Life, in a Nutshell

“The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.”
– Hugh Macleod

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Worth a Thousand Words, Part I

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Back in the 1890’s, dentist Weston A. Price became an early subscriber to National Geographic Magazine. He ordered it initially as waiting room reading for his patients, but quickly became obsessed with it himself. In particular, he couldn’t help but notice that the indigenous people featured in its photographs all had excellent teeth. Healthy, straight, excellent teeth. Whereas, his patients, and the patients in most practices in the American Dental Association (for which he chaired the research section), emphatically did not.

So, when he retired from dentistry, Price headed out around the globe, studying native cultures everywhere he could find them: Switzerland, Scotland, Alaska, Canada, New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, Kenya, Uganda, the Congo, Sudan, Australia, New Zealand, Peru.

And, in every case, he found that those indigenous groups were remarkably free from the diseases that then (and still now) plagued Western civilization – from cavities and impacted molars, through to allergies, asthma, heart disease, and cancer.

During the time he studied them, the younger generations of many of those cultures began to abandon their traditional diets in favor of Western foods like refined flowers and sugars, and canned goods. And, inevitably, that new-diet-eating younger generation would suddenly manifest the same ailments as the rest of the Western world. Even down to crooked teeth, which apparently are the result of jaw growth and structure – something, not surprisingly, that’s hugely driven by pre-natal and childhood diet.

To this day, research comes out constantly to support the same idea: that eating food rather than ‘food products’ has a huge impact on our health. That if we contrain our diet to unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods like meat, seafood, fruits, nuts and vegetables, we’re far, far healthier.

Problem is, that stuff is expensive. And US food policy – which heavily incentivizes production of corn and wheat to the exclusion of nearly everything else – only makes it more so. So, in short, it’s not your fault that you eat badly. It’s the US Government’s.

Or is it? Turns out, eighty years ago, people spent nearly 25% of their income on food; now, we spend barely 10%. In other words, people are quite literally no longer putting their money where there mouths are.

So what, exactly, is the above graph telling you? Basically, that your high blood pressure and your fat ass are both the result of your being a cheap bastard.

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Redo

Like the proverbial frog boiled slowly to death, the parents unable to see how much their child has grown in the past year having watched that growing day-to-day, I’d similarly totally missed the fact that Cyan’s office has somehow gradually become a complete and total shit-hole.

Granted, it wasn’t great to begin with. Having outgrown our prior office, but with more hiring on the not-too-distant horizon, we needed a temporary space to hole up. Hence our current digs, which are indeed cool (in the Village, with a gated courtyard, and very high ceilings), but completely ill-suited (it was built as a loft apartment, not an office) and already a tight fit when we moved in.

Because we knew we wouldn’t be here permanently, we skimped on setting it up in the first place. And it’s gone downhill since. Our conference table chairs (West Elm) have cracked sufficiently that a giant splinter from one recently tore a hole in the ass of my suit pants. The white walls have slowly scuffed to gray. Piles of files, DVDs, trailers, and posters have sprung up like fungus. And, speaking of fungus, the entire place has started to smell a bit, in a way vaguely reminiscent of a frat house basement.

So, even though we think we’re only here for another half year, tops, I’ve now reached the point where I can’t even stand to look at this for many days more, much less weeks or months.

A painter’s swinging by tomorrow morning to give us a quote, we’re weighing options for replacement chairs and lights, and we’re considering where we might hang the Cyan movie posters we’d long been holding off on framing.

And, even after all of that, it probably still won’t be good. But, at least, it won’t be a painful embarrassment whenever anyone stops by. Which, at the moment, would be a pretty big improvement.

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Three Generations of Proud

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I think I speak for my father, who made Obama calls to Ohio undecideds in between patients, and for my grandfather, who lobbied for him in his Broward County, Florida retirement community, when I say:

Holy fucking shit! We did it!

[Quick Addendum: McCain’s concession speech reminded me everything I actually really like about the guy. I certainly don’t want him as president (especially with Sarah in tow), but I do sincerely wish him the best.]

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Slip into Something More

Here’s my best secret for pitching investors, picking up women, and speaking in front of crowds:

Look comfortable.

That’s it. Most people would say the secret is to look confident. But, really, what does confident look like? How do you fake confident?

Comfortable, on the other hand, is much clearer. And, it turns out, comfortable is much more powerful, a much better synonym for the elusive ‘cool’.

I’ve noted as much of late in the world of politics. Take, for example, the Alfred E. Smith benefit dinner a few weeks back, where McCain and Obama both presented self-deprecating standup. McCain killed, as he appeared completely serene while making fun of himself. Obama, on the other hand, read his jokes stiffly and with clear reservation, and more or less bombed by comparison.

Then, on the other hand, take the Presidential debates. Here, the balance shifted in the other direction. While McCain seemed stiff, angry and stressed, Obama seemed relaxed, in his element. Obama looked comfortable.

Or consider Saturday Night Live. On each of his passes through the show, McCain was clearly willing to play along. His running mate, however, wasn’t. Despite the hype leading to her appearance on Saturday Night Live, Palin ended up mainly serving as a prop, a wax statue of herself. She was so clearly uncomfortable that she became, arguably, the first politician in the history of SNL to seem less cool after her appearance.

Which, then, also yields the corollary to my “cool = comfortable” theorem, which I’ll henceforth refer to as Palin’s Law:

People uncomfortable with playing dumb in a comedy sketch are usually complete and total idiots in real life.

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