Category: Worthless Advice

Too Many People Feeling Worthless And How I Can Help!

~ K ~ 2 Comments

I have to admit that I’m beginning to worry that chosen field of worthless advice may be becoming too crowded.  Most advice out there is worthless but at least I admit my advice is worthless and awesome.  However, the term “worthless” is being thrown around out there by everyone trying to butt in on my niche.  It is becoming annoying and rather troublesome to think that now I really have to pump out the worthless advice.

These clever imitators try to offer “helpful” advice but we know it is really “worthless”.  Top Ten Lists are the worst offenders making it easy to muck up the reader’s life by following the bullet points.  Worthless advice isn’t easy to dish out in a cookie cutter fashion.  You must be skilled at it.  You have to know that your advice really won’t help anyone but yourself.

As I scorn through the vast information highway, a simple search through my WordPress Reader makes me sick when I use the term “worthless”.

Bring on the depression when you click on the link to any blog with the term “worthless” in it.  I fall deep into a person’s written account of how they feel worthless and I need to fight the strong urge to stab my eyes with a letter opener to stop the insanity.  Then I realize that all the letter openers are in landfills because no one writes letters anymore and all those noble letter opener manufacturers are bankrupt.

Are these blogs I’ve stumbled upon really worthless?  Probably not.  Most of the writers admit that they have a good family life, a good home, and food in their stomachs but they feel worthless.  I just want to slap them upside the head and tell them to stop complaining.  Things could be worse for them.  They have access to the internet and time to write a blog about feeling worthless.  They could be stuck watching a local production of a musical by a bunch of untalented elementary students singing off key and missing their cues.

But then again, maybe they have some mental issues and I’m not being sensitive.  I understand mental issues and the problems they bring.  I know that the chemical imbalance causes havoc in the mind and crazy stuff happens.  I read a few of those crazy bloggers and they are some of the best blogs around.  You have to love craziness.

So I won’t slap them upside the head because I am sensitive (shhh…don’t tell anyone) and I do have a heart.  I usually write a positive uplifting comment on their blog to give them some encouragement.  Jeez, I’m getting soft, aren’t I?  Next thing you know I’ll be adopting sixteen cats and starting an animal shelter in my basement.  And even that wouldn’t be worthless to me or my sixteen kitty cats because I would be an awesome Crazy Cat Guy.

DSCI0327Good luck on your blog and write your witty comments below.

Worthless Advice: Back to School Tips from Your Uncle Kev

~ K ~ 2 Comments

I sometimes forget that I am here to help my readers in their life.  Now, I know everyone doesn’t have kids in school and some of my readers look to me as an inspiration to when they make the choice to have children.  Seriously, I am an awesome father that knows how to raise awesome children.  Who wouldn’t want some worthless advice from me?

For those of you with children, you will probably learn from my worthless parenting advice that you have been raising your children all wrong.  Yes, you are incorrect in the way you parent your offspring.  Perhaps there is still time for you to reverse those bad parenting habits you have learned from the so-called “experts” out there.

One of the major things we worry about is when our kids go to Back to School and whether they will survive.  Will they be able to make it through a day without us?

To prep your child for the first day of school (and the beginning of another exciting year of learning! Oh yeah!), you should set up an imaginary school at home.

 Bullying:

Have your children dress up in the worst possible clothing combinations and make fun of their clothes.  This teaches them that bullies come in all shapes and sizes and they aren’t safe anywhere….even in their own home!

Lunch:

Ask your kids what they want for lunch.  To simulate a school lunch, take these tips to heart.  If they want hot pizza, make sure it is cold and half cooked.  If they want a cold sandwich, warmth it up so it taste terrible.  Make sure the milk is warm too.  Nothing like that taste of spoiled milk to ruin your child’s appetite!

School Supplies:

Do you get those crazy school supply lists?  We do.  I merely view them as suggestions.  If every parent bought everything on the list then the teacher would have way too many school supplies.  You should be that one parent that holds out and refuses to be a puppet in the educational supply purchasing machine complex that is controlled by our robot overlords.

Backpacks:

One way to strengthen your child’s back is to overload their backpack with useless stuff.  Throw in their favorite rock you collected from your back yard.  Add in a brick from the neighbor’s walkway.  Have them take cans of food back and forth to school.   What doesn’t break their little spines and spirits makes them stronger!

Reading:

Did your kids read during the summer?  Well, if they didn’t your kid is probably in the same boat with about 80% of the other kids in their class.  Not to worry, you can still have them read a cereal box or an old phonebook.  That counts as reading doesn’t it?

Good luck with your student this year!  Only 179 more school days for my kids until Summer Vacation 2014.

Please kill me now…another “Informational” Meeting!!

~ K ~ 3 Comments

Please kill me now…another “informational” meeting…..

Last night I got stuck going to my son’s “informational” meeting for new parents at his high school.  It is our second time through this school but he is doing the Jump Start program which is new.  The meeting was scheduled to be an hour long and that should have been my first warning sign.  Any meeting that is an hour long is mostly a meeting of wasted time and worthless advice.  The two papers that the school handed out could have easily been emailed to me.  In fact, I think this whole “informational” meeting should have just been uploaded onto YouTube video.  Then I could have had the option to ignore it online instead of being subjected to a hot stuffy theater stage for 55 minutes.

On the bright side, it did end five minutes early.  Or I feel asleep.  One of the two.

Getting back to my annoyance…..Yes, I understand parents like to know what is going on in their kid’s life.  Sure, these informative meetings are helpful for some people.  But really, when you basically go over the same information that I have in my hand (as a piece of paper), you are wasting my time.  I’m not saying it is worthless advice. I’m saying it was a waste of my time.  Time better spent relaxing at home and enjoying the last summer evenings before school starts.

 I know better.  I knew I should have skipped this meeting.  This isn’t my first time at the rodeo.  But I thought I should go.  And I was strongly encouraged by my wife to go.  Hmm, the same wife that is out of town on a “Girl’s Trip” with her two best friends.

So blinded by love for my wife and children, I thought I should show my face and be a good parent.  You know that kind of stuff where you look like a good parent but are really just going through the motions.

Ahh, high school….

It’s not like I’m totally against the idea of having an informational meeting that will aid parents when they send their children off to high school.  I’m just against the wasting of my time with a meeting that really didn’t need to happen.  It didn’t need to occur; a simple tactful email with the two documents attached to it could have accomplished the same thing.  Think of all the valuable time that could have been saved!  Hours and hours!  My time wasted, my friends’ time wasted, teachers’ time, people I hate…their time was wasted as well.

That time is gone forever.  And I am forever reminded of the pain of that lost time whenever I drive by that school.

 

 

 

 

How to Make Your Husband feel Bad about having a Blog

~ K ~ 11 Comments

The other day, my wife pointed out that one of her classmates from high school was a writer and had a blog.  She mentioned that I should read it because it was not like my blog, that it was “uplifting”.  Ouch!

She also told me she doesn’t read my blog.  Double Ouch!

I enjoy mentioning this story to everyone I know because it is an excellent example of when your best client might not be your friends and family.

Certainly, some of your best clients will be people you know such as friends and family members.  However, most likely your best customers will be people who are not related to you but respect you because you do an awesome job.  They somehow discover that you are more than a stick in the mud and will get the job done and will make them happy.

My wife informed me years ago that she wouldn’t work for me because she says I’m too intense.  That doesn’t hurt my feelings in the least bit.  I also know she doesn’t do the best job for me as she could do.  She does an awesome job for everyone else but me.  What is the difference?  Why do I get average business support?

Marriage is the difference.  I know if I screw up, my wife loves me no matter what.  I also know that if I’m late, she might be mad but in the end, she loves me and knows that me being late isn’t that big of a deal.  Again, I know she’ll be pissed off but in the end she loves me.  And when she makes a mistake, I know that I can tease her about it for years to come.  We both know that that after 17 years of marriage, this is what you get.  Baby, if you wanted to end it, then you should have done it a long time ago.

We complain about each other (of course she says she never says anything bad about me but I know she has a lot to complain about.  Seriously, she is married to me!).  Every couple has there ups and downs and we are no different than any other normal couple.  If a couple says they have no problems, they are lying or one of the members is a dishrag.  Everyone has disagreements.  Claiming you get along all the time is you denying who you really are.  You are a liar.

Oh, did I hurt your feelings with that last statement?  Good.  Come to grips with reality.  If you love someone, they make a mistake, it happens.  Forgive them and move on.  If your life as a couple is so awful, then it is time to move on.  Cut your losses.

I read a lot of different types of blogs.  And if you were a good foller you’d know this, right?  I follow blogs that range  from ex-spouse horror stories, to dating horror stories of twenty somethings, to miniature horse advice stories (seriously…now that is some good stuff!).  If you want to become a great writer, you need to read a wide variety of different stories, blogs, novels, to know what is god writing and what is really bad.

Keep in mind, that I’m not a great writer or a marriage/couples counselor so my advice might be labeled as “worthless advice”.  Or perhaps it is advice that is so true to your heart you just don’t want to listen to it?

So if you were reading this blog for some worthless advice then I probably failed you greatly.  If you read this blog because I write about the truth, then you should be delighted with the reading experience.  The knowledge I have bestowed on you should keep you going for years (or at least days) to come.

As always, your comments are welcome as long as I love them.  Who are we kidding?  I’m a whore for comments….keep them coming and hit that “LIKE” button too!  Make me feel important and prove my wife that I do have some followers besides Cyndi my Imaginary Stalker!

 

This is the Yard that Child Slave Labor Built!

~ K ~ 3 Comments

My neighbors are having phase 2 of their landscaping yard done over the next few days by professionals.  As you can imagine, I feel that this is cheating because everyone knows that if your children haven’t broken their little backs, toes, and fingers making your yard awesome, then you haven’t done anything worth talking about.

This Do-It-Yourself (DIY) work or die attitude has been passed down from generation to generation on both my mother’s side and father’s side of my family.  It is in my blood to see my children (and the neighborhood children) slave away moving rocks from one side of the yard to the other.  I compare of my efforts of creating a wonderful yard to that of the English aristocrats that keep their rose gardens all prim and proper.  I often wear my big fluffy hat as I garden in the flower beds while I wait for my afternoon tea.

Crumpets anyone? photo from http://www.vancouverislandgardentrail.com

Nothing impresses on small children the value of hard work when they can look their hands and see the blisters forming.  To get that visual of a day’s hard work in your hand is nothing short of accomplishment in my mind.  And a few stones that fall onto their toes once in a while will teach them that you always need proper footwear at my house.  Hobble home young underage yard worker, tomorrow is another day of back breaking labor!

One of my favorite moments of teaching is when a child starts to cry after being worked to the bone.  If you can push them a little bit more, they can learn how to push themselves to success.  My motto: If you ain’t crying, you ain’t trying.  They need to learn their boundaries and how to push themselves past the point of self imposed limits.  Success comes to those that push themselves (or are pushed by a slave driver parent).

Valuable lessons abound in making your yard an oasis for you to enjoy.  One of my favorite lessons is to change the project midstream so all of the hard work my kids just did was for nothing.  All of their hard work building that fence is gone once I realize I want the fence three more feet to the left.  Kind of reminds you of your boss at work, doesn’t it?  See!  Another lesson from adult life brought home for children to learn from!  Can you hear your boss now?

“Johnson, remember how I had you write that twenty page report on how we can make our workflow more efficient?  Well, we are switching focus again so your goal oriented results report isn’t going to cut it now.  You’ll have to do it all over.  And I need it by Monday.  Don’t forget the cover sheet on your TPS report too!”

So my request to move the fence three feet to the left is just preparing them for the future.  Am I a great teacher or what?

To get the most out of child workers, you should also offer incentives.  You don’t actually have to follow through on the incentives, but you should offer them.  Tell them: If you finish that 65 foot long rock wall by tonight, I’ll take you to the lake tomorrow!  As you can imagine, when they fail to finish you can tell them that you would love to take them to the lake but you can’t reward failure.  That just wouldn’t be fair.  By setting unrealistic goals, you know that you’ll never have to follow through with your rewards.  Again, another great realistic life lesson for your kids to experience.  Their future boss will do the exact same thing to them in their future job.  They will hate him as much as they hated you as a child.  Yet, they won’t quite make the connection until they are older and in therapy.  By then it will be too late.

You should view your yard as an outdoor classroom.  It is always changing; as are the lessons you are teaching your children.  The neighborhood kids can be invaluable teaching tools as they are extra help for the really big projects and to show the concept of favoritism.  You can treat them better than your own kids. This is to show your kids that they need to work even harder in a fruitless effort to gain your love and attention.  Always tell the neighbor kid he is doing an awesome job but ignore your own kid.  Then sit back and watch your kid step up their efforts.  The sad look in their little faces as they wait for that one positive comment from you to justify their existence is a reward in itself.

As summer rolls on, you should always look to the future of child labor.  Even if your kids are grown up, you can tap into your grandkids.  What if you are young and have no children?  Consider the neighbor kids or even a cousin or two.  Never pay a professional when you can easily watch a half hour TV program and have kids there to assist you in your landscaping dreams!

Ah! Rock walls....
Ah! Rock walls….

Are You A Crazy Writer? Then maybe I’ll follow your blog!

~ K ~ 5 Comments

What Blog Style Is the Best?

 I follow a number of different blogs to give me a cross section of reading material.  Some bloggers swear, others are inspirational, some are crazy, others suffer from their craziness (mental health issues), a few are funny, and others are sarcastic like me. 

Crazy?

 Like a hobo attracted to the railroads, I love a good train wreck of a blog.  The suffering the writer has to overcome to get their feelings and thoughts into words is one of the most attractive things about writing.  My life in comparison is quite dull and drab, so I vicariously live misery through others.  Undoubtedly, this frees me up to be more sarcastic in my own personal life.

 Everyone’s time is valuable and I appreciate you reading my worthless advice blog.  Personally, my blog postings tend to go from sarcastic to informational at times.  I also try not to post just to say I posted “something”.  Of course, I could post anything, anytime because my blog has “worthless advice” in the title.  It gives me a free-for-all writing attitude.

Oh, you don’t even know the half of it!

 Of the blogs I follow, I enjoy the bloggers that have mental issues the best. This isn’t to say that you don’t have mental issues yourself; you just don’t share them enough.  The ones with mental issues allow me to step into a different world.  What is abnormal to us is normal to them and vice versus. 

 Remember when someone does something crazy or insane?  You say to yourself “What were they thinking?”  Most likely, they were crazy and that was their normal path of thinking.

 By reading crazy people’s blogs, you get to step into their head.  These bloggers gives me an insight in their craziness.  They wouldn’t blog and write about their issues if they didn’t want you to read about them.  While I may be not in the same writing arena as they are, I still like them.  I even follow a blog about a miniature horse that gives advice.  Who is more crazy…me or the miniature horse giving advice?  But I must admit, the advice is usually pretty good…..

 Thanks again for reading and enjoying my blog.

4th of July: Let’s blow some stuff up because we are Morons!

~ K ~ 6 Comments

Ahh, Happy 4th of July to all my readers here in America (and the rest of you across the world).  This is the American holiday that we use as an excuse to buy fireworks and blow stuff up all in the name of freedom.  Americans like to buy fireworks, and shoot them off in the false belief that we are being safe.  It is really just an excuse to buy dangerous flying toys and injure ourselves.

As a typical guy, I love explosions just like the next hot blooded male.  Show me a great movie with lots of explosions and no realistic plot, throw in some hot babes and I am all over it.

However, as a fairly intelligent person, real life fireworks scare the crap out of me.  I have no real expert knowledge of fireworks, how they are made, how much gun powder goes into them, etc.  It is out of my range of expertise and I’m OK with that.  I know that they explode and I have a good chance of getting hurt.  That is all the knowledge I need to have to tell me to stay away.

Already this morning, I saw on our local KIRO TV news program (in the Seattle area) we already had someone headed to the hospital because of the homemade fireworks bomb he made.

Now, I enjoy watching the professional fireworks shows but I’m not into lighting fireworks off myself.  Over the years, our family has had the bad luck of fireworks tipping over and shooting right at us.  So it isn’t that the fireworks are dangerous as much as the people lighting them off.  I think my living room is a perfectly safe spot to watch the fireworks and not get blown up by untrained monkeys.

Don’t get me starting with the “safe” fireworks like sparklers.  Who thinks that handing a child a piece of burning metal is a smart thing to do?  Can I see a show of hands, please?  Call me a downer but a sparkler is burning at 2000 degrees F and can burn metal.  Hmmm, seems like a safe toy for a child.  My daughter had the sparks from the sparkler fall on her foot a few years back.  No permanent damage but she now knows the dangers of fireworks.  And don’t I feel like a stupid ass parent?  You bet.

Don’t get me started on sparkler bombs.  Just Bing or Google sparkler bombs and you’ll get tons of videos, how to articles, and step by step instructions to make a dangerous weapon of death.  I watched a few YouTube videos and when you have a lot of questions and most of the answers from the makers are “I don’t know” then you know you are dealing with a bunch of idiots.

I am all for free speech and free knowledge but there are some stupid people out there that don’t need to know how to do this stuff.  They just aren’t smart enough to handle the knowledge and use it in a responsible manner.  (Now if that doesn’t sound like government censorship, I don’t what does!)  However, I think we can all agree that some people just aren’t smart enough to handle some things.  Fireworks just so happens to be one of them.  Give someone just enough knowledge to be dangerous and look what happens.

Perhaps this would be a good time to wish everyone a safe and sane holiday here in America.  I’d give you a warning that you should be safe on the 4th of July but you’d just file it under worthless advice so I’ll skip it today.

And you thought I was a downer…look at this picture!

Uh Oh, Kevin is Back into his Blog….

~ K ~ 7 Comments

Oops, did I forget to blog for the past six weeks?

I must apologize for being one of those terrible bloggers that builds up a massive audience of three readers and then let’s them wonder if I will every write again.

I have a million excuses of why I did write anything on my blog.  Was it Writer’s Block?  Perhaps my life was just so busy I didn’t have time?  Or maybe I just ran out of good things to write about?

To be honest, it was a little bit of all the above items.  I usually like to make my blog entries something that just makes my three devoted readers just rave to their 30 cats about what an awesome writer I am.  Yet, I have let these folks down by not writing and thus making them think that maybe I’m not quite the amazing writer they imagine I am.

I was overwhelmed with work, the ending of the school year for my kids, and blah, blah, blah.  Life just got busier and I put my blog on the back burner.

Putting your blog on the backburner is a frightening easy thing to do.  You tell yourself that you’ll write tomorrow…or on the weekend….or next week.  And see what happens?  Six weeks later and I’m trying to reconnect with my readers yet again.

And a lot of stuff has happened in six weeks.  We had a flood at our family’s cabin, deadlines for projects came and went, we have awesome completed our front porch rebuild, we made our first summer vacation trip to Silverwood Amusement Park (and Water Park in Idaho), and we set up the pool for the summer.

I know, I know.  Pretty darn exciting stuff, huh?

My new commitment for my blog is to actually write more in July and in a summer craze of creativity I shall honor my commitment to you (my dear readers!)

Again, thanks for reading and I hope to see you commenting on how wonderful it is to have me back!

Another Self Help Lesson…for people (like you) that need help!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

FLOWERSI’m sorry if you are curled up in the fetal position this past weekend because I didn’t address your latest psychological issue.  First of all, mental illness isn’t a laughing matter.  We all know someone that suffers from a mental illness whether you understand it or not.  According to statistics I just made up, 1 in 5 people suffer from mental illness.  I know that might seem a bit low considering half your family is a bunch of drunks and the other half is dysfunctional bunch of drug addicts, but in my limited one quarter of psychology at the local junior college 20 years ago, it seems pretty legit.

Wait, I know…alcohol is a drug so basically 100% of your family is crazy but you forget to factor in my margin of error.  Since you are normal (normal because you read my worthless advice blog), then your family can’t be 100% crazy loony tunes, right?  You might be the one ray of sunshine in your family’ sad existence and I applaud you for being that one speck of normalness in a wacky uncaring family.

Now, let’s talk about you.

Since you believe that you are normal, does that mean all your beliefs are normal and those that disagree with your normal views are abnormal?  Hold on, what if you change your opinion on something?  Does that mean that your old normal is now abnormal and your new belief is the “new” normal?

Confused?  I hope so.  The reality is that you are always changing your opinion and beliefs in the endless pursuit of escaping your past and that the future is your only hope for a better you.  You believe in continuous improvement and that your updated beliefs are making you better.  And you should believe in continuous improvement.  If you don’t believe in it, you are fooling yourself.  Every article you read in a magazine, every show you watch, every ad you intake affects your belief system.

How you accept these new beliefs will determine your future.  Can you accept this?  You do know that this influences your decisions?  Of course, you know all this.  All of your experiences contribute to your decisions you make now and in the future.  Whether they are the right decisions can be decided by your value system.  No one can tell you what is right or wrong unless it falls into your personal value system.  Your personal ethics can be a free flowing or as rigid as you want them (or need them to be).

Allow yourself to invest in your belief system and develop your future into what you want it to be.  Look back at the past and embrace what it has molded you into for it has a direct influence on your future.

You have to accept that your past was bad, it was awful, and you were wrong.  Admit that you screwed up, you were a failure, a liar, a thief, and that you hurt people that love you.  Until you accept your past, you will never change.

Accept your past, admit your failures and wrongdoing, set new goals that bring about continuous improvement, and get on with your life.

Now is the time to chime in with your thoughts and feelings.  Boost my fragile ego and encourage my narcissistic nature with your comments (good and bad)!

Did I hurt your feelings about Killing your Dreams?

~ K ~ 2 Comments

Yesterday, I offered my dream killing services to my devoted readers (which consists of my mother and my imaginary stalker Cyndi).  It was met with overwhelming support and I have been killing your dreams all day long.  It is hard work, dashing your dreams and hopes on the rocky shores of reality but I have gladly accepted this task to help you better yourself.

You can thank me later for slapping your face hard with the stick of reality.

Am I saying you should give up on your dreams?

Yes, if your dreams are unrealistic.  Oh, wait!  What is Kevin’s definition of unrealistic?  My definition of unrealistic is simple.  You won’t win the Powerball Lottery (Sorry, someone in Florida just won the $590 million), you won’t be the next Bill Gates, and you probably won’t be curing cancer.  Seriously, if you were on track to be the next Bill Gates would you be reading my worthless advice blog?  Uh, probably not.

I will say that if you want to be successful you need to discontinue reading my worthless advice blog.  Sure, you’ll enjoy my sarcastic wit and my blog will bring endless joy it to your miserable life but it is still a distraction.  It will merely derail you from setting your goals, making a plan, executing your plan, and accomplishing something.

But then again, the lure of my worthless advice is just so enticing, isn’t it?  I’m pretty enjoyable, aren’t I?

See you did it again….you lost focus.

Let’s circle back to reality.  No, matter how much I try, not all my advice is worthless advice.  Here I am giving you hope after I have smashed your dreams and fantasies.  The truth is that it is OK to have your dreams and fantasies.  But if you are serious about something, you need to take action.  Put your fear aside and write that novel.  Even if it sucks, at least you did it, you tried, you took a risk and went outside your comfort zone.

Good luck on those dreams of yours.  I’m still available if you need someone to destroy your dreams.

As always, your comments and insights are always welcome.  Leave a comment and tell me how much you hate my quest to kill your dream.