Dinner was delicious. We went to a Chinese buffet restaurant and had lobsters, crabs, and piles of desserts. Kass didn't touch the shellfishes, she's allergic. I didn't touch the chicken balls. They're offensive.
Now to work off that fat by finger presses.
Day 13:
Prompt 1: A beginner's guide to getting noticed
So you want to get noticed, eh? Well, see that pole over there? Yeah that one with the grey cement. Why don't you run towards it. That's it, don't stop. Now, this is very important and will definitely get you noticed. Sprint at your top speed smack into it.
What's that? That's dumb? Well, yeah, no shit Sherlock. You wanted to be noticed, not adored by the public. It's easy to be noticed. You can rip off all your clothes and dance in the middle of the street. Not New York though. You could shake your dick in New Yorker's faces and they wouldn't notice you. Try doing that in some isolated Muslim-centric village. You might get stoned to death, but you'll be noticed.
Oh, you want to be admired, you say? Well being noticed isn't the only way to go about it. You can be noticed because you're good looking, or because you're god-awful looking and should have an iron mask locked on. You can be noticed because you're this year's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, or because you waved a gun manically outside the White House and got arrested.
What am I trying to tell you? You don't need a guide to be noticed. Why the hell did you think this book was only a few pages long? You do need a guide to succeed. Succeed wildly in what you do and you will be noticed. Succeed in living a good, happy life, then you won't need to be noticed.
Now, go forth and prosper.
Prompt 2: Tenth Anniversary
On our first date, you bought me roses because that's what the movies do.
On our first anniversary you knew me better, and bought me an orchid.
On our second anniversary we fought, but you came home just before midnight with a grocery store bouquet.
On our third anniversary I was in the hospital with pneumonia, where real flowers aren't permitted, so you folded the best origami you could manage.
On our fourth anniversary we were in Maui, so you woke me up with a room full of hibiscuses.
On our fifth anniversary you were away on business, so I asked the hotel to leave a vase of daisies in your room.
On our sixth anniversary we both forgot about it, and ran into each other at the grocery store florist.
On our seventh anniversary we were out hiking, and you picked me a handful of wild lavender.
On our eighth anniversary we were drifting apart, and you thrusted a handful of baby's breath at me - I hate baby's breath.
On our ninth anniversary we were separated, and I bought myself a dozen roses to fill an empty spot.
On our tenth anniversary I'm standing in front of you with roses, asking you if you missed me too.
Prompt 3: Being chased by a killer
They will come for you. They are a silent, deadly killer with 100% results. No one walks away from an encounter with them alive. They are not a plural. There is only one of them. No one knows if they are female or male. No one knows how old they are, what their motive is. No one even knows the pattern in their skills. But they do kill. They are proficient and come randomly for victims.
You spend your life trying to dodge them, but they have their target sight on you. You drive a big, hefty car that's a variable tank on the roads, lest they try to run you off. You swear every car that cuts you off, weaves dangerously in front of you is them, closing in.
You eat only safely prepared, organic foods, straight from the farm where they can't have tempered with it. Whenever you can you cook yourself, so no one can temper with it.
You train at the gym daily. You live on the treadmill to prepare to outrun them someday. You leg press, shoulder press, arms press to have enough muscles to fight them if the need arise.
You wire your house with the best professionals. You have the engineers check, double check, then triple check every wiring to make sure they are safe, and your house will not go up in flames with you in it.
You spend more than 70 years training, trying to avoid them. But they have caught up to you at last. Your muscles have weakened, your stomach has weekend, you can no longer drive straight on the road. You fall in your own home. You know it is inevitable, now. They have at long last caught up and have you sighted. And truth be told, you're relieved. Old age has caught up.
As you lean back in your hospital bed, surrounded by your children and grandchildren, you know that you are done running. You stop the chase and walk on with Death together.
Prompt 4: On becoming a tycoon
"Congratulations class of 2015. Now, I've been invited here for the prestigious honour of addressing you, you the new grads, the new generation, the one who will save us or destroy us. Apparently I've been chosen because of my wise business choices that brought me to you as a Fortune 500 CEO. I can talk at you for a good 40 minutes, drone about the important choices you have to make, your duty to your country and your fellow humans. I can natter at you until you bore of me, on topics of religious tolerance, equality for all and plead for world peace. But I'm not going to do that.
None of you are stupid. You sit before me as some of the brightest minds of this generation. Perhaps amongst you is the next Albert Einstein, who will at once inspire and doom us all. Or the next Bill Gates, who will revolutionize our perception of technology, for better or worse. But I'm not here to preach to you about your future potentials, either. You all know your potentials, you all know how good and smart you are.
I'm going to tell you how to be a tycoon instead, because that's what I know best.
There are a few steps to being a tycoon, and I've been through each one. So let's go through them.
Step 1: Think of something new. You don't have to invent the new jet pack, you just have to find a niche market and take advantage of it. Who would have thought of a stick to let people take selfies as a revolutionary invention? But they're sitting up a multi-million dollar patent and making money hand over fist.
Step 2: Give your all to the design and get it off the ground. I do mean your all. All your time otherwise spent sleeping, going to the gym or going out with that cute guy from the coffee shop. All your time that would have been spent on family dinners and romantic escapades. All your energy otherwise devoted to playing with your cousins, or volunteering with children who looked to you as a mentor. All your brain capacity, otherwise dedicated to reading the complete works of Shakespeare, writing that novel, or painting an abstract.
Step 3: Lose everything. Giving it your all means giving up your all. You give up your health because you don't have energy to exercise or eat healthily. You give up your relationship with your family, who enjoy your passion but miss your presence. You give up your partner, who loves you but feels slighted and neglected by your work. You might even give up your home, because you poured all your money into this idea. Be ready for the shit storm.
Step 4: Keep going and persevere. You've given it too much, now. Don't stop. Let the rest of your life fall by the wayside, there'll be time enough when you're 45 to fix them. You can remarry, have children, and give them the best they'll never even dream of.
Step 5: Self-realization. I'm at here, now. This is the last step of your journey to tycoon-dom. Realize that you have what you worked for, but nothing else. You have a company, vice-presidents who trip over their own feet to please you, secretaries who bring you coffee and tell you you'r 9 o'clock is in the conference room. You have more money than you know what to do with, so you buy a yacht. You buy mansions in California. You buy cottages in Maui. You buy cabins in Aspen. You keep buying.
You flirt with that gorgeous Victoria's Secret model, or the Calvin Klein underwear model. You go on dates with other uber-rich magnates, to St. Lucia for a first date, or to Paris for a dinner fling. But you can't find them again. That person you gave up for this life. Maybe that person was the reason you wanted to make money, so you could build a good life together.
Your friends tell you how envious they are of your new Ferrari two-seater. You are privately envious of their Ford family van, filled with laughing, screaming messy children, who grin at their parents and hit each other with toys.
What's that? Sounds like an empty life, eh? I know, you're right. I didn't come here to tell you how to live a good, healthy, happy or worthwhile life. I came here to tell you how to be a tycoon. And now you know.
You can be whatever you want to be. You can be a tycoon. You can be a mother, a father. You can be a park ranger or a Nobel Laureate. Each of them have their own lives and their own ups and downs.
Once again, congratulations class of 2015.
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and see who you want to be."
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