Better Life Through Science

Fiction

This is the script of a speech I delivered - dressed as a mad scientist - for the Toastmasters Humorous Speech Contest.  Hence the over-use of exclamation marks, capitals and generally overcooked style. Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen, I am of course Barney Buggins, eminent Scientist and prominent Motivational Speaker!  You may have heard of Tony Robbins, you may have heard of Jim Rohn or Dr Phil … but what they all FAIL to grasp is that the answer to the successful life we are all looking for, what YOU are looking for, is not in affirmations or goals or positive attitudes … it’s in pills and potions, it’s in the writings of Newton, the memoirs of Edison … that’s right, the answer to all our problems Ladies and Gentlemen is Science … and it’s oh, so very complex. Yes, yes, we Esteemed Fellows of the Utopian Institute of Exceptional Narcissists got together and realised – surely, the answers to our everyday problems CAN’T be simple, proven things that just work – how can that possibly make one feel intellectually superior?  No! – us boffins cannot throw down the chalk until we have found a unreasonably complex and eclectic strategy that employs academic rigour and sports impressive looking equations. That’s why now, I tour the world advising all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds on quite simply “how to solve simple problems in complex ways” – that, and running my groundbreaking seminar “Unleash The Geek Within”. Friends - My approach to personal development is in three parts:

  1. So much advice given by the Personal Development world is over-simplified.  So we took the best it had to offer, stripped everything out of it, and made it difficult to understand.
  2. The root of all human unhappiness is in biochemical imbalances.  So we do a throrough analysis, then dose them up with a miraculous white powder we call Steed that has them off the couch and off to the nearest rave club in no time flat, and
  3. Realising that “Self Matters”.  Which is why I’m up here talking about “My Self”.

Now who wants to take my word for it that lofty academics and weird science is all you need to solve any problem, or do you want proof?! I’ll tell you a story about how I’ve helped someone with my techniques.  I once worked with a client – who we’ll call Cedric – who was suffering from the sensitive problem of a broken heart – at the tender age of 13.  It was a sad predicament, this young lad knew HE loved HER, but the reverse just wasn’t to be.  Now this strikes me as highly unusual, because HE was honoured champion of Classical Thermodynamics 3 years running in his middle school science league, as WELL as successfully infiltrating the MoD’s computers between bouts of World of Warcraft – what a stud.  Whereas SHE – who we’ll call Delila - was merely … some kind of child model and actress, written up in the school magazine as Naomi Campbell’s “mini-me”, or something like that. We figured – my young, virile maths hunk and I – that he’d have no problem with this girl, all we needed was a little magnetism!  So Cedric and I sat down to a crazy, unhinged midnight equation solving session and we concluded … the following.  We humans all have iron in our bodies, and iron is of course magnetic.  Now if only we had a way to magnetise Cedric and Delila in opposite directions we would have ourselves an inseperable pair! So we took half a gram of Helium, inverted it, and we combined it with sulphur.  Which gives the mass of a human body multiplied by the reciprocal of the speed of light times one radioactive alpha particle, times the distance between Cedric and Delila and QED we had ourselves a plan! (writing a complex equation on the white-board, which eventually spelled “He’s MAD” across the top) Now I don’t want to go into grim … - err SPECIFIC details of this highly dangerous and risky experiment with two young people, the voltages involved WERE quite high, and it was a rainy day … poor blighters … (gesturing absent-mindedly about hair standing up on end) But do not lose hope!  Do not despair!  For my system of self-improvement through genetic manipulation, nuclear physics, or whatever half-baked theories I learn while immorally taking notes from New Scientist in the aisles of WH Smiths make me feel highly intelligent!  And who’s to argue with a megalomaniac nutter who is – for the moment – pacified?! I’ll leave you with a couple of tips to take home if you want to be a REAL success - the kind of person who turns streetlamps off as you walk beneath them.

  1. The natural highs and lows of life aren’t a problem if you turn to the UNnatural.
  2. The road to dedication is medication
  3. Get a life … get a PhD.

That’s all the freebies you’re getting though, visit my website at www.canhebeserious.com … I’m waiting for your money.  Thankyou.