Multi-Level Marketing (MLM): A New Business Opportunity!

There is a huge sensation sweeping Utah - I mean just SWEEPING it! All over the place - from the far northern lands by Logan down to the southern hills of St. George. "Just what IS this sensation!?" you cry? "I must, I say must, know about this!" Okay okay - I can tell that you are all chomping at the bit with insanity, just waiting to hear what it is. Are you ready? Okay - here we go: It's Multi-Level Marketing, or MLM for short! And it's so wonderful that tons of wonderful Utah companies are using it in order to provide YOU with more value, give YOU more bang for your buck, and give YOU a chance to stay at home with your family while making just tons of money while hardly lifting a finger!

First off a lesson on MLM. MLM is a valuable new tool to SUPPLEMENT your income by only doing a little work a day and having fun while you sell valuable, HIGH quality products to your friends at the low prices of $9.00 for a bar of soap, or $8.00 for a tube of toothpaste. Soon, with just a smidgeon of elbow grease and the MLM’s patented new system of income inducement, you could possibly find yourself as rich as Bill Gates, and all this without leaving your home. All you have to do is get your friends to join and buy products, and soon YOU, yes – YOU, will be a qualifying EXECUTIVE at our company leading a team of SALES AGENTS or people who distribute products if you will, to pave the way for a brighter future for the rest of the world. If you have any questions at all, feel free to call our quality controlled Distributor Help Line who we’ve trained to know the answer to any question you could possibly have. And if they don't know the answer, they'll just make one up in order to give you the feeling of assurance that we care and are truly knowledgeable about our products!

Making money with MLM is very easy - here - let me show you how to do it. I am here to help you in this business because I am your friend and I care about you, and friends help each other out. First off - let's show you this piece of paper. Look at it. See that pie chart on the bottom right? That proves that multi-level marketing makes people money. And here's a quote by John Petershmidt, a not-so-well known billionaire stating that if he had done Multi-Level Marketing he would have been 20 times richer than he currently is! And then at the bottom right we show irrefutable proof that to make tons of money you only need to talk to 20 of your friends and get them to join you as a sales-force, and then they'll get 20 friends, and soon the whole world will be rich! Rich I say!

The only thing that you'll have to do to invest in this great opportunity is pay us $1000.00, and then just get your friends to start buying our lovely products or to also pay $1000.00 and join our sales force and you'll be right on your way to making tons of money while being able to stay home with your family at the same time!

"Why didn't you say one single word about the products we'd be selling?" you ask? Oh you guys are so cute when you ask about things! I promise that we'll get right to those in just one second as soon as we discuss these other things important things!

"This is just like a pyramid scam!" you say? Oh no no no! This isn't a pyramid scam! Please never never ever mention those words ever again. They are highly shunned by our company for the simple reason that our company is NOT a pyramid scam at all since it actually promotes the selling of VERY high quality products at VERY low prices while pyramid scams do not.

So you just give me your money and we'll never mention the words 'pyramid scam' ever again, and eventually we'll talk about some of the wonderful valuable products not available anywhere else in the world and in just a few months we'll all be happy, and it's all thanks to Multi-Level Marketing.

And remember our slogan in all you do: Multi-Level Marketing is the only possible way for people to make a decent living.

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Christmas with The Farmers

It's time for me to go home, to spend Christmas with the Farmers. No, I do not mean I will spend Christmas in a rural area where the air is clear and the grass grows tall and people truly know the meaning of the word 'neighbour'. No, in this case I mean Christmas with my family - The Farmers.

Back when I was growing up we would all (and by all I mean EVERY member of the family from my Grandpa Farmer down to the Great- Grandkids)gather together to celebrate Christmas. Being that we lived within a 10 minute drive of each other, with my Grandpa just 5 houses down the street from us, this was usually rather easy to do.

We would start celebrating a week or 2 early, when we went out and looked at Christmas lights. This was one of my fondest memories - a bunch of people would gather together in a couple of cars, and then the rest of us would jam into my Dad's suburban, with very few of us having seatbelts on and about 7 or 8 kids jammed in the back without seatbelts on. My dad would be the one driving the suburban, of course. It's his pride and joy and absolutely nobody else is allowed to touch it. It's a 1976 brown suburban, slightly rusty in parts. The 'Suburb' part of 'Suburban' fell off however, so it's no longer a Suburban, it's actually an 'an'. And as we drove around to look at lights we would sing 'Bye Bye Miss American Pie', the real Don MacLean version, none of this fake Madonna garbage for us, and to this day it's still my favorite Christmas Carol.

Whenever we would go over a big dip in the road or over the railroad tracks, dad would go about 50 mph over them, making all of us unseatbelted grandkids in the back bounce around like crazy.

And right now, as my Grandma Farmer reads this, she's groaning and saying to herself "Oh...no...They didn't! Oh, my conscience! Those grandkids will be the death of me with their playing hockey and horseback riding and wrestling and driving too fast!"

And then we would finally all gather together in the same house for Christmas Eve, and all talk at the top of our voices to make ourselves heard. This may seem loud and boorish for most of you, but this is absolutely necessary for us. We all speak rather loudly, even the shy ones.

True story: when I talk to my family on the phone and I'm sitting in a chair at the table, not even slouching, I can put the phone down on the table, face up, and still hear them loud as a bell. This is not a complaint - this is a statement of fact. I do it as well. If I ever call any of you on the phone, I advise you to have your phone turned down to the lowest volume possible. If it has one, you should use the 'mute' button.

And here we are all talking amongst ourselves, with nobody really able to hear themselves think, and Grandpa Farmer saying every 3 minutes, "What'd they say?" Then Grandma, "Fred, turn your hearing aid on!" "My hearing aid is on Gene! I can hear every word they say - now what'd Susan say? I couldn't hear because you were talking!" My Great-Aunt Coleen said of us, "I think they're all deaf!" And there you haveit: Christmas with The Farmers.

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Moustache Day - January 9th, 2006!

Folks - I should have published this earlier, but later is better than never. We want to have Moustache Day on campus! "Just what IS Moustache Day?" you ask? It is a day for us to go out and celebrate and rejoice in and wear the only article of facial hair that is allowed by the Honor Code: The Moustache. Moustache Day will take place on January 9th, the First day back from school. It will be a day of rejoicing! A day of festivities! A day to show to BYU campus just how lovely The Moustache is!

Just picture it now - It's January 9th, your first day back from the break, your first day of stress, the day where you're walking around in the snow-laden paths of BYU looking at the dreary sky and thinking to yourself, "Oh man, if only there were something to brighten my day," and all of a sudden, everywhere you look, you see Men & Women Wearing Moustaches (Women may wear one too - it never says in the honor code that only Men may be allowed to wear Moustaches. In fact - technically it doesn't say that Women can't wear beards either - but we won't go there - yet). These moustaches scream joy and happiness to you!

All of a sudden your day is bright and happy! A smile is now on your face where moments before the only thing that was there was as scowl as you looked at the homework that was already due by tomorrow. All of a sudden, as you look at the moustaches on the faces of everybody you see, it doesn't seem so bleak and grim and a sense of confidence grows inside you. "I CAN do this!" you say to yourself. "Thank you Moustache Day!"

This and much more joy and happiness can and will be brought by Moustache Day! "What can I do to support Moustache Day?" you ask? Simple! First - spread the word - tell everybody about it - maybe print the date on little cards. It's easy to remember - January 9th - The first day when we return from our winter breaks to school!

"But it will take me weeks to grow a decent moustache!" you say? Yes, this is true - for that reason you can grow it out over Christmas break where all you see are friends and family, groups of people who will love you no matter what sort of scraggly facial hair you are currently wearing.

"But I don't look good in a moustache!" may be your next reply. Well, neither do I nor do 99.8% of men out there! I suggest you do what I'm going to do: grow out either a goatee or a beard over the break - and then come Moustache Day Eve you shave off everything but the Moustache. This might not be completely in the spirit of the Honor Code - but let's be honest guys, when you go home, do you honestly shave every single day, or for some guys twice a day, in order to maintain a clean-cut appearance like you should when you're following the honor code?

“Is this sexist?” No! BOTH men & women can do it. You’ll see that the honor code never says that they can’t if you go here.

"What type of Moustache should I wear?" Anything you choose, so long as it follows the honor code which states: If worn, moustaches should be neatly trimmed and may not extend beyond or below the corners of the mouth. I plan on studying different styles for many days and pondering on the matter before I select one, And then come January 8th, Moustache Day Eve I will sculpt my moustache into the shape I want it to be.

And if you ever get down in the mouth over the break while trying to grow a moustache, just think about the joy and happiness you will feel while walking around on Campus, and then go look yourself in the eye (in the mirror of course, unless you have some other way of looking yourself in the eye) and say to yourself, "I can grow this moustache darnit! And I will!" and come Moustache Day, everybody will be happy.

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Bunches of Stories

I now present to you funny little anecdotes that are too small to put in just one article by themselves. Each paragraph is a separate story in and of itself.


Below is the tracking information for something I ordered from amazon.com. Their packages arrive before they're even dispatched.



I went to the Big & Tall shop to find me a new suit. They told me my size is 58W which the man described as 58 - Portley. Frankly, you'd think they would figure out a better name for their sizes, like 58 Relaxed Fit. They're a Big & Tall shop! Their customers already KNOW they're fat when they walk in there to find themselves clothing! You don't need to go rubbing it in their faces!

I'm taking a statistics class this semester. The whole semester I was thinking "Why is all my teacher doing is reading the information right off the slides? Why doesn't she teach?" And then somebody told me that she was told to teach that way by the Stats department because they're doing a study.

One time my roommate told me "Your grandpa called and he says to call him back as soon as you get home." It was 10:45 here, 11:45 St. Louis time, but I figured if it was urgent, it was urgent. So I called them up, and we chatted a bit about this and that - nothing too important but it was nice. Then the next morning my other Grandpa called and asked me why I didn't call him back.

In Math class, they're having us do homework online now. I thought, "Well, it's not the best way to do math, it's much easier to do it on paper, but this will probably save me from buying paper." Then 2 weeks later they told us that when we do the homework, we need to do it online and then write it down and turn in the written homework.

One girl was trying to give me and another guy diet advice and said that I should eat oatmeal or cracked wheat - however she said to eat them without any sugar. I told her that I would rather be fat my whole life than do that even once.

In my old Bible, Mark 9:43 reads: "It is beer for thee to enter into life."

I gave my blog URL to most of my family in an email, thinking they might want to go to it. Turns out my grandpa accidentally typed in http://candid.blogspot.com instead of http://candidbyu.blogspot.com, and then he read some articles there which involved some cussing and some guy saying he's sick of life here and he's depressed about everything and all he wants to do is move to Japan. So my Grandpa is thinking, "What the heck is Christian writing?" And starts calling up my cousins, and my sisters, and my parents, and aunts, and uncles, and saying, "We need to help Christian - he's writing some weird things." He finally got in touch with me about it 2 days later, and I showed him the right website, and he had to call everybody back to let them know it was OK.

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The 100 Hour Board

There's a website at BYU called the 100 hour board. Check it out at http://theboard.byu.eduSeems like it's a pretty interesting concept - people write in and ask it questions, and within 100 hours of the time you ask the question they will provide an answer for it, unless they think the question isn't good enough - which is understandable.

I found out 1 week ago about the existence of this board, when somebody (Heretical in Heritage) asked a question which included a link to my blog. You can see the question here: Heretical in Heritage's question and then down below you'll notice an explanation that I wrote, which I thought would give less bias and more understanding to the people responding to the question.

The funny part is that I think Heretical in Heritage got gipped. The people on the board thought I was the one who wrote in, and they answered the questions like they were trying to talk to the author. I tried to write in to explain this, but I think the editor must've deleted my question from ever going to 'B.C.', because I manipulated the URL to find my question, and I couldn't find it. Oh well.

I just wanted to state that I did NOT post the question on The Board. I was not out looking for publicity though I thought it might be kind of a sweet idea. I also must admit that I am not beyond the idea of trying to get free publicity for my blog, and have even gone so far as to encourage one of my friends to write a letter to the Daily Universe claiming that they were offended by my blog in hopes that my blog would be featured in the newspaper. It never appeared either - oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Read on if you wish to read my response to B.C. that got erased.

Dear 100 Hour Board,

In response to B.C.'s answer to question 20884, I (the author of the flyer) am not Heretical in Heritage. Heretical in Heritage was just wondering what your opinion of the actual flyer was. I wrote the explanation (the latter half of the question) to your board 1 day later and the editor meshed them (Heretical's question & my explanation) into one question instead of two - if you go back and reread it you'll notice that it's 2 sections instead of 1, each independently written by different people.

I have no idea who Heretical in Heritage is. I didn't even know about the existence of an online 100 hour board until Heretical in Heritage wrote in with a question to my blog, and when you guys linked there I found the URL for the board in my web counter. The question appearing on here was just an accidental result from me passing out the flyers on campus in the first place. I did not try to place a link to my blog on this site in an attempt to gain publicity, nor did I encourage anybody I know to do so.

Other than that mistake in your response, thanks for your review of the flyer and your opinions of it. I just hope that my writing the explanation didn't mar the answer to Heretical in Heritage's question by causing you to focus the attention on me instead of him/her.

It's still obvious though that you never had any experience in dealing with Dr. Garner's calculus book. I do agree that all math books are horrible, but this book is 1000 times worse. The monopoly on the calculus book isn't enforced by the bookstore, but rather by the math department of which Dr. Garner is the chair. Dr. Garner is gaining commission off of each book, and the requisite use of his calculus book seems like an abuse of power to me and many other people.

We need to go elsewhere besides the math department, because the math department has failed us in the past. We did not try coming to you - that was merely a faithful reader (Heretical in Heritage) of your board asking you a question. I have not had nor do I have any plans to try to twist the nature of this board into an agenda of any sort.

Thanks for your time,
The Author of the Calculus Flyer

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Depression - Seasonal and Otherwise

Right now I'm sitting here - I haven't written a decent thing in over a week, and I have a few really good topics I could hit on, but I really don't want to even start. Why? I've been depressed - not seriously depressed to the point where I'm miserable, but depressed to the point where it takes away my personality and makes me feel numb to all emotions and makes me incapable of telling a joke, in writing or in person. To the point where I feel somewhat stupid interacting with people and want to retreat into a cave where I won't need to talk to people as much. This might sound like I'm whining, however I'm just stating this as a fact and trying to explain it to people. I'm not trying to explain this depression to say "Hey - look at me! Give me attention!" But I'm trying to do this to hopefully give people a better understanding of depression and how it affects people. Personally I've come to be able to live with depression and just accept that it happens, but it affects me and everything I do quite a bit and the ONLY thing left that annoys me about it is explaining what's happening to people who don't get depressed.

Depression is something that's affected me for my whole life, which seems to get worse each year, yet I will NEVER talk about it with anybody unless I think the somebody I'm talking to has at least somewhat experienced it before. I don't discuss this with family, because if I do I'm scared that they'll try to 'fix' me or turn me into a project to correct this problem, while I've learned through experience that the best way to deal with it is to let the time that I'm feeling this way pass while trying to get on with my life as best as possible.

Right now as you're reading this, you're thinking thoughts similar to one of these two things:

1)"Yeah, I can identify with that"
or
2) "Yeesh, who is this guy fooling? People who say they're depressed are faking it and should just get over it"

And right now as I say this I'm taking a huge risk, because frankly I hate talking to people about this, and people who know me might want to talk to me about it, but I really don't want to, I just want to explain my point of view in the hopes of helping people to understand and then move on.

A lot of you who have never been depressed will think that the best way to approach someone who's depressed is to say to them, "Hey! Cheer up! I've been there! I know what you're going through!" This is something you must absolutely NOT do. You (those of you who don't get depressed) do NOT know what is like to go through this. You know as much about how it feels to be depressed as males could know what it feels like to give birth to a baby without anaesthetic. Sure males can try and empathize and be sympathetic towards the female, but they will NEVER know what it's like to give birth because it's impossible for them to experience that in life.

Depression is something which affects a lot of people - I don't know how many - but the fact of the matter is that people who are depressed never want to talk about it. Often they're ashamed of it and feel that it's something they've done to make themselves depressed. It took a long while for me to realize that it just happens to me once in a while, and that it's just something that I need to deal with in my life.

For me, as with many others, I start to become really depressed every year from around the end of September to somewhere probably around February. I think it has something to do with less sunlight, or maybe the fact that it's just cloudy and dreary all the time, but all I know is that when September rolls around I start to dread the upcoming months. I dread it so much that I've even thought I would be better off moving somewhere else, like Australia or Argentina, during those months and living around complete strangers rather than live here and be depressed around friends that I know really well. Luckily it's not a constant depression but it just tends to come and go during this period.

Without fail, at least one person per year for the last 5 or 6 years has asked me in the fall why I'm not as happy as I used to be, and I'm never really sure how to respond. One time when I told somebody that I just tend to get somewhat down in the fall, and this person said, "I don't think that's it - I think it's just a lack of faith, if you prayed it would probably go away." I wanted to tell this person that they should stop taking drugs for headaches and instead just pray for their headaches to go away.

"What does depression do? Does it just make you sad?" No - it's not necessarily being sad. Being sad is a feeling where you know you're sad for a reason - you're sad about something and you know that feeling will go away. When you become depressed, you can be happy one second then all of a sudden out of nowhere you're sad. Your personality disappears. Your ability to laugh and enjoy things that you normally do goes away. Sometimes it gets to the point where it's a feeling of despair, but often for me it's more like a feeling of numbness. A feeling where I feel incapable of interacting with people on an emotional level. Anything I need to do that requires emotion, like writing, is near impossible to get done. I can still force myself to do it, but the finished product will only be about 10% as good as it would have been if I wasn't depressed and will take me twice as long to finish.

Along with the lack of emotions, it often makes me feel socially incompetent. I still want to interact with people, but whenever I try the words don't come out right, and I just end up feeling awkward, and in the end after forcing myself to interact, instead of 'feeling better' like I thought would happen I just end up feeling more depressed and more incompetent than I did before.

"What can I do to help somebody who's depressed?" OK - the #1 thing to do is not treat them like an outcast and not speak to them. Still say 'hi' and 'how's it going?' like you normally would. I know it's awkward being around people that are depressed, but believe me the depressed people find it more awkward than you do. IF you say "I'm worried about you" make it understood that you mean you care about them. Often when people say "I'm worried about you" it just adds more stress onto the person who's depressed, it makes them think, "Oh no, what I'm doing is really affecting other people" which you might think is a good motivator but in reality this hurts the depressed person even more a lot of times. Believe me, they are trying to get out of the depressed phase and they are worried enough about it already. Don't throw your worries on top of theirs.

"What should I not do?" Do NOT tell them how to cheer themselves up. It's ok to suggest but do not insist that they do it. Generally people who are depressed know more about how to deal with it than people who aren't - they've been living with it for most of their lives. Listen to them, talk to them, ask them how they're doing but don't tell them what to do or how to get over it. Don't act like you know a solution to depression, unless of course you're a counselor or a psychiatrist or something. Do not try to 'fix' them. Treat them like a person, not like a broken down car or machine.

Whatever you do, just treat them like a friend, not a project. And I'm not just saying that to sound sappy.

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