Swim with the hustledorks

We modern-day humans have a tendency to make life far more complicated than it needs to be. Despite the proven facts* that total happiness and astounding success can be obtained through mastering three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, or ten easy principles (depending upon which book you happen to be reading) – and that recovery from even the most devastating addictions or emotional crises can be realized in twelve steps – we are forever trying to muck things up with complexity.

I think that in part we have science to blame, with its irritating tendency to point out complexities rather than simplicity. For example, for years we’ve been told by scientists that there are thousands of species of fish swimming in the Earth’s oceans (albeit far fewer individual members of various species these days, given the global overfishing problem). And it seems that "new" species are being "discovered" all the time. Turns out that the scientists were exaggerating, as usual. Yesterday I got an email from a lady named Chellie Campbell, who informed me that "There are three kinds of fish in the sea: Dolphins, Sharks and Tuna."

I bet you didn’t know Dolphins were fish, did you? But they are, at least in Chellie’s world. And they are one of only three kinds of fish you need to be concerned about. Here’s how to distinguish them from each other:

Dolphins are wonderful creatures: intelligent, happy, and playful. They communicate; they swim in schools. They’ve been known to ward off a shark attack and protect the other fish. They are fun-loving and beautiful, arcing in graceful leaps over the waves.

Sharks are eating machines. It’s not their fault; they were born that way. But their job is to eat you. If you find yourself in the water with a shark, put your shark fin on or get out of the water. It’s very difficult for a dolphin to act like a shark, and you’ll never be as good at it as a real shark, so I recommend getting out of the water.

Tuna fish are food. They don’t know that the blood in the water is their own. They think everything that happens to them is somebody else’s fault. They take no responsibility for their choices. It’s like there are three kinds of people: the people that make things happen, the people that watch things happen, and the people who say, "What happened?" (Those are the tuna.)

Sharks will steal your money and tuna will leech money from you. Real money is made when you have dolphins on your team.

Who are the fish in your sea?

I guess Chellie is another person who hasn’t seen some of the cutting-edge research about dolphins, which I blogged about a few months ago.

But never mind that. Chellie is not a marine biologist or any other type of scientist, but a Financial Stress Reduction ® specialist, Law of Attraction fan and professional self-promoter. She is the author of two books, Zero to Zillionaire: 8 Foolproof Steps to Financial Peace of Mind, and The Wealthy Spirit: Daily Affirmations for Financial Stress Reduction. Chellie is not exactly a zillionaire herself, but she is willing to sell you the secrets that will make you a zillionaire. And apparently she has come to the attention of some of the top Law of Attraction mercenaries, such as Chicken Soup For The Soul magnate Jack Canfield, who included her story in his compilation work, You’ve Got To Read This Book! 55 People Tell The Story Of The Book That Changed Their Life.

Chellie is the founder of The Dolphin Club, an online networking organization that you can join for only $9.98 a month. Let’s face it; you can’t be a New-Wage practitioner and not exploit dolphins in some manner, even if you do it in a purely metaphorical way. And if you join Chellie's Dolphin Club, you will get a chance to metaphorically swim with metaphorical dolphins. Dolphins, in this case, are people who will earnestly try to transform your world and change your life by selling you their stuff, and you in turn can earnestly try to transform their worlds and lives by selling them your stuff. You can hustle each other till the sea-cows come home. But it's not all hustle. You’ll also receive a ton of membership benefits, including free daily affirmation / screensaver software, a free copy of one of Chellie’s book proposals, and "special access to anything Chellie," which includes "her guidance, thoughts, resources, special tips, products, and other information available only to members."

Best of all, for a limited time only, aspiring authors who join will get a chance to show their book proposals to Chellie’s literary agent, Lisa Hagan of Paraview Inc. (slogan: "Transforming The World One Book At A Time"). Although Lisa’s clients include several authors of books on metaphysical and paranormal subjects, I really think she is going to rue the day she agreed to participate in this. I have a feeling that after she’s read a few crappy proposals – harbingers of even crappier manuscripts – she’s going to get out of the water, metaphorically speaking, as quickly as she can.

* * *

And speaking of sharks, I fear that one of my favorite shows, the CBS series, Cold Case, jumped the shark on the episode that aired November 19 ("Fat Chick Down"**). If you follow the link, you’ll see that other folks think the show jumped quite a few episodes ago, but I don’t agree. However, the November 19 show was so full of intensely unlikable characters, and the story line was so stupid, that I didn’t even cry during the end scene where everyone is walking in slow motion to the sound of some poignantly relevant song from the year the murder took place. Generally that part of the show will bring me to tears even if I haven’t seen any of the rest of the episode. Not this time. It just left me…well, cold. I hope this was just an aberration and not a true shark jump.

* That is, if the "nonfiction" bestseller lists are any proof.
** That probably wasn’t the real name of the episode, but that’s what it was about.