omg
lol
stfu
np

Do you even wonder where these acronyms come from? Who starts them? Is there a secret cave full of the movers and shakers of the internet world who spend all day trying to come up with the next 'lol'?

Well, wonder no more, my feathered friend. This is the story of 'np'.

Just wanted to a take a minute and talk about this blog.

The recent trend of people making a living off of their blogs had a lot of appeal to me. I do more interesting stuff than anyone I know - why not write about it? I also enjoy writing and sharing my stories with other people. I have a lot of theories, do a lot of crazy experiments, and take a lot of... calculated risks.

My primary source of income was a business I started six years ago that was very successful, but came to a screeching halt. In a way I was glad, though... I was sick of doing it. I'm working on a lot of projects, frantically trying to see what will catch on next. I'm hoping it's this blog.

This is a continuation of the story, How I Became a Famous Pickup Artist Part 1. If you haven't read that already, you should do so before reading this article.

Papa was notorious for being in contact with everyone in the pickup scene. I couldn't blame him, either - he was the business side of "Real Social Dynamics", a company that taught seminars and workshops to aspiring players. Not surprisingly, he was the only person at the seminar that I knew.

In order to extract every last precious second out of my experience, I had gotten on the earliest flight to Chicago that I could book. I called Papa when I arrived at the hotel at 10am. I could hardly make out his voice. He'd been out in the clubs until very late and was still sleeping.

A bunch of people e-mailed me about the Drop Out and Grow Rich article I posted yesterday. A friend of mine pointed out a few things, most importantly that I failed to give the college grad interest on his money. Fixing that (and making him pay interest if he was negative, but only after the first 4 years of college) put him very close to the high school grad with private school money. Never charging him interest for being negative got him slightly above that same person.

Then it was pointed out that the difference in earnings wasn't 900k as the college-mongers claimed. It was more like 1.3mil. I had no good data on salary increases, so I assumed the inflation rate. I guess it stands to reason that after a while job experience means more than the degree, so the gap gets smaller.

If I fudged the grad's income to equal a 900k lifetime earnings difference, the Dropout with Private School money is again the winner, but is still followed closely by the grad. If I fudge the dropout's starting income (to $29,692) to get the 900k difference, the grad still beats the dropout with public level money, but only by 300k. Also, the dropout would be beating him until age 58.

In our culture going to school is given a lot of respect. Dropouts face a sharp negative stigma. They're quitters. They're losers. They'll go nowhere in life. But is this really true? How big of a factor is college on success?

Here's a list of some of the dropouts that I personally admire :

Bill Gates
Steve Jobs
Paul Allen
Richard Branson
Larry Ellison (Oracle)
Dave Thomas
Ted Turner
Henry Ford
Almost 1 in 5 of the US Presidents including Lincoln, Washington, Jackson, and Cleveland
Albert Einstein
Walt Disney
John D. Rockafeller
Mark Twain
Charles Dickens
Thomas Edison
Benjamin Franklin
Ray Kroc (billionaire founder of McDonalds)
Claude Monet

Wow. This has got to be one of my all time best stories.

On Wednesday night I was talking to my good friend Jonah and was telling him about the show "The Amazing Race", and how I wanted to apply this year. Jonah and I have gone on a lot of trips together and somehow don't grate on each other's nerves at all. I have a lot of respect for him and his abilities, so I thought he'd be a perfect partner for The Amazing Race. For those of you who don't know about this tv-tastic gem, it's basically a race / scavenger hunt around the world.

I meandered to the application site, downloaded the application, and began to check out the requirements. Guess when the due date for the tape was? Friday at 5pm, which meant that we had one day to create a 3 minute video, fill out the two 11 page applications and get some passport sized photos taken. Not one to back down from a challenge due to complete lack of time, I convinced Jonah to get on board.

Also, I can't imagine how we wouldn't win. I plan on running every day, lifting weights every other day, and learning 1-2 more languages by the time the show films in June.

As far as I was concerned, she was perfect. She was at least as smart as I was, was a dancer and had the body to prove it, and had a smile that could disarm the national guard. Let's call her Julie.

So, like an earthworm stalking it's prey, I put my usual game on her. Since my last flowchart was so popular, I've made another one to show you how I dealt with the ladies back then:

Nedless to say, things went slowly. We hung out nearly every day for the last couple months of our Senior year summer vacation. Like many guys, I was totally oblivious to her attraction for me. One morning Julie came over really early while I was still sleeping, and squeezed into my twin bed with me. I woke up, and assumed that she must be tired - it didn't even occur to me that she might like me. Finally on the last week of that vacation she said to me,

People often comment that I have a lot of discipline. Even if you go through some comments on posts in this blog, you'll see people saying that. I even agree with them - I've been working this polyphasic thing for over two months now! Very few nights have gone by that haven't involved an intense struggle to stave off sleepiness.

The funny thing is that I used to be completely UNdisciplined. It was almost a joke amongst my friends and families. What changed? Read on...

The problem was that I didn't trust myself. If I said "I'm going to not eat meat for 30 days", I knew that since I was undisciplined, that it might not actually be true. So when day three rolled around and I saw a hamburger, I'd think subconciously, "Well, I wasn't going to make it thirty days anyway" and I'd chow down. Even small things like saying "I'm going to go to sleep after one more game" would get stretched. My promises to myself were worthless.

Before I went to Massachusetts, things were peachy. I did 4 days with only one hour of oversleeping. Then during Massachusetts I did rather poorly, but still not too bad. When I got back I was settling back into my polyphasic/gangsta lifestyle, but that got interrupted for my trip to Vegas. And Vegas, surprisingly, wasn't kind to the schedule.

Since then I've been trying to get back on the boat, so to speak. Last night I only overslept by 90 minutes, but I just woke up from a 4 hour (!!!!) oversleep. So now, I confess that I've been keeping something from you, dear reader.

It's true.