/commenting practices that would be beaten out of him in Becks' certification class. If not, then Ned himself is banned.
CCMC
Chuckling 'Cause of Mary Catherine?
After a close encounter with Landmark Forum (Son of EST)
I flirted with Landmark for longer than I should have, back when I was a wee early-twenty-something.
Anybody have any dealings with The Hunger Project? My ex-wife's friend started writing letters to all the people that had been important in her life (from favorite elementary school teachers to college roommates to ex-boyfriends) asking for money. so that she could reach her highest potential by attending more Hunger Project classes(or maybe they were called "workshops" or "indoctrination sessions").
Chuckling 'Cause of Mary Catherine?
RTFA!
Pimp.
We have many employees here who are certified PMPs.
I'm a Hunger Project Operating Body Thetan with the ability to fly twice a week. What's the problem? It's great for networking.
37: I thought we were celebrating hunger?
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My wife just got mad at me because I didn't want to read carefully through a several page flame mail she wrote this morning to a coworker of hers... who also happens to be an ex girlfriend of hers.
This project is making her stressier than usual and I would like it to be over now.
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You also have to revise the book of best practices every few years. It takes more drunken hazes than you think.
But the PMP will be worth it. Maybe.
40: I wouldn't touch that situation with a ten-foot pole.
38: That would explain it, I guess -- I had just misunderstood the supposed purpose of the organization.
But I do vaguely recall having attended one of their educational seminars in which they kept on saying that they were going "end hunger by the year 2000". My understanding was that they believed that by repeating the words over and over it would become true.
44: In his heart, he proofread your wife.
My understanding was that they believed that by repeating the words over and over it would become true.
This is kind of how Landmark Education works, too.
In his heart, he proofread your wife.
With a ten-foot pole.
"With a ten-foot pole."
Thanks to Enzyte.
The hunger project looks like a freaky Werner Erhard thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Project
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If I didn't ask for anything, does that change your impression of the following story?
http://tennessean.com/article/20090421/NEWS03/904210340
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50: That's it. I'm switching all my contributions from the Hunger Project to the Human Fund.
40: If she asked you to read it before she sent it, then you must. Print it out. Get into bed with it at night, fall asleep, lend it out.
Seriously, if it's not too late to prevent it from being sent, you oughta should.
41 to 40, but then I suppose 44 to 41.
46, 53: This wasn't a request for proofread or "should I send this". This was "look what she made me do."
A friend was extolling Landmark to me recently. She's been on one of their courses, and she's planning to send her children as soon as she can. I thought it sounded interesting, came home, googled and decided it sounded bloody awful.
A friend of mine's ex-partner is obsessed with the Forum. Instead of just dropping off/picking up their daughter and leaving, he'll hang around making heavy-handed comments about how he's "gaining a lot" from his latest course.
He seems to think that if he demonstrates sufficient personal growth in this way she might take him back, when all it does is turn her off even more.
It seems to be just like scientology, only without the pseudo-religious aspects. He's spent thousands and thousands to move up to every-higher levels of enlightenment.
Bugger. "Ever-higher" of course.
A friend was extolling Landmark to me recently.
It's not terrible. I got some good stuff out of their forum, and found parts of it useless. The problem is this pressure to advocate constantly to your friends and family about how glorious and transformative it is.
59 - Exactly. The friend who's into Landmark Forum isn't stupid or gullible and does seem to be getting something positive out of it. But if she tries to sell me on it one more time I'm going to send her all the web resources I found that convinced me I never wanted to go.
(My rule-of-thumb is generally: Anyone can ask once, if they do it politely and take no for an answer. Close friends can ask twice, if they wait a reasonable amount of time so that I might have thought my first 'no' over. Ask three times when you already got "no" twice, and I will, no-holds-barred, convince you strongly never to try asking me again.)
Anyway, Landmark Forum sounded (a) expensive (b) boring (c) emotionally bleah where not boring. So, sod it.