The Secrets of Being
POPULARITY

What is important? What is not important? Are other people's opinions relevant or irrelevant? Is being noticed a good thing...or a bad thing? Do people really give a damn if you can or can't remember their names? And just what exactly are the real benefits of using towelettes?

Most people can't agree on anything, but one thing everyone will admit is that being popularity is very important. Being noticed by other people and having recognition is a vital aspect of life that cannot be denied. Can you think of any situation recently where you were not feeling well, and then all of a sudden someone noticed you and said something nice? That probably made you feel good inside, didn't it?

DEFINITION

Just what is the definition of popularity? By defining it just proper, the Bridgeport Abridged Dictionary offers the following: "popularity is that kind of article which is inherent in all people for making ego boosting explosion, for giving wide expectation of reason for not committing suicide." Put in layman's terms, popularity is simply that thing which gives a false impression of having worth when there never really was any worth to begin with.

THE PROBLEM OF NO POPULARITY

To be able to understand its vast importance, it is first important to understand what can happen when popularity is lacking in the life of an individual. Most people walk on the earth with their furry heads neatly combed, just waiting for that proper stroke that comes from being liked by others. But there are unfortunate cases everywhere in which there is no one to notice...no one to smile and wave...and no one to offer supportive words of encouragement.

The effects of not having popularity can be devastating. In a study of over ten thousand specimens, it was eventually proven that the most unhealthy ones were the ones who no one spoke to at important urban functions. These individuals tended to have pock marks, rough skin attributes, and odd shapes in unfamiliar places. In addition, the general lifespan of specimens having no popularity was less than half the lifespan of specimens having a reasonable amount.

THE POTENTIAL FOR HAVING IT

Believe it or not, all people have the potential for possessing popularity even if they don't know they have the potential for having it. Becoming popular and having popularity is as simple as growing teeth or moving your fingers, once you know a few tricks of the trading system. Acquiring the traits and attributes can be as easy as playing with a stick of gum or having a nervous reaction.

YOUR EASY IDENTIFICATION

Are you lacking popularity? There is an easy test that will reveal this for you. If you often find yourself in social situations standing alone observing other people with popularity, there is a good chance that you have been identified. If you also find yourself wanting to kill the person you are observing with popularity, then the identification has been verified. The person who lacks manifests their own inadequacies by hating the other person who has what he or she does not have. Actually doing physical harm to the person who has been observed is the final step of the test, where there is most certainly an obvious need for learning some appropriate skills.

LEARNING FROM THE ENEMY

Instead of just watching the "populars" with anxiety and stress, there is a much better way of dealing with your hatred. Learn from them. Watch the things the populars do, and learn to mimic them. The skills that they exhibit are the very skills that you must learn to emulate in order to be popularity. Therefore, it only makes sense that you should try to copy the people who you would like to be more similar to. But how do you get started?

WHY DOES EVERYONE LIKE SALLY?

Why does everyone like talking to Sally? Is it because she has an important position with a prominent corporation? Or is it simply because her breasts are large and she is wearing a tight blouse? Then again, could it be that she keeps running back and forth to the bathroom giving people free lines of snort cocaine? Could any of these things have anything to do with the large crowd of people that always seem to surround her?

In actuality, none of these variables have the slightest impact on the popularity of Sally. It is not the job, nor the breasts, nor the cocaine that draw people to her. Instead, it is her inherent good wisdom and her ability to communicate with others that make her such a sought after festival bunny at big important social events.

Don't hate Sally. Learn from her. Watch her mouth as it moves, her arms as they graze the sides of her torso, and her animated facial expressions as she titters and giggles with excitement. The next time you are talking with someone, try and act just like Sally. And though you are actually learning to improve on your social skills by adapting your personality traits, you should bear in mind that no one ever died from having breast implants. And offering some snorty blow to a few hairy fellows in the back room certainly won't hurt anything either.

EYE POWER

The power of looking directly at other people cannot be stressed enough, although this paragraph was largely developed specifically for that purpose. The power which is stressed is called eye power. Eye power is the power to have others look at you and talk with you simply by using the power of the eye to give the impression that you aren't really bored to death by them. The eye power that is being stressed is that important power that allows an individual to become one with the group that it is standing around with. The ability to mingle, to sort through, to suddenly apologize and switch over to a group of people who is more important or influential...these are all things that can somehow be connected with the critical importance of specific types of eye power.

MOISTNESS

There is a trait which all popularity has in common. This is the simple trait of moistness. People in general are drawn to moist. Look in the mirror. Are your lips or eyes perhaps just a slight bit dry? Examine your ears closely. There seems to be just a tad of chafing going on around those lobes, isn't there? And how about that neglected tongue muscle that you just can't help but take for granted? Isn't it beginning to look like a partially damaged pastry that your mother wouldn't even feed to the dog?

Dry is bad. Moist is good. Moistness can be in the skin, the hair, the teeth...even in the very heart of an individual. Some people are moist naturally, but others are normally dry by nature.

The moist people have it made. But what about the dry ones...the ones who aren't naturally blessed? Is there any hope of somehow becoming more...wet?

Fortunately, there is an easy and simple solution for many people. The saving grace of moist towelettes has been granted by the Lord to give assistance when and where the need exists. Almost anyone can come up with an easy excuse to tuck away into the corner for a few seconds to adjust.

It is impossible to wipe too much, for the more we wipe ourselves with moistness the better we will be liked by others. Some of the most successful kings and queens of Europe used literally hundreds of towelettes each month. It's no wonder that hoards of thousands of people flocked to hear them speak and to watch them as they ate or shopped.

All famous , successful people have found some unique way to make their bodies and, in fact, their personalities wetter. Moist towelettes are but one way of achieving this goal. The important thing to remember is that wetter equals better. Whether on the outside or on the inside, this is thing that makes others want to touch us and become part of that big circular garden shade of life.

OBVIOUS PROTRUSIONS

There are other things that help grease social gravity. Those social greasers are the obvious protrusions that jart off in some direction from the center of an individual. It can be from the torso, abdomen, or even from the neck...as long as the protrusion is somehow direct, uniform, and solid. The solidness of a protrusion is perhaps its most integral quality, a quality that for many years remained motionless and transitory at the bottom of the mucky bottom of the darkest lake waters.

But wait! Don't panic in your barnhole confusion! There is no law which states that protrusions must be natural. Artificial protrusions are not only generally accepted, but in many cases they are actually even preferred over the real things.

Catalogs. You need to have catalogs. A whole pile of them. Look at the catalogs. Examine the pictures and read the descriptions of the items in the catalogs. The things that you are dreaming of acquiring can have a dramatic and jarring impact on your life.

Begin to think of ways to make more money. A lot more money. The more money you have, the more protrusions you can purchase. Within just a few precious years, you will wonder why you were always snuffed at local gatherings when you knew deep inside that you had as much good material as anyone else.

The lessons you are learning will make you become whole with yourself...and this is the kind of material from which the tragic distortion and disappointing tension in your life must now be sown.

LYING AND BEING PHONY

Lying and being phony have been successful vehicles for many a great social acrobat as a means of acquiring friends. It is important to remember that a friend does not have to be a friend for life. A friend for a few seconds is worth it if it means you might be able to bounce off that person to another person nearby that you find much more physically stimulating and mentally challenging.

Though it doesn't just come naturally to everyone, shrugging off temporary friends or brushing them off doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be a very good thing that you just kind of do because it helps you to get closer to who you want. And, contrary to popular belief, it is not bad to get what you want. Getting what you want is a good thing. And using other people to get to know who you want to know can be done in ways such that the used one doesn't really get hurt all that much. Think of it like a game...some peculiar little game that somehow got lost in the back of your subconscious as you continued crawling towards infancy.

SANDWICH TIME

Any man that can make a good sandwich is a man for life. Abraham Lincoln didn't get a good start on the early worm for no reason. The man just made good sandwiches. At first he began his creations for the pure joy of creating, but not long afterward his friends began to show up more and more often. At times there were so many people at Abraham's home that he had to run back and forth to the grocery store several times each day in the rain and snow...struggling to bring in every bag with care so that none of the items got broken. But Abraham didn't mind. He was an honest and a good man, and his vision could not be driven off the clearest path.

But in the end, wisdom and truth were secondary to the very sandwiches that he made and gave away. While it would be foolish to believe that carrying sandwich trays around at parties will always win you friends, this is one way of attacking the problem that shouldn't be discounted.

SMEARING BLOOD

Popular opinion is that having blood smeared on you by a stranger isn't such a good thing. If you are just getting to know someone and you suddenly have the urge to cut your arm and smear a bit on them, don't do it. You are almost always going to get a very negative reaction. Sometimes the reaction may even come in the form of a physical attack.

This is the one case where moist is actually bad. If you have trouble tracking your memory, try jogging it by flipping the wheel to digital direct and laying down the razor with the pollycat's tail. The bowl-faced nature of the cat becomes lazier and lazier, until the sad jowels drip away and whiz on down the freeway.

LOTS OF LITTLE THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO

There are lots of little things you can do. There are, in fact, so many little things that you can do that it would be exhaustive to even try and begin to list all those little things in this particular article. You can think of an unlimited amount of things that you can do. List the things on a sheet of paper, and then begin to do them. You can snap, run, jump, pull a page out of a book, decorate a lamp, shift the nose of a prannie, pass out deficiency slips, skip, toss a fresh little baby around the boathouse, ask for a discount if the mood feels right, tiptoe down to the basement with Angelo, nod your head up and down... My, my, my. It is so very easy to come up with lots of little things that everything else just doesn't seem so important anymore. You can wink at a stranger on the sidewalk, throw rocks at birds, have your cable service discontinued...you can even just sit yourself down at a typewriter and type up a permanent list of little things so that you won't forget them.

LITTLE THINGS DON'T GO OVER SO WELL

While coming up with all those little things may be fun as hell, going into detail about them with other individuals in social settings will most likely cost you a good many potential friends. Describing long lists of seemingly random little things that one has the potential to do can quickly become annoying to others who are a part of the social circle that you have created. This is a bad thing. You want to promote concentration, mental alertness, and higher level stability in your circle. This is why you will want to avoid talking about the little things and concentrate more on the really big things, although we're only just now about to find out what those are.

THE BIG THINGS

Head and shoulders. Your head and your shoulders tell other people a great deal about you. Is your head sometimes droopy and perhaps a little off to the side on occasion? What about your shoulders? Do they hang down like a granny with an addiction to her pancreas medication? Keep your head erect and shoulders cracked back snapple, and the circles you create will always bond with golden green goodness.

Tone of voice. High, whiny voices are a turn off. So are the stupid, giggly voices of people who try too hard to make people like them. Your tone of voice should most often be directed by infinite concentration and focus. Remember, it isn't so much what you say as much as how you say it.

Moist towelettes. Don't forget to use lots of these little things. They're cheap. They're easy. And they are everywhere. It would be impossible to overemphasize how beneficial these odd little squares can be.

Smell. What you smell like is what you are, and so is everyone else. Your smell directs your ideas, the transitions, the true friend bonding engines...and in the end, these are the therapeutic requirements that will give logic and reason to the proactive individual.

Movement. How you move is what you will be. If your nervous hand movements are making people walk away when you speak to them, then you should keep your hands still. Head movement is extremely critical. Try to remember that a little goes a long way. Unexpected large bolts out of nowhere will scare away a temporary pal in the flutter of a heartbeat.

Hiding reality. Don't mention anything about religion or race within the first few minutes of speaking to a new person. People get upset quite easily these days, and you want to first make them feel comfortable with you. Later, once you have gained their trust, you can then begin to let your real personality and spirit spill out. After all, once the person begins to like you they will quickly develop a curious need for your continued stroking. You can then continue to stroke them as you get to know them better...as you slowly begin to whittle away at their integrity and self esteem.

An occasional touch. After the initial trust is gained, an occasional touch can add to the strength of human bonding. The touch must be soft and gentle at first, however, and the placement of the touch is extremely critical to its success. When in doubt about delivering a touch, the best way is just throw caution to the wind and play along.

REFERENCES

Appling, J. D. (1998). How I got people to like me by lying right to their goddamn faces. Minneapolis, MN: The Harlington Press.

Carver, B. B. (1999). Missy gets her front all bruised and hurted because she wouldn't stop talking. New York, NY: Random Plow House.

Flivvet, D. W. (1998). Meeting cool high school seniors can be a real ego boost if you're having a downer of a day selling CDs at used record stores. Boston, MA: MDA Press.

Lawsy, K. K. K. (1997). Juss kuzz ahm blakk dawn meen datz ah kain habb noze frinz neeber. Baton Rouge, LA: Trander Binnie Publishers.

Sissy, L. P. (1998). There's a second grade disaster that could be happening right in the middle of the most important party in the world. Davenport, IA: Culvert and Tillman.

Winter, P. B. (1998). I'm always there, right in the middle section of your pantie loaf. Racine, OH: Free Throw.

©1998 LMNOP

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