Hello, Pity

There are lots of people out there who are full of untapped promise... present company excluded of course. I mean, the mere fact that you are reading these words means you are living up to your maximum potential. Kudos to you!

For the rest of the idiots, there are books like this:

While I have not personally read The Guide to Confident Living, I can pretty much guarantee that its pages are filled with lessons such as "Believing in Yourself (Even When No One Else Will)" and "Grabbing That Tiger By The Tail!!"

I'm not saying these books don't have their place. The person who bought this book was probably in a really bad place--maybe they had just gone through a nasty divorce, or the loss of a loved one. Or maybe, just maybe, they had just endured a particularly soul-crushing job that left them a little stabby, and they needed some semblance of order in their lives.

One of the lessons that are in all of these books is "Visualizing and Organizing." Generally, this is the part of the book that says if you clean up the surroundings you can control, the rest of the world will somehow magically fall into place. I, for one, encourage that behavior--After all, that's probably the number one reason people dump these objects on the NeighborGoodies Table.

In an effort to get herself together, the gal who bought this book rushed out to Staples and grabbed a shit-ton of binders:


One important lesson from the NeighborGoodies Life-Improvement Seminar: Don't lose yourself while you improve yourself!™ Our heroine made sure to hold onto her quirky, fun personality by picking up some Hello Kitty stationary to fill her three-ring binder with:


She even enrolled in classes...
...and decorated her now-empty Consulting Skills Program notebook with a little froggy sticker...
...because how else will she "Hop" to success?

How did our heroine fare?

Well, according to the level of dust on the notebooks (as well as this calendar from 2006)...


...I think it's safe to assume that maybe she's still trying to Live Confidently in the Hollywood Hills.

So I guess the lesson here is to tell your dopey friends to come and read NeighborGoodies so that they, too, can experience their Maximum Potential! After all: If you hang out with idiots, then what does that make you?