yonmei

09:34 am: Okay, stuff...
My sister rang me. She is on her way to a Landmark Forum Saturday and wanted to check in about Christmas/December.

We settled on the weekend of the 12th, which is best for me, best for nephew, and fine for her, and my parents are likely to be good for it (they had hoped for the 19th, but recognised this was not that likely because you're into Christmas travel time then).

We talked about the US elections and I explained about the awfulness of Proposition 8. I do not think she would have quite understood had I just been wonky about it, but I clarified it for her by pointing out that I knew people who had got married in California in the last six months, and she made sympathetic noises.

Then she invited me to Landmark Forum once again, and I said that I had looked stuff about it up on the Internet and did not believe it was my kind of thing. She was impressed that I had, and said no, it wasn't, but it would still be good for me. I swear, the next time she says this I want to say "Yes, I know that's what you are supposed to tell me because I looked it up." Still, she has not yet ended a phone call to me with "I love you" which is a mandated Landmark Forum thing... so not quite lost to decency or common sense, yes?"

Anyway. I must sign up to Yuletide this weekend. (I started this week and realised that I didn't have a chance of thinking sensibly about it.)

Also, I am nanoing, and have written 11192 words, which is 1308 words less than my target but I'm still feeling pretty good about it.

However. This morning, I am determined to go to the gym, and to a Close Guantanamo Bay demo at 1pm which is being organised by kids from my old school. Yay.

Tags: bloody bloody bloody, family stuff, landmark forum, yuletide

04:05 pm: This explains why I was so depressed yesterday.
Well, that and Landmark Forum.

Tags: bloody bloody bloody, landmark forum

01:29 pm: How To Make Lots Of Money
1. Invent a name that sounds authoritative but friendly. est. Landmark. HAND.
2. Write up something that sounds convincing about how HAND will help you achieve your goals, know yourself better, become happier, be healthier, and eat more chocolate. Maybe not the latter.
3. Publicise it widely. Set dates, book large venues.
5. Charge 500 people £120 each for attending your one-day event, including lunch.
6. Do not provide tea or coffee or wine because caffeine and alcohol are bad. Fresh salad, bread, and sliced salmon works as a Healthy (yet cheap) lunch for the masses at the self-help event I went to. (Paid for by work.) You should expect to clear at least 80% profit after the costs of the venue and the delegate packs.
7. Repeat until you are very rich.
8. Retire, selling your concept on to someone else.

Tags: landmark forum

11:05 pm: Landmark Forum linky roundup
My sister went to a Landmark Forum weekend recently, and talked my mum into going to a free "introductory evening" tomorrow night: outline described here in the Observer and here in the Independent by journalists who went and here by one blogger.

Thinking About the Landmark Forum?

Another couple of posts by a more enthusiastic blogger about the weekend and the Advanced course.

A link page at the ApologeticsIndex website: What is Landmark Education? (they show a great awareness that Landmark loves to sue, though it has lost at least one case.)

And a final comment:

More than anything, though, I have a vague sense of what-might-have-been about the workings of the company. In some ways, it's a good place to do personal growth, especially for the hard-headed who need a boot camp to tear them down and build them back up. I have recommended The Forum in the past to a few specific people who I thought could benefit from going through the courses. And it certainly isn't the kind of harmful David Koresh nightmare that you think of when you hear the word "cult." But they are unnecessarily harsh on nice people, and I don't like that. And worse than that, they commit a sin so unforgivable that for that reason alone I can't recommend them.

They take themselves too seriously.

Tags: family stuff, landmark forum