Getting Toasty

A few months ago I joined an organization called Toastmasters International. Sadly it has nothing to do with the act of "toasting" alcoholic beverages nor does it have to do with learning how to perfectly toast a piece of bread. What it does focus on is public speaking.

Why do you want to improve your public speaking skills, Chris? Is a question the few of you reading this may be asking yourselves. 

The answer is simple. If you plan on conquering the world, you're gonna need to know how to address it publicly to large masses of people at a time. Plus, my 7 a.m. slot for Tuesday mornings was open so I said what the hell. 

For the uninitiated or for those of you just too lazy or not properly enticed to click the hyperlink in the first sentence of this article, Toastmasters helps anyone who wants help in honing their skills in regard to speaking in front of people.

There's a large percentage of people that suffer from Glossophobia which is the fear of public speaking. I am not one of those people, however. My biggest fear is not being able to pee in a urinal when a dude is next to me peeing which is called Paruresis. Unfortunately there's yet to be a Paruresis International so I've just decided to settle with Toastmasters.

The meetings are fun and once you join you get two awesome books that give you an assignment schedule to follow. Each assignment is a speech that you are to prepare and execute following certain criteria for each individual speech. 

Once you've recited your speech at a meeting in front of other members you're evaluated on your speech subject, your voice performance and pace and your body language. Every week is a mini-competition where people with the best skills for that day are awarded a ribbon. As you can see by the pic that accompanies this article, I've kinda got a knack for this shit.

The speech subject matter can be about whatever we wish it to be, which makes for some interesting speeches from yours truly.

SO, since there's a handful of you that like to read my writing (literally, about 5 of you) I decided to post each speech I do. On an average, I do about one prepared speech every 3 weeks so for those of you looking to kill 5 minutes at work, I've got you covered 5 min out of every 3 weeks.

You can find the first two speeches here and here.

You're welcome.  

    

Toastmasters - Get to the Point Speech - Caught in the Net

By a show of hands, how many people here subscribe to Netflix?

I myself have been a long time subscriber and as if I’m not digitally manipulated enough on a daily basis by emails, text messages, or voicemails, I have an iTunes library that’s in constant disarray and a torrent bin that’s messier than a 1 yr. olds diaper after he’s just been fed Taco Bell.

So when I want a break from being a 21^st century digital boy I do so by engaging in the act of something that is exclusively 21^st century. I try to unwind by watching a movie via Netflix.

This never works out the way it was intended.  

You see, every time I pull up my Netflix I can never watch anything because there’s too much of EVERYTHING.  

Just how much is everything you may ask? Close to 9,000 movies and over 2,000 TV shows. That’s a lot of everything.  

In fact I think it’s safe to say that Netflix could easily be called the Walmart of the movie streaming industry due to the sheer volume of crap they have on hand for you to consume.

Whether it’s action /adventure, comedy, drama, horror, romance, foreign, foreign drama, foreign romance, foreign horror  or foreign drama horror comedy that has a romantic edge to it as prevalent in the Spanish film Witching & Bitching, there’s literally something for everybody.

My biggest problem is, which one is for me? And thus, every night when I go to www.netflix.com I feverishly ponder that question and stare quietly into the abyss while the abyss stares back at me.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize that nothing is more valuable than time. Everything else, more or less, you can make more of except for time, that one is always a losing sum game.

So when it comes to how I’m going to spend my leisure time I take it very seriously. I don’t want to become too engrossed in a movie that’s not for me. So I’ll attempt to peruse that which dwarfs the library of congress 10 fold in an attempt to figure out what type of cinematic experience best tailors to the unique individual that I am.

This is always nothing short of a Sisyphus task which bears no progress and ironically squanders the very time that it is I’m trying to save.

Sure, I’ll come across some interesting titles that, after reading at least two pages of user reviews I think I may like, but I never want to commit to anything because I’m afraid if I do I’ll be missing out on something better. So the movies that may be for me but just aren’t for me right now get thrown on to my Netflix list where it can be saved for me to ignore at a later date.  

I believe the whole concept of the Netflix personal list is empirical proof that Netflix knows that they’re bludgeoning the consumer over the head with too many choices to the point that the customer can’t think straight or make a decision.

In 1970 a book came out called Future Shock. In it the author coined a phrase called Overchoice. 

Overchoice theorizes that consumers can have too many choices and therefore are unable to make an optimal choice which causes stress, anxiety and unhappiness. Not to mention the inability to make a choice.

I’d say that this perfectly sums up my Netflix experience.

Now of course one could easily suggest that I just all together cancel my Netflix subscription and put an end to the tyranny of small decisions and quit entering that dastardly hedge maze night after night. 

But then I wouldn’t have access to all those choices I can’t make a choice on.

I hate it, but I’m inexplicably drawn to it. And at only $7.99 per month I can easily justify the cost even though I hardly ever watch anything because I’m too busy looking at…everything.

Truth be told, Netflix really is just like crack. It’s cheap, easy to get and incapacitates you for hours at a time. The side effects are irritability, loss of time, anxiousness, paranoia and sleep deprivation.  

And, it’s a national epidemic.

Just last week I was in a conversation with some friends and they were complaining about their lack of ability to choose what to watch on Netflix. 

They, like me, spent massive amounts of time just scrolling through the endless titles of movies, documentaries, musicals, indie films and Japanese cartoons which ultimately led them back to the safe confines of a Family Guy episode they’d watched at least 100 other times that week because they didn’t know what else to watch.

They say variety is the spice of life, however there’s a really good chance that “THEY” are a group of people that are clinically and legally insane and more than likely work at the upper echelons of the Netflix empire.

So to “THEY” I say, hey, enough with all these decisions. Man was not made to spend all of his free time deciding. Just put up a total of 5 movies for us to watch instead of over 5,000. That way we can complain that there’s nothing to watch instead of complaining that there’s too much of everything to watch.

If you liked this speech, you can watch it in it’s entirety on Netflix.com in the horror comedy foreign titles. Please note its only foreign if you’re watching it outside the U.S.

 

 

Toastmasters - Organize Your Speech - Here Comes the Tide

 I intended to give a speech on motivation and how it’s impeded by distraction, and then I got distracted. I thought it’d be a good idea to go get my mail before I started preparing my speech.

It was not.

Because in my mail I received what I believe is the social equivalent of a jury duty summons.

I’d been invited to a wedding.

Now I have nothing against the institution of marriage so long as it’s between two consenting adults regardless of racial, sexual or religious orientation. What I am a huge proponent of is the 3 ring circus of madness that signifies the kick-off of the marriage.

So instead of today’s topic being about motivation, it’s going to be the result of motivation.  Specifically the three motivating factors that contribute to my utter disdain for weddings that I’m invited to.

Now I’m not trying to be an iconoclast or a purveyor of cultural genocide. I’m just a simple man with a simple plea to stop the insanity or at the very least, stop the insanity from inviting me to spend time with it.

So without further “I do’s”…

1^st Reason Why I Dislike Weddings: They’re boring.

Let’s be honest, nothing exciting happens at weddings. Everyone knows how it’s gonna go down. They’ll be some music, they’ll be the exchange of vows and then there’s the whole “I now pronounce you husband and wife…or husband and husband… or wife and wife.”

Listen, either way, despite the miniscule nuances in gender, it always ends with the couple being married. There’s no drama, there’s no sudden plot twists where the groom realizes he’s been dead the whole time we’ve been watching this play out. It’s literally the same thing over and over. A re-run with a variation on set and cast members.

The average non-denominational wedding clocks in at about 25 minutes. Now I think the fact that it takes more time to have your car’s oil changed, get a pizza delivered or take your lunch break at work is a testament to the fact that even the bride & groom know their wedding ceremony is the prattle of the dead and even THEY themselves want it to be over faster than a knife fight in a phone booth.

And let’s not discount the side effects of boredom which are; Excessive alcohol consumption, over eating & an increase in bad decision making. I think we can agree that all three of those things happen in abundance & repeatedly throughout the night at the wedding reception which peruses the ceremony.

2^nd Reason Why I Dislike Weddings: They’re expensive. 

I’m talking obscenely expensive. Obscenity taken to such heights that even Caligula, The Roman emperor of depravity would blush at such obscenity.

A typical wedding’s cost is ballpark $23 grand…for one day. Actually not even one day, more like 15 hrs which equates to $1,533 per hour. This is lunacy at its zenith. In fact this is $500 MORE than what O.J. Simpson was paying his attorneys per hour during his murder trial.

So not only could that amount keep you from ever seeing the inside of a jail cell, but it could also be spent towards a myriad of more enjoyable things such as an incredible vacation, furthering one’s education, investing in mutual funds, stocks or 401K, putting a down payment on a home or starting a college fund for when the children arrive.

But instead of using the financial capital for something long-term & meaningful, it’s spent on invitations that get thrown away or go unanswered, renting uncomfortable tuxedos & buying an expensive gown that will be worn once and then put in a box.

Then there’s the whole paying the church, renting a hall for a reception and hiring a DJ so you can watch your aunt that’s drunk on the booze you paid for whose way too old to be twerking, attempt to twerk anyway, throw out her hip and then send you the medical bill since it happened at YOUR wedding.

And let’s not forget those of us that have to take off work to attend an event in which we KNOW two people will say “I do.” Yes, I know you do; in fact, you’ve been doing long before you got married. How about we focus on the “I don’t” as in “I don’t get paid for taking time off to attend your wedding, I don't want to have to buy you a gift and I don't want to sit at a table full of strangers at your reception."

3^rd Reason Why I Dislike Weddings: They’re stressful.

There aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the calendar year for me to elucidate on the myriad of things that can be stressful about a wedding. But more often than not, a good percentage of weddings never or almost never happen ipso facto (I really hope I used that adverb correctly). What I’m getting at is that a lot of would be weddings self destruct because of the stress that comes from the planning of it.

And if that’s not enough, there’s always the dilemma of only being able to invite a finite number of guests. This means some people that know all the other people that were invited will not be invited.

That in turn puts a burden of guilt & secrecy on those that made it to the invite list which causes THEM to stress out over keeping the wedding hush-hush as if it were some CIA cover up that will ultimately end up on social media anyway leaving the invited guests the ones held responsible for explaining to the uninvited guests why they weren’t invited in the first place.

Those invited suddenly find themselves cast adrift in an ocean of deceit; stress & anxiety that will inevitably drown them in its undertow or crush them by its tide. 

In conclusion I hope that I’ve made a valid argument for at least the personal reasons why I detest weddings and all that they usually encompass. 

And As I’ve stated before, I completely condone and support the marriage of two people wanting to spend the rest of their lives with one another and making each other a better version of themselves.

I just don’t think a wedding is the healthiest way to start off a marriage, especially when I’m invited to it.