Random Thoughts on Various Subjects

1. LEO BABAUTA'S HABITS COURSE

Leo Babauta has "disgraced" himself by offering a $497 habit course to participants in changing lifestyles and habits. This has led to criticism.

I don't get paid by anyone to endorse anything here. I do this gig for free. As such, I don't think I have the bias that such payments would bring since it wouldn't make sense to bite the hand that feeds me. But I try to be evenhanded in my criticism whether it is a guy like Tim Ferriss or Leo Babauta.

The Habit Course is basically a $500 deal for personal life coaching. The time invested in this costs somebody something. One of the steps that Leo recommends for people is to be public about the commitment to change a habit. For him, this meant starting a personal blog that became Zen Habits. Most people aren't going to do this because they either can't blog, code HTML, write, or want to open themselves up to the entire wide world. As such, this course is on par with hiring a personal trainer who does the same thing. The personal trainer gives the foot up the ass to make the change.

People will say that this personal coaching isn't worth the $500 price tag. The advice is already free on sites like Zen Habits. You can buy a book for $10 that will do the same thing. I tend to agree. The price of the course seems like a waste. But people do find value in the course where I don't. The customer is always right. I feel confident that the people who sign up for the course are already familiar with the advice. It isn't a lack of knowledge but a simple lack of self-discipline. Plus, you get $300 worth of books and a money back guarantee. It sounds like I am selling this program, but I'm not. These are fair terms since no effort is being made to flim-flam anyone. If you find no value in the product, you can get your money back. You can't get any more fair than this.

I think what rankles the critics is Leo's deliberate profit making with this venture. As a capitalist, this doesn't faze me. As long as he is not defrauding his customers, I don't care. And as someone who has read his advice, there is no fraud here like you will find with people peddling herbal remedies or the Law of Attraction. Leo strikes me as a very generous guy since his website is free and works under an uncopyright rule. He carries no advertising on his sites even though such advertising is certain to be lucrative considering he gets a million visits each month. But this would indicate a lack of integrity on his part. This is where people are upset.

Leo runs the risk of guilt by association. Leo offers real solutions. He embodies what he teaches. He is a genuine and sincere and nice guy. Trust me, I am a no-bullshit guy, and I don't get any whiff of bullshit from Babauta. I cannot say the same for Tim Ferriss or Steve Pavlina. The Habit Course reminds people so much of that huckster crap that it is understandable why people might feel betrayed on this. Is this something Leo should address? Yes.

The reason Babauta became so popular with his self-improvement advice was because it was simple, and it works. In his way, Leo was the anti-establishment hero. Now, with the Habits Course, Leo is becoming the establishment. He risks alienating the fans by straying from his principles and associating with the crap element. At some point, people will look to this Habit Course as the moment when Babauta jumped the shark.

The answer for Babauta is pretty simple. GET A FUCKING JOB. A real job doing real work allows you the freedom to live with integrity. I understand the need for Babauta to monetize his project. People have to eat. Websites don't pay for themselves. Blogging and producing content eats time that could be spent on paying projects or with friends and family. The answer to this dilemma is simple. Put out a tip jar. This isn't advertising. It doesn't cut you off from non-paying customers. It doesn't compromise your integrity. And it only takes a fraction of your readership making donations to keep a site going. I suspect Leo went along with this Habit Course project because he got talked into doing it by all these other people connected to the project. But I might be wrong on this.

Babauta hasn't compromised my principles with this project, but he may be compromising his own principles. He's the socialist not me. I think I have been fair with this piece.




2. WEINER'S RESIGNATION

I can think of may reasons why I think Anthony Weiner made the correction decision to resign. His dick isn't one of them. It has more to do with his politics and his voting record than his extracurricular activities. I don't really care about the sex lives of politicians until they start sticking their noses in the sex lives of others. This would be that piece of shit Eliot Spitzer who went after prostitution really hard as a prosecutor while paying to shag the very fuckable Ashley Dupre. As far as I know, Weiner never was as hypocritical as this. Moral hypocrisy tends to be a Republican thing.



My advice to anyone in the spotlight is to do the Charlie Sheen thing and embrace being a scoundrel. I do this. As long as you are never on that moral pedestal in the first place, there is nowhere for you to fall.

3. GENE SIMMONS AND SHANNON TWEED

From the looks of it, Shannon Tweed is done with Gene Simmons. They are not married but have been a couple for 28 years. But it is obvious that Gene has cheated on Shannon many times. It is also obvious that Shannon was with Gene for the money as she is a big time shopaholic. Married or not, their relationship is exactly what most couples are like that I see. The husband has multiple affairs while the wife has one or two affairs of her own and maxes out the credit card. Marriage is essentially a very unhealthy business relationship. The only good thing to come out of these unions are the kids. But as Gene and Shannon show, you don't need to be married to have kids and raise them.

As I have said before, love and marriage are a fucking farce. People that marry are fools. People that remarry are even bigger fools. The good thing I can say about Gene and Shannon is that they were open eyed enough to never do the nuptials in the first place. This will be less money for the lawyers when they go their separate ways.



4. HEF GETS JILTED

I don't know what to say about the collapse of Hugh Hefner's wedding plans. Undoubtedly, it was a rare burst of common sense from a woman who realized that some things just aren't worth the money. As for Hef, he should know better. For him, there should be more to life than sex.

5. OBAMA'S ILLEGAL WAR

The only hard news item I can comment on is the fact that Obama has no congressional approval for warfare in Libya and doesn't seem to think he needs any. This fucker needs to be impeached, but it won't happen. Congress gave that war power to the POTUS a long time ago. It's almost like Shannon Tweed letting Gene fuck all those whores while turning a blind eye to it all.

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