By now everyone has seen the Direct TV commercials featuring Rob Lowe with a humorous, debased version of himself. The first ones to air featured “super-creepy Rob Lowe”— a leather-clad, unkempt derelict who has cable. While the commercials are indeed hilarious, they frightfully reveal the very slim distance of looking put-together and handsome and looking like the dregs of society. Let’s be honest, Rob Lowe is about as handsome as they get. He is a better version of Ken the Barbie Doll. But with a little makeup and wardrobe change, he looks like the kind of guy who goes to the rec center with binoculars to “watch folks swim.”

Is it not scary how close we all are to being a creepy version of ourselves? It really wouldn’t take very much for me. For starters, I’m not immune to bad clothes. I have bad pants, shirts and jackets as part of my wardrobe right now. They don’t surface often, but if we get slack on the wash around here they could easily find their way on to my person. Suddenly I’m out in my front yard with worn-out sweat pants, a crumply V-neck and a hat with a regrettable label. In no time the neighbors are shooing their cats in and closing their blinds while my property value plummets.

But even if my wardrobe remained tight, my facial hair alone could propel me to instant creepy status. If I gave Movember a go you would understand this. I don’t grow a formidable, bushy mustache but more of a sad whisker village whose few residents live way too far apart from one another. Simply living in a society replete with razors drastically reduces creeper prevalence. We can all be grateful this Thanksgiving for the blade that finds my upper lip region.

Truly though, we can be completely polished with dapper attire and impeccable grooming but if our voice and tone are whacky, people will step away. All it takes is a bad cold. Either your throat gets all deep and raspy and you sound like you’re due for another sneaky smoke break, or you lose your voice and speak in little whispers like everything you’re saying is some grand secret. Either way, you’ll be viewed unfavorably and likely suspected of creeperdom.

So the next time you laugh at the Rob Lowe Direct TV commercials, take heed to keep your stuff tight because you’re not as far as you think from becoming your own doppelcreeper.

I’m pretty sure no one wants to get rich quickly anymore.

To “get rich quick” used to be a personal finance buzz phrase producing over-exuberance that left us thinking if we could push a few magical buttons, we’d become financial gods in about five minutes. Truly, getting rich is pretty hard, so the thought that we could accomplish it while napping and sipping beach drinks was pretty appealing. So naturally, gurus and hucksters alike swarmed in to promote to the masses their ideal of how in a few finger snaps we could get wads and wads of cheddar. And by golly we ate it up.

Until…none of us got rich quickly. We didn’t even get rich slowly. We didn’t even get rich. If you take into account the dumb-ass books and seminars we attended, we actually got poorer! What we really learned was how to waste time and get poor.

So we got skeptical. The dreamy notion of getting rich quickly was supplanted with the not-as-fun yet realistic notion that we were more likely to get duped quickly. The formerly appealing term “get rich quickly” was subsequently derided and associated with schemes and trickery. Yet, there was still something to that “get rich” part.

We still wanted to get rich, but figured it actually required doing at least one productive human activity, and probably many. Once again, the gurus resurfaced with new, more realistic ways of getting rich. There’s the popular Get Rich Slowly blog, appealing to a steady, reasonable approach to personal finance and offers no help to NBA lottery picks and mobsters. Jim Cramer’s new book”Get Rich Carefully” has a title insinuating there are pitfalls to getting rich, not the least of which is becoming a psycho market junky like Cramer. These resources, among others, appear to be popping up everywhere, and I can only imagine what “get rich” idea will be en vogue next.

Get Rich, Haphazardly– This one is for those who’d like to craft their personal finance strategy around trying to win the lottery. Budgets are burdensome and buying tickets when we get our pack of smokes is so much easier. Trips to the bank are wasteful while trips to the gas station are requisite habits for fostering financial independence.

Get Rich, Hilariously– Offers ideas to become great at something obscure like the World’s Greatest Hot Dog Eater or NFL punter.

Get Rich, Invisibly– Gives tips on how to maintain a low profile publicly while swimming laps in a Scrooge McDuck coin pool privately.

Get Rich, Surprisingly– Teaches you odd ways to amass a fortune such as becoming a yard sale Craig’s List king, or honing uncanny abilities with a metal detector.

Get Rich, Apparently–  Tells you nothing about how to build wealth but everything about how to look wealthy. Take a wild ride on the consumer debt express. Get a new Mercedez for your teen and buy a craft beer at a hockey game you crazy SOB.

What “Get Rich” book are you waiting for?