I hate making sweeping, blanket statements. Really, I do. Nevertheless, I am constantly forced to do so by the sometimes stunningly uniform stupidity of people at large.

People as a whole, I'm afraid, have become a bunch of perpetual whiners and terminal sissies.

I'm not saying this from the point of view of some old person who's bitter that he had to spend his youth walking to the grocery store to buy milk that spoiled two days later. I'm also not taking the side of those survivalists who get some kind of high out of sleeping amongst the rocks and mosquitos. Nope, I'm trying to be as objective as possible, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job.

All one has to do is stroll through the average bookstore to see what I mean. There's a cancer in those bookstores, and it's called the Self-Help section. Through a stunning coincidence, the New Age section is right next to it! I think they're all part of the same mealy-mouthed sissy tumor on the ass of literature.

I certainly have nothing against efforts at self-improvement, but for the love of Jimmy Carter, go to the crafts section! Will reading a book on dream interpretation really change your life? What about finding your inner child? Is a book about understanding your angels rally a path to success? Golly, there's a book that tells you how to get everything you want out of life and here's one that promises to develop your psychic powers! Ooo, look: "The secret of happiness: Crack." Now THAT'S a book I believe in. Then there are the plethora of relationship books and the newest fad diets.

Although all these books are stupid in their own unique ways, they all manage to take something that has managed to elude people their entire lives like psychic development, spiritual fulfillment, or something as inane as happiness, and distill down to a list so obvious a 1st grader would have thought of it. Some of them might be helpful, I suppose, but the majority of them found root in the fetid minds of the seriously deranged or those who know how to make a buck off of the teeming masses.

What I don't understand is why people seem to think that these knuckleheads know anything that they don't. I know that many of those freaks who write relationship books can't keep a marriage together to save their lives, so how the hell can they advise you? Sure, I can understand if they write the book AFTER a break up, when supposedly they've made their mistakes and learned from them, but some of these people go through 3 or more divorces, many of them AFTER they've supposedly come up with the answer on how to keep a relationship together! Take that Ellen Fein broad, who wrote "The Rules". She wrote 3 of those "Rules" books, and then got divorced. What does she know? That's like someone writing about car repair, and then their vehicles seizes up the day it goes to press because they didn't put oil in it! The story is pretty much the same for the author of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus", Mr. I-Have-A-PhD-From-A-Non-Accredited-Institution John Gray.

It goes without saying that those morons telling you how to commune with your angels and that the secret to happiness is eating according to your blood type are either completely deranged or utter charlatans.

Wanna know how to feel good about yourself? I have the perfect solution, and it's guaranTEED to eliminate that gnawing sense of unfulfillment in your gut. It's really easy, too. Just hop on a plane and go to Sudan and tour all of the villages full of starving people. If you prefer Eastern cuisine, hang out in the Bangkok slums. If you're on a budget, visit the cancer ward of the local children's hospital.

Believe me, there are plenty of people in the world who don't need to swim with dolphins to feel fulfilled. Some moldy bread would do just fine.

If I wrote a self-help book, it would tell you that the path to happiness is a month of eating nothing but tofu, sleeping on thumbtacks, bathing in lemon juice, and hitting yourself in the head with a hammer every morning.

After a month of that, your regular life will seem Goddamn heavenly.

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