Top 10 Ways to Live Life More Dangerously

Tonight our Toastmasters of La Jolla theme is Adrenaline, which as you may know, is the chemical responsible for our “fight or flight” response – whether it’s a bear chasing you, or a close call on the freeway, you get excited and scared – your body prepares to fight or run.



In keeping with our theme, we have:



The Top Ten ways to live life more dangerously





10. Always smoke while refueling your car. Also, keep it running the whole time, and bring slippers and a piece of carpet to generate static electricity with. If anyone says anything, flip them ‘the bird’.



9. Whenever you see a big jacked up truck, accelerate past them, cut them off and then flip them ‘the bird’.



8. When driving beside a highway patrol car, wait until they’re exiting the freeway, wave to them, then flip them ‘the bird’.



7. Go to an amusement park and ride the fastest scariest rollercoaster in the park as many times as it takes to barf on the people behind you. When you exit the ride, point at them, and laugh. Then flip them the bird, and run!



6. If you park your car and other people are sitting in the next car, bump their door loudly with yours, then walk away as if nothing had happened. If they say anything... you know what to do.



5. While grocery shopping, eat food that you haven’t bought yet, then eat the wrapper so they can’t scan the bar code. If the grocery checker says anything, tell them to ‘scan this’.



4. Find the biggest guy in the gym and ask him why he’s such a small girlie man. Did he just start working out?



3. Women: Dress revealingly, then interrupt any conversation between a man and woman. Ignore the woman and ask the man a question, and listen to his answer as if he’s the most fascinating and sexy man on the planet. Ask him how such a fascinating man could be standing here all alone.



2. Men: Wait until that that special woman in your life is PMS’ing, and then: point out all the things about her that have been bothering you lately.



And the number one way to live life more dangerously…



1. Ask your significant other how their day was, and when they start talking, turn away and start doing something else.

Top 10 Ways to Mess Up Your Emotions

Here's the President's top ten list from August 31st. Did you miss the meeting? The theme of the Aug 31 meeting of Toastmasters of La Jolla was 'Efficiency'.



It's hard to be efficient if your emotions are all messed up, so here's a list of things NOT to do (this is an excerpt from my new book on body-mind medicine)



Brian Carter's Top Ten Ways to Mess Up Your Emotions



10. Work until you collapse. Repeat.



9. Alternate option: Drink until you pass out every day. Come to. Repeat.



8. Don't exercise. Ever. Even if someone points a gun at your head.



7. Ignore your body, appetite, and sleep. Substitute caffeine and sugar.



6. Fantasize about the future while doing nothing.



5. Stubbornly hang on to vague goals of huge magnitude.



4. Decide you don't have enough time to improve yourself. Then go watch some TV.



3. If all else fails, worry as much as possible about loved ones. It shows you really care.



2. Occasionally take breaks from self-absorption to envy and resent everyone else.



And the number one way to mess up your emotions is...



1. Focus on what you don't have. Once you get it, don't let that faze you: put it away and focus on something else you don't have.

The Top 10 Advantages of Being a Loser

Here's the President's top ten list from August 23rd. Did you miss it?



The theme of the Aug 23 meeting of Toastmasters of La Jolla was the Humorous Speech Contest, and the Tabletopics Contest. As usual, I made a sharp lefthand turn and spun the topic. The focus was on competing and winning, so I thought I'd make the losers feel more comfortable.



Losing has gotten a bad rap. There are some really good benefits to losing. Here are...



The Top Ten Advantages of Being a Loser



10. Plenty of time to discover how many different shapes you make with a paper clip



9. More time with opposite sex means your loser genes are more likely to dominate the gene pool



8. Easier to keep relationships because girls that like losers have lower standards



7 . Mobile home parks are filled with your kind, and they're cheap!



6. If the Democrats win in 2004, all losers will receive a $90,000 tax credit.



5. If you lose dramatically on TV, you can get more airtime than the winner



4. TV is always looking for a guy whose broken leg pokes through his skin, or a driver whose car flips 12 times and then blows up



3. Losers always outnumber winners, so you can all jump the winner and beat him up



2. Sometimes losers win out of sheer luck and that really pisses off the winners



And the number one advantage of being a loser is...



1. No demanding training schedules means more time to watch Seinfeld reruns

Top 10 Dumbest Quotes Ever

Tonite’s Toastmasters of La Jolla theme is “Traveling Through Space and Time,” and as I thought about astronauts, cosmonauts, and whatnauts, I remembered there is another kind of space, INNER space – and some of us have more inner space than others- e.g. blondes, jocks, etc. and we are often called “Space Cadets.”



So tonight’s top ten list is a bunch of quotes that come from some of our most famous Space Cadets – here are my top ten dumbest quotes ever:



10. "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."

- Dan Quayle



9. "I was dramatically shaped by my grandmother and my aunts because they convinced me there was always a cookie available. Deep down inside I'm four years old, and I wake up and think out there, there's a cookie. Every morning I'm going, you know, either it can be baked or it's already been bought, but it's in a jar . . . somewhere. . . ."

— Newt Gingrich, 1994



8. "My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state. We have the sons and daughters of every, of people from every planet, of every country on earth."

— Former California Gov. Gray Davis, during the recall campaign



7. "My sister's expecting a baby, and I don't know if I'm going to be an uncle or an aunt."

- a North Carolina State basketball player, explaining to his Coach why he appeared nervous at practice, 1982



6. "I can't really remember the names of the clubs that we went to."

- Shaquille O'Neal on whether he had been to the Parthenon during his visit to Greece



5. "Any time Detroit scores more than 100 points and holds the other team below 100 points, they almost always win."

- Basketball announcer Doug Collins



4. "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."

- Football commentator and former player Joe Theismann



3. "I'm a 4-wheel-drive pickup type of guy. So is my wife."

-Baseball player Mike Greenwell



2. "We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."

- Jason Kidd, Point Guard, New Jersey Nets



And the number one dumbest quote ever is…



“I love being a star because I get to travel overseas to places like Canada.”

-Britney Spears

Top 10 Signs Your Outdoors Toastmasters Meeting Isn't Working Out

(I'm the president of my club, Toastmasters of La Jolla, and I kick off every meeting. In the summer, we have a meeting or two at the beautiful La Jolla Cove.)



Last week, I introduced a fixture to my Presidential comments, the top ten list. In the spirit of tonight’s theme, The Dog Days of Summer, here are the top ten signs that your outdoor Toastmasters meeting isn’t working out:



10. Bored members hanging around the free wine table long before the break.



9. Several of the guests keep looking around to make sure no one’s taking their shopping carts.



8. Instead of wine, your club serves 40 oz.’ers.



7. Audience members keep getting hit in head with Frisbees.



6. Your toastmaster’s theme is Lynyrd Skynyrd, and their CD player is infinitely repeating “Free Bird.”



5. The General Evaluator, dressed in a kilt, spends his entire two and a half minutes saying the club is filled with girlie-men.



4. Half the membership gets lost looking for the “meeting at the cave”



3. Your president shows up wearing only a thong.



2. The partisanship sweeping the nation overcomes your club as angry members throw salsa and squirt shaken-up beers at one another.



And the number one side that your outdoors Toastmasters meeting isn’t working out…



No one is sober enough to participate in table topics.

Ex-Nerd Finally Finds Sports Love

Fact is, growing up I was a nerd, a geek, a four-eyes. I wouldn't say I wasn't physical, but I was short. I was good at math and other school subjects, so I got stereotyped.



Despite enjoying peewee baseball (where the ball was pitched by a machine), I took my leave when other kids my age started throwing the ball across the plate. It seemed to me they threw it with more speed than accuracy, and getting to play didn't outweight being hit. I tried soccer, too, but no one filled me in on the basics, and I was competing against kids who'd been playing for years. I didn't understand, and didn't enjoy it.



In elementary school, I wasn't one of the stars of kickball - I could occasionally kick for a "home run," but not consistently. In fact, my most memorable kickball moment was getting accidentally kicked in the jewels by a girl while waiting in line to kick.



I ran track for 2 years - I loved the 100 yard dash and the long jump. I tried the high jump, but couldn't get high enough for myself. Eventually, I'd had enough fun and moved on. I wasn't devoted to this one either. I loved handball, played with one of the big red kickballs - I played that almost every day, and was one of the best. I also loved a game called "prisoner bombardment," which was like a huge group dodgeball game - one team on each side of a basketball court, with four or six kickballs, the goal was to hit players on the opposite team, and then they had to go to your prison, in your backcourt - their teammates could "spring" them if they could throw a ball over to them, but if a competitor caught the ball, they also had to become a prisoner. They didn't play handball or prison bombardment in high school, though.



I never really tried basketball, though I did enjoy shooting baskets with my Dad in the driveway at home. I didn't even think of going out for football.



Even though there were sports I enjoyed, none of them were big, and I wasn't a sports kind of guy. I never "lettered" in any sport. I was on the tennis team for a year, but I had trouble with losing. I felt too 'on-the-spot', and took it too personally. It was hard not to be the best. Since I never devoted myself to any sport, I always was behind kids who had been practicing one for years.



The most I did in my Bachelor's degree was hike. I did a fair amount of that and enjoyed it. But I wasn't getting aerobic exercise.



I didn't find my true sports love until I was 28 years old. It was rock climbing. That is a story in itself, but the main thing I want to say is that finding my sport has changed my entire personality. I cut my long hair off. I am comfortable being physical. I understand aspects of being a man that I hadn't experience before. I suddenly got into college and NBA basketball after a lifetime of refusing to be a spectator of any sport. I suppose now that I had mine, I felt confident and secure enough to watch others have theirs. It no longer threatened my value, or my manhood.



Now I can watch all kinds of sports, and the benefit of that is getting to see the best examples of team activity and coaching. How to win and how to lose. How to work together. How to persist. How to have a goal and go after it no matter what.

Myths about Western Medicine

Myths about Western Conventional Allopathic Medicine

1. Everything MD’s do in practice is based on research
2. Everything MD’s do in practice is what other MD’s do in practice
3. All good research is put into practice by MD’s within a year or two
4. Insurance is good
5. Side effects are a necessary part of effective medicine
6. MD’s are the only people qualified to understand and critique medical research
7. MD’s are so smart and well educated that they can practice acupuncture or recommend herbs without further training
8. Western medicine is the best at all forms of emergency medicine