Lifestyle designer and time-management philosopher, Tim Ferriss, wasted a total of 3.82 seconds on Sunday evening, when he absent-mindedly glanced at a Calvin Klein billboard while on an errand.

"The Marina is ranked by my research team as THE most streamlined and efficient traffic-grid in North America. Its contra-rotating circuit patterns and direct lateral orbit synchronizations are second to none. See, what I do is rent an Electric Scooter online, pick it up at the end of my street, then ride it entirely downhill on Fillmore, turn it back in at the station at the bottom of hill, then take the bus back home. I don't have to pay for the battery recharge," said Ferriss. "But that's where everything went wrong."

The young, physically fit author says that on his way down the hill, he felt a sneeze coming on. He looked up at a 45 degree angle, pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth in order to pacify the sternutatal nerve, a technique he learned while traveling the countryside by unicycle in India. "That's when I saw the damned billboard and got totally distracted for a few seconds."

He then missed his bus back up the hill, which departs from the corner of Fillmore & Chestnut between 4 and 5 seconds after he deposits his rent check into his landlord's mail slot. He was then required to jog back up the hill without the aid of his Nike iPod Interface. On the way, he purchased a small package of unsalted peanuts, which slightly raised the density of Immunoglobin E in his blood, causing him to jog at a 6% deficiency.

Ferriss claims the delay in his return home over-humidified his apartment, causing a drop in oxygen levels in his personal rain-forest which decreased his handwriting speed by 4% over several days. He also cited an inability to focus on his book-on-tape Vietnamese language studies, missed his Kenpo class, and forgot to take his hourly hypodermic B12 supplement several times. He spent the rest of the evening depressed, shopping on Craigslist for exercise equipment, then fell asleep on the futon.

An elaborate chapter on the holistic health benefits of ignoring roadside billboards is featured in Ferriss' new book, "The Twelve-Minute Errand," which teaches entrepreneurs to speed-read street signs in over 20 languages, allowing anyone to filter out unnecessary information while engaged in time-critical daily missions.

"Even the most efficient time-management guru can make a mistake, I guess," said Ferriss, in a press release written by his team of Personal Assistants, who were themselves on vacation in Qatar while subcontracting their work to a firm in Utah. "This has taken me weeks to recover from. Don't make the same mistake I did."

As restitution, Pre-Orders of Ferriss' "Philosophy of Impatience" eBook are being offered at a 17.4% discount off the $1997 price if they purchased their tickets through Twitter at 7:46pm PST on March 29, which were the exact moments when Tim was too distracted to process orders completely efficiently via Skype on his iPhone.

Readers of Tim's personal blog were disappointed.

"Your advice has taught me how to drink fourteen gallons of Starbucks Coffee in only one afternoon without getting sick, how to use NLP to cut in line at the restroom, and techniques for social engineering at the post office. Through one of your blog posts I even learned how to craft a crude Indonesian bow & arrow out of ordinary office supplies. I can't believe I even wasted 32.48 seconds posting this comment."

The above article was preemptively rejected by The Onion. For more stories from Beneath The Imaginary City, visit www.drzoltan.com.

Way back in 2007, Doktor Zoltan was enslaved by a creature known as Justin St. Vincent from a small island called New Zealand. He was forced to write an essay for a website called Xtreme Music. One Earth Year later, the results were published on the Internet: a wasteful, imaginary gathering place for young people. Categorized under "World," rather than its correct demonomination, "Underworld," the essay (along with incorrectly-scaled and sharpened bitmap images in an attempt to discredit Doktor Zoltan) is available as a PDF. The entire essay is also displayed below, according to the strict standard of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange:

For the context of this essay on music and spirituality, Dr. Zoltan will declare that there are two categories of humans: those who believe that this life on planet Earth is “enough” and those who do not. Those in the former group are soldiers, employees, and ants, marching in repeated and predictable patterns, attaining goals of mundane survival and amusement until the day they die. Those in the latter group are of the utmost value to the future because they pursue extra-terrestrial activities, such as the arts and sciences. They make attempts to reach beyond the boundaries of their world, out of a sense of wonder and curiosity. What normal life offers is just not enough for them! They require mystery, and mysticism is the science of the mysterious. It is an open-minded inquiry into the chaos of the unknown, filling in the blanks with the gift of imagination. Demons, aliens, and vampires are the human mind’s own fear of the unknown; a process of putting a face on unexplainable phenomenon. The good news: many strange things happen on Earth, and they will only get stranger as humans become more complex beings. Music and spirituality are personal pursuits within the realm of the mysterious, but the Do-It-Yourself Ethic has been lost and perverted into the form of standardized industries. The perversion of spirituality is the Church. The perversion of music is the Rock concert. In both cases, the participants are divided into 1). An all-powerful leader, and 2). The followers. Personal power is handed over and unequally distributed into a top-down hierarchy. The allpowerful leader is showered in praise, glory, and gifts. The followers huddle together and imitate each other’s every move, reacting to the whims of the leader. Group think. Safety in numbers. Mass hypnosis. Vigilance and responsibility are surrendered. What was once a magical process of discovery and exploration for all is now a system of rules. Those who are too unimaginative to study their inner world are offered a simple step-by-step methodology. A formula. Both have become systems of uniform, massmarketed dogma, packaged for easy consumption. Reduced to copy and paste costumes, symbols, and decorations. The encyclopedia of deities and chord changes that someone else invented. But the essence of music and spirituality is a relationship with the mysterious. Those who embrace it will change the world.

FInd out more about how you can Live Correctly at www.drzoltan.com.

Will Maier stars in this new music video by lead singer of Sister Hazel, Ken Block.

Visit http://www.willmaier.net for more info on this upcoming child star.

If you are a musician, comedian, actor, or have some other type of creative career, you are probably guilty of the following:

Dark Dragon VOTE FOR OUR NEW SINGLE NEW EP COMING SOON T-SHIRTS ARE NOW IN OUR STORE $10 PAYPAL would like to be your friend!

Or perhaps the history of your Twitter account looks like this:

• Dark Dragon LIVE TONITE @ BEAR CLAW, 523 HAIGHT STRT, SANTA MONICA $4 COVER, 9PM
• Dark Dragon Watch our new BEHIND THE SCENES music video on YOUTUBE! http://../q8b5q0
• Dark Dragon check out NEW mp3 MIXES on our MYSPACE http://myspace.com/darkdragonbandrockslamusic
• Dark Dragon LIVE TONIGHT @ OPEN MIKE -- WEAR OUR SHIRT AND GET $2 OFF $10 COVER OR $1 OFF BEER IF YOU BUY THREE OR MORE. http://../v87btek
• Dark Dragon ADD OUR OTHER TWITTER feed for SIDE PROJECTS and special offers and WIN A FREE CD http://www.twitter.com/darkdragonlarocksbandmusicsideprojects

But for some reason, other than your friends, no one responds or shows up. You have probably noticed this phenomenon and attempted to counteract it. Your band figured, "Not enough people are reading our data, so we have to make it more visible. We must not be posting it in enough places." So you posted it in more places. You signed up for a couple of extra Facebook accounts, some Livejournals, 2-3 Flickr accounts, and a YouTube. Copy and paste, copy and paste. You went on Myspace and posted it all over everyone's Comments along with a very large, obnoxious flyer. You made a YouTube video begging people to come to your show. You made Bulletins, Tweets, Blog Entries, Status Updates, and even thought about going to Kinkos and printing up old-fashioned paper flyers, then taking a picture of your flyer and putting it on Flickr. But still, no one notices you.

The problem with this is that unless you already have loyal followers, no one is going to care or read this useless data. This is the problem with "Report Communication."

Report Communication is a communication style based on broadcasting information without regard for who wants to hear it. Most commercials on radio and TV are Report Marketing. Seth Godin also calls this "Interruption Marketing." You're watching your favorite TV show, and all of the sudden, you are interrupted. As a result, you tune it all out. Often changing the channel or lowering the volume. It's nothing but obnoxious noise.

Do you really want your band to be lumped together in all of that cultural static?

Of course not. So that's why you need to do more Rapport Communication.

Rapport Communication is all about building a relationship with your listener, whether it be one person sitting at the dinner table with you or a live audience. It is about treating them as humans, rather than consumers who exist only to make you rich and famous. Do not dominate the conversation, interrupting them to constantly say, "BUY A SHIRT." You would not do that in a regular conversation with someone.

Artistic types claim to hate the business side and want to just focus on being creative. So why is it that 99% of the artists on the internet spend their time spamming everyone with meta-data? It is a waste of time.

Here is what you need to do:

1.) Stop.

2.) Learn how to tell a unique, personal story with your art. Focus on doing something interesting and unusual -- something with a different perspective. Something creative that permeates every aspect of what you do, whether it be video, audio, or text. Make your art the center of your message. When you Tweet, upload a photo, write a blog, make it stand on its own as a creative work -- not just as a cheap ad for your next show. Build a mythology and community around your ideas. Connect them all together. Document them. Give people something to explore.

If your ideas are powerful enough, you will attract followers. But first, you need to focus your energy on developing and deploying your strongest ideas -- ideas worth sharing. Seduce people into your world. Be open and inviting, and keep the conversation going in both directions. In other words: build Rapport.

If you do not, your communication will be as effective as a homeless person on a street corner. The louder you scream, the more you are ignored.

Originally posted on http://www.drzoltan.com.

From the appendix of: IEEE Subcommittee on Subjective Measurements IEEE Recommended Practices for Speech Quality Measurements. IEEE Transactions on Audio and Electroacoustics. vol 17, 227-46, 1969, List 13:

Type out three lists of orders.
The harder he tried the less he got done.
The boss ran the show with a watchful eye.
The cup cracked and spilled its contents.
Paste can cleanse the most dirty brass.
The slang word for raw whiskey is booze.
It caught its hind paw in a rusty trap.
The wharf could be seen at the farther shore.
Feel the heat of the weak dying flame.
The tiny girl took off her hat.

72 Complete Lists of Harvard Sentences can be found at www.columbia.edu. Very useful!

The above content contained therein and herein is made public by Dr. Zoltan and must be read with scrutiny by the intended recipient in perpetuity throughout the universe. This blog entry is not meta-philosophical advice or an investment recommendation and should not be construed as such.

>> 3 YEARS FULL OF DR. ZOLTAN!

Dr. Zoltan, the trans-dimensional being of pure marketing light-force, has now inhabited the feeble and cowardly consciousness of the host musician called Sir Millard Mulch for three full years! Help Dr. Zoltan celebrate the past three years of success by immediately enjoying his new website, which is now a glossy Web 3.0 magazine!

Look at it: http://www.drzoltan.com

Now featuring advanced features such as:

• Transparent PNGs
• Rejection of Non-Compliant Browsers
• Valid XHTML and CSS! (Except for those pesky YouTube embeds...)

The URL called http://www.drzoltan.com/blog is no longer correct! Please update your feeds!

See Marcus Shostanovich as he attempts to conduct an orchestra while being subjected to disturbing figures from his past.

This post originally appeared on www.drzoltan.com

It is the end of the month. In the past 31 days, the following keyphrases were typed into Google (or some other search engine), and led visitors to www.drzoltan.com:

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[ Dr. Zoltan has launched his new website. Gnomes successful. Visit http://www.drzoltan.com to find out more. ]

For those who are proudly displaying their War On Fun Certificates and Banners on their site, please visit the following link for the updated code:

http://www.drzoltan.com/campaigns/the-war-on-fun/

-Dr. Zoltan!