The real Dr. Dick has one hand. Well—not exactly. He has two hands. But one of his arms is lame. Not lame like a bad joke. Literally lame. The arm just hangs there and the second hand does nothing. Doesn’t even tell time!

On the other hand—I mean on second thought—how can you not love a guy who stays with Dr. Dick? Imagine the movie poster. “Jim Carrey IS Dr. Dick!” Pet Detective turned pediatrician. There he is. Dangling Dr. Dick, constantly flipping his one bad arm up out of the way, with his one good hand.

There’s an argument to be made that if your doctor can’t solve his own arm, he might not be the doctor for you. But Dr. Dick is the only doctor in our little New England town of 3,500 people. Everybody goes to Dr. Dick.

In those days you could be a one-handed doctor, because you didn’t need to spend 20 hours a week advocating for your patients with insurance companies from a laptop that is ironically attached to an arm that works.

There have been a lot of doctors since Dr. Dick. The same is true for your family. Broken bone doctors. Spinal fusion doctors. Pancreatic cancer doctors. Alzheimer’s doctors. Heart attack doctors. Pregnancy doctors. Delivery doctors. Primary care doctors you ignore when they ask, “What about this gut?”

Think about the doctors in your life and the lives of the people you care about and you will realize that doctors get paid to receive you as you are without judgment. They could have gone to Wall Street or Big Tech.

They chose empathy.

I am absolutely not pro-The System.

But I am fiercely pro-doctor.

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For over fifty years, Life Points co-founder, E. Pratt “Mark” Whitney, has engineered systems to disrupt legacy monopolies, duopolies and cartels. His one-of-a-kind career spans dot-com breakthroughs, 100+ consecutive quarters of legal-tech profitability, award-winning performance art, real estate fintech architecture, 700 days in five federal prisons, one conjugal visit, and that’s from the guy in the next cell.

With Whitney fully recovered from his ironic 2022 flatlining experience on National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day, ‘Shiny & Shady’ are back to bottom lining, serving as mass customized, business managers for your mouth. Why? Because as Shady regularly reminds us, “That’s not Jack in the box, it’s you in the box!

Whitney has 45 years of experience:

• Restructuring Professional Service Industries
• Bootstrapping Clean Sheet Enterprises
• Establishing and Implementing Mass Customized Relationship Management & Direct Marketing Models

Prison Break

Whitney is an expert systems builder whose wares have been peddled, adopted and acquired by a Fortune 500 company. In 1991, as a newly broke and bankrupt entrepreneur in his 20s, Whitney was unconstitutionally banished to Federal prison for giving banks the tax returns he should’ve filed with IRS.

Fifteen months later, writing as a high school graduate with a prison typewriter, Whitney persuaded future Justice of the Supreme Court, Stephen G. Breyer, to declare his term of imprisonment so unconstitutional, that Breyer faxed an order to the warden, ordering Whitney’s immediate release.

As Co-Executive Producer of Shiny & Shady, The Late Mark Whitney, who recently died naked in his own shit on a trauma table, today treats his own human biology with the same cold, analytical, asset-stripping forensic strategy he used to disrupt the multi-billion dollar legal publishing duopoly, and otherwise.

The Recruiting Services Industry

In 1996, two years before Google, and as a co-founding member of AIRS®, Whitney co-created his first dot com, revolutionizing the corporate recruiting industry. For the next three years, he toured America’s boardrooms and ballrooms, running his mouth for nine hours straight, regularly bringing in upwards of $50,000 in a single day.

Thought leaders from Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Disney and most of the Fortune 500 embraced Whitney’s system for using the Internet to gather and leverage competitive intelligence on behalf of their human capital initiatives. AIRS® was acquired by ADP® and is still in business.

The Legal Services Industry

In 1999, Whitney launched THELAWNET Corporation, which he has since led to 100+ consecutive profitable quarters. For decades, attorneys, law firms, judges, courts, governmental instrumentalities and indigenous nations have trusted TLN to provide them with comprehensive access to the law via a single intuitive interface.

Systems Architecture Demo

Watch below as master systems architect, E. Pratt “Mark” Whitney, demonstrates the algorithmic data-retrieval engine built to index millions of federal and state judicial opinions. Whitney uses the identical pattern recognition schema in service of Shiny & Shady’s Piehole Protocol.

Procedural Game Theory + Elite Litigation Strategy = THELAWNET

Before database syndication democratized legal research via TLN’s signature software, Equalizer 7, Whitney operated as an unassuming, high-stakes operative in various federal cases and controversies, often over the objection of federal authorities. He regularly exploited procedural blind spots to undermine premium brand sophists and elite legal cartels.

United States v. Roger Lussier & Lyndonville Savings Bank v. Lussier

When powerhouse Boston firm Hale & Dorr (the antagonist immortalized in A Civil Action) targeted a popular, old-school, small town, convicted bank president in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom, with an $8.7 million federal lawsuit, they relied on boilerplate hubris. The banker relied on Mark Whitney.

“If George Bailey and Boss Hogg had a lovechild, it would be Roger Lussier. He was the most popular and most reported on federal criminal defendant in New England. Shortly after Roger self-surrendered to Allenwood to serve his 46 month term of imprisonment, Caledonia County residents rallied, presenting the warden with a 1,200 signature petition demanding his immediate release,” Whitney recalled. “I loved the guy and would do anything to help him.”

In their statement of jurisdiction, Hale & Dorr falsely claimed their state-chartered bank client was a federally chartered bank client, thereby unlocking the door of the federal court, while sidestepping potential humiliation at the hands of a Lussier-loving Caledonia County jury. The firm did this knowing that their Harvard Law sleight-of-hand would likely go undetected, thereby securing a quick win under federal supplemental jurisdiction theory.

Whitney spotted the lie instantly. But instead of exposing it immediately—which would have handed Hale & Dorr a second bite at the apple in state court—Whitney gamed out a multi-layered procedural scheme. He directed civil defense counsel and Lussier loyalist, Andy Field, to stand mute on the jurisdictional defect, while letting the federal case drag out for years under a Rope-A-Dope Guise of protecting Lussier’s rights, until such time as the Vermont state statute of limitations had fully run.

Because federal subject-matter jurisdiction can never be waived and can be challenged at any time—even after final judgment—the opposition had zero exit strategies left. Whitney pre-sandbagged them years ago, forcing Hale & Dorr to humiliate itself on appeal.¹

The resulting landmark Second Circuit decision² was authored by future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who famously tore Hale & Dorr’s Sr. Litigation Partner & Harvard Law Alum, Richard A. Johnston, a new one at oral argument. In the run-up to her confirmation as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Sotomayor submitted the foregoing saga of litigation to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as one of the most significant appellate matters of her exemplary judicial career.³

Around the same time, Whitney wrote a letter to F. Lee Bailey over the signature of his somewhat client, Lussier, citing the precise judicial precedent that would result in a Second Circuit appellate win in Lussier’s criminal case. Bailey demurred, and eventually Bailey’s malpractice provider was forced to make Lussier whole with a check in the amount of $426,000.⁴

Whitney’s devastatingly effective consulting business so rattled U.S. Probation that it deployed the U.S. Marshals to arrest him, with an eye toward returning him to prison on a minor supervised release violation for having “contact” with felons. Whitney counter-sued, claiming that (i) while he enjoyed regular, frequent contact with felons and their counsel, there was zero evidence of a criminal association, and (ii) it was in fact Probation officials who were violating a core condition of his release that required him to work full-time and support his young family.⁵

The result? Former legendary Vermont criminal defense attorney, turned Federal Judge, William K Sessions, II, issued an oral injunction from the bench securing Whitney’s operations, stating on the record:

“You will leave Mr. Whitney alone. He is providing a much-needed service.”

The foregoing historic legal victories didn’t just defeat some of the most iconic boldfaced names in American jurisprudence—they assisted in providing much of the startup capital required to build THELAWNET.

“Lussier was four years of my life. I think Roger trusted me to manage the dozens of lawsuits that always follow the criminal conviction of a wealthy person, because I was the rogue capitalist with all the learning,” Whitney recalls. “Roger only made it to the eighth grade, whereas I was fully armed with a high school diploma.”

Speaking, Writing, & Narrative Architecture

“Mark—you start out with a premise... a big idea, and then you start to fill it in, as opposed to what most people do, which is just let experience slap them across the face enough times until they finally get it.” ~Robert McKee (portrayed by Brian Cox in ‘Adaptation’ (below)

In Issue 05 of Robert McKee’s STORY Magazine, the world’s premier narrative authority dedicated an exclusive run to the three creators he recognizes as role models when it comes to live storytelling. Positioned alongside household names, Drew Carey and Russell Brand, Mark Whitney was profiled for his mastery of the spoken word.

Whitney’s sense of humor has been central to his success as an entrepreneur who communicates at the highest level. His creative writing, speaking, production and development skills have been showcased on Robert McKee’s Storylogue alongside Steven Pressfield (The Legend Of Bagger Vance), Ed Saxon (producer, Silence of The Lambs), Zak Penn (writer, X-Men), Paul Haggis (writer, Best Picture Oscar winners, Crash and Million Dollar Baby) and Sarah Treem, (Writers Guild Award Winner, House Of Cards).

From 2007-2013 Whitney toured his autobiographical political dramedy, Fool For A Client, on the North American Independent Theatre Circuit, where he won Best Solo Awards at performing arts festivals in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, Boulder, and Washington, D.C.

The Art of the Push, the Pivot, and the Coffee Can Vault

Long before taking on the multi-billion dollar Westlaw and Lexis duopoly (aka Wexis),⁶ an 18-year-old Mark Whitney cut his teeth peddling vacuum cleaners door-to-door along the back roads and Green Mountains of Vermont.

“I joined the University of Electrolux, where I majored in getting the f**king money.”

Watch the short clip below as Whitney recaps the psychological theater of entering a stranger’s living room, intentionally soliciting, then systematically finessing a series of “No’s,” until eventually he uncovers Mrs. Jones’ hidden cash reserve.

Mark Audits, Analyzes, Then Rewrites Steve Jobs’ Iconic Stanford Commencement Speech

In 2015, Whitney crafted and delivered a 75 minute corporate keynote for Toastmasters International’s Annual Convention called: “Bring Your Show: The Art & Business Of Humorous Speaking”. Lark Doley, the then-President of Toastmasters International was in the front row. A popular highlight among the world’s 1M+ Toastmasters, is Whitney’s 3-1/2 minute take on Steve Jobs’ speech to Stanford grads.

“If there is one video I could recommend to you, to get the real essence of public speaking, Bring Your Show would be it!” ~Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, 2014 World Champion of Public Speaking

What a fool I was! And I’m a closer! A methodical, tactical, predatory closer who never uses exclamation marks!

I’ve closed them all. Name a Fortune 500 company, I’ve probably closed it. Name a Tech 100 company, I’ve probably closed it. Apple? Google? Disney? Oracle? Closed ’em. Tens of thousands of law firms and government agencies? Indigenous nations? Closed. Federal judges? Closed. Ask me about that one time when I had a seven-figure IRS problem? Closed ’em for two cents on the dollar.

If you’re gonna run your mouth about being a master closer as the setup to publicly admitting to being a know-nothing, an ignoramus, a mindless mooch blissfully gliding through life on autopilot, you better have game tape.

This clip right here—I’m talking about the hard-sell with soft-touch tactics I successfully deployed 50 years ago as a teenage door-to-door vacuum peddler.

When Mr. Jones looks at Mrs. Jones, he sees a wife. When I look at Mrs. Jones, I see a business. I see an asset manager. I see an entity that has something I want. The trick is to smack Mrs. Jones right in the dopamine, because none of what is about to happen is rational. It’s emotional.

I manage to one question and one question only.

“Will she buy it?”

To get the answer I want, all Mrs. Jones has to do is make one more bad business decision.

She already has the perfectly fine machine my manager sold her five years ago. Mrs. Jones doesn’t know for sure, but she correctly suspects the only difference between my machine and her machine is the color.

Her old machine is hyperlink blue. Her soon-to-be new machine is shimmering gold with shiny accents of chrome.

“Look—you can see yourself, Mrs. Jones!”

I hand her the canister.

“Now that you’re holding it, Mrs. Jones, would you agree, it actually feels lighter, doesn’t it?”

“Hmmm—I think you might be right about that.”

Everything feels dope on dopamine.

Mrs. Jones never saw me coming. But her bad business decision did not trigger a liquidation event. Life went on—until the day I morphed into the hapless Mrs. Jones.

One minute I’m choking down a freebie on National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day 2022. Next, I’m naked on a gurney, flatlining in the trauma center, shitting myself for an audience. They bring my wife back to say goodbye. So much equipment. A dozen medical professionals locked in on her husband of 45 years. Julie kisses me gently on the cheek, whispering, “This is going to be like a $10,000 copay.”

I die on the trauma table. I’m gone. Taken out by chicken shrapnel.

Some quick napkin math indicates that I’ve spent nearly five full years of my life on the road eating 4,000-calorie lunches at Legal Sea Foods.

Of course a widowmaker took me out!

When the Dopamine Cartel looks at you, it sees a legacy business. It sees an asset manager. It sees somebody who has something it wants. It sees the linchpin to life itself.

Your piehole.

When it targets your child, it sees a startup. It sees generational, dopa-fueled recurring revenue that is the stuff of every objectively bad business decision.

I wake up in the ICU with a couple of stents, learn that I died on the trauma table, and promptly declare myself an addict. I ask myself, “Self—what is Big Food’s one-question system?”

“Will they eat it?”

That’s the whole game right there.

Will you eat it?

Once it hits me that Wall Street looks at my piehole and sees a cash register, I issue an executive decree: “From now on, I do the closing!”

In the 70s I was closing Mrs. Jones. On paper, Big Food is a more formidable foe. But the rules are the same and games aren’t played on paper. They’re played on the field.

All I need to do is copy the people who produce our ubiquitous, gastro-culture of death. To secure my body — the entity in which I hold 100% equity — I need to manage to one question and one question only.

“Is this good for me?”

This one question flips the script, taking me from mindless to mindful. This one question takes me from no filter to the only filter that matters. I could care less about wellness for the sake of it. I need to write jokes, funny sketches, and produce world-class corporate and political satire.

I hate to see needless suffering, especially when I am the one suffering needlessly!

On November 9th, I will have been on my Is It Good For Me system for four years. When I walked out of the ICU on November 10, 2022, I was issued five prescriptions my surgeon said I would be on for the rest of my life.

I’ve since been deprescribed.

On June 1st, when Shiny & I decided to build this site, we committed to submitting our intake to public audit.

My July 2026 Sales Report reveals a closing percentage of 92%. In other words, the people who killed me breached my territory 11 times, for a total of 7.73% of my intake decisions. Their multi-billion-dollar business plan choked.

Final Score? Life Points: 394 | Death Points: 33.

If Shiny & Shady’s one-question system catches on—and it will—the people responsible for all the addictive crap we buy from the middle aisles of the grocery store will start ginning up stories in The Atlantic that prey on the pathologies of the Orthorexia Community.

I am not out to delay death. I am prolonging my best work. Parents are honored, sons are grown, synapses are firing, and laughter is the best medicine.

As for you, my gentle reader, Halloween candy is already in stores and football starts Thursday with the Hall of Fame Game. Between NCAA D1 and the NFL, we’re talking nearly 2,000 game-time excuses to open your cash register to pure unadulterated ASSS (Alcohol, Salt, Sugar, and bad Satfat).

I’m a simple man. Execute a culture of death that bankrupts my business and you don’t get my money. Big Food can kiss my ASSS if it can even find the formerly extra-large-turned-medium version.

So what’s my one question for you?

“Do you have your game face on?”

I hope so. Because that’s not Jack in the Box. It’s you in the box!

Keep banging!™

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Shall we look inside and see what we have today? I think we should.

A typical lunch has three components:

• Your typical sugary dessert.

• Your typical salty snack.

• Your typical sandwich—typically tuna fish, cheese, or bologna.

Let’s see what we have today. Oreos! Delicious. This is your typical sugary snack. We still have Oreos today. In the 60s, Oreos had a jingle. It goes like this:

♫Oh, the kid’ll eat the middle of the Oreo first, and save the chocolate cookie outside for last!♫

True story. You can actually unscrew the cookie, eat the lard, and then you’re good for the rest of the day. Fantastic!

Let’s see what else we have. Oh, look! Your typical salty snack: Lay’s Potato Chips. Now, Lay’s doesn’t have a jingle. Lay’s has a slogan.

“Betcha can’t eat just one!”

Y’all remember the movie The Wizard of Oz, right? The original one from 1939. Has a character actor who plays the Cowardly Lion. His name is Bert Lahr. Well, 30 years later, in 1969, the people down at Lay’s hire Bert Lahr to do a commercial. And he gets on there and he goes: “I betcha can’t eat just one!”

And the announcer goes, “Lay’s potato chips. You can eat a million of ‘em, but no one can eat just one!” The reason they hire the Cowardly Lion, is because they need a really good actor to play the part of Satan!

He’s dressed as Satan! Got a pitchfork and everything! And he’s like, “I betcha can’t eat just one!”

See, they knew—food scientists back in 1967—they knew we were powerless.

What’s today’s sandwich? Let’s find out. Is it tuna? Cheese? Bologna?

It’s bologna!

Bologna doesn’t have a jingle. Bologna doesn’t have a slogan. Bologna has an entire damn song and it goes like this. They get the cutest little kid you can find—the cutest little bastard they could possibly find—and they sit him on a dock in the middle of summer, and he’s got his red overalls, and he’s got his bologna sandwich, and he’s sitting there and he goes:

That’s genius, isn’t it? Genius! How can you say no to that, right?

[Applause]

Earlier this week, I sit down and I ask the AI: “Is bologna good for me?”
“No.”
I’m thinking that can’t be. Let me try this again.
“Is bologna really that bad?”
“Yes. It really is.”

In fact, according to the screen, the World Health Organization designates bologna as a Class 1 carcinogen.

Asbestos. Arsenic. And bologna.

“I should probably never eat bologna. Agree or disagree?”
“Disagree. Bologna should be consumed sparingly.”
“What is an example of consuming bologna sparingly?”
“Sparingly. Every now and then.”
“Since bologna and arsenic are both designated Class 1 carcinogens, should I also consume arsenic sparingly?”

AI defaults to the regular search results! The robot doesn’t want to talk about it! I’m thinking they need Oscar Mayer for advertising.

“Is my mother trying to kill me?”

November 9th, 2022, I drop dead from a heart attack. The fatality rate of the heart attack that I had is 85%. And that assumes you have it in the hospital, which is where I had it.

If I had stayed dead, my obituary would say: “heart attack,” “cardiovascular disease,” “natural causes.” Nowhere would it say “Oreos” or “Lays Potato Chips.”

Nowhere does it say, “This is the moron who goes to Denny’s and orders the turkey dinner... for breakfast, and then goes back to his studio to a jar of M&Ms and a jar of Twizzlers.”

It doesn’t say that. It says: “Natural causes.” “Cardiovascular disease.”

Now, if I knowingly throw myself in front of a cement truck, is that Freightliner disease? Kenworth disease? Peterbilt disease? Yeah, I don’t think so!

My obituary would just say heart attack. know this for a fact, because Ronnie, Gavin, and Tim also died in 2022, and all of their obituaries say heart attack. The only difference between them and me is that they live in the sticks. If you live in the sticks and you have a widowmaker, you’re done.

That is what their obituaries say.

Here’s my challenge for you, because the test for substance abuse is, “Can you stop? Can you stop?”

I challenge you, starting today at 1:00, for one month: no cake, no pie, no snacks from bags that crinkle, no candy, no alcohol, no sugary drinks for one month.

I know what you’re thinking: “But Mark, it’s the holidays!” Exactly my point! It’s December! This is the month where Christians all over the world celebrate the birth of Jesus. So what better time to ensure that Satan doesn’t have his way with you?

[Applause]

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Shiny & Shady break down how managing to a rigid System 2 boundary reclaims your frontal cortex and keeps you off the trauma table so that you’re alive for the earthly experiences that actually matter.

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One minute I’m choking down a freebie on National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day 2022. Next I’m naked on a gurney, flatlining in the trauma center, shitting myself for an audience. They bring my wife back to say goodbye. So much equipment. A dozen medical professionals locked in on her husband of 45 years. Julie kisses me gently on the cheek, whispering, “This is going to be like a $10,000 copay.”

Next morning I wake up in intensive care with two stents. Main artery to my heart? 100% blockage. For the record, I didn’t “beat” the widowmaker. I was lucky to be a ten minute ambulance ride away from the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute.

How fragile do you have to be to be struck dead by chicken shrapnel?

In my first life I was an amateur. I ran my mouth like a dumpster. My LDL was LOL. Zero intention. In my second life I run my mouth like a business.

The modern grocery store is a multi-billion-dollar psychological war zone. You are a vulnerable plate spinner, juggling a career, a mortgage, a family, and a running list of daily obligations.

The generic health critic attacks the generic obvious targets. Oreos, Doritos, and fast food are the low hanging fruit of the Nutrition Shamers. But, no amount of judgment and moral shaming will save you when you are hopelessly addicted to the mind-numbing vagaries of salt, sugar and saturated fat.

The snack aisle isn’t going anywhere. The wine and beer aisles aren’t going anywhere. The products displayed there are meticulously engineered. The represented brands are globally famous because when the multi-billion-dollar food and drink conglomerates look at your mouth they do not see a human organ.

They see a cash register. They get out of it what you put into it.

You cannot defeat a Wall Street-backed strategy with wishful eating thoughts. But you can defeat bad strategy with good strategy.

I flatlined as an amateur on November 9, 2022. The next day, I turned Pro.

The difference between a Pro and an Amateur consumer is not what you eat. The difference is that the Amateur’s criteria is reckless, haphazard, and unintentional. Treating your mouth like a dumpster lacks intention. Running it like a business reclaims your autonomy.

I am no scientist. I do not have a PhD in Psychology. Rather, I am an entrepreneur with 45 years of experience and the father to an autistic son.

Twenty five years ago, when his teenage brain went through rapid, volatile growth spurts, he was plunged into a terrifying developmental spiral that lasted three or four years. It was a revolving door of psychologists, psychiatrists, and various medications, desperately trying to find just the right chemical cocktail that wouldn’t react in the exact opposite way it was intended to react—as is often the case with autistic folk.

That brings me to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

CBT is as simple as drawing a line straight down the middle of a page to separate the emotional distortion from the audited truth. In business we do side-by-side all the time.

Imagine you are fifteen years old and trapped in a doom loop. In the Left Column, you scrawl your emotional truth: “If I don’t get straight As, I won’t get into a good college. My life is over.”

Now in the Right Column, you reluctantly scribble the audited truth: “People who do NOT have straight As get into good colleges all the time. In fact, the vast majority of people attending good colleges in this exact moment do not have straight As.”

Food is binary. It is life or death. It’s a banana, not banana bread. It’s a carrot, not carrot cake. Food is life affirming or death promoting. Death promoting “food” may be food as a matter of law. But as a matter of fact whose to really say?

If you can imagine an Onlyfans for the cholesterol class, that’s The Shiny & Shady Show. A true bowel to global movement story, dedicated to the premise that what separates the amateur from the pro is intention.

Everybody has nine holes. But, you only have one piehole. My Piehole is pinned 24/7 to the main navigation bar herein. I populate the grid with the stuff I cram into my piehole and Piehole pukes out dynamically generated weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports.

It’s the running balance that restores balance.

I imagine a world in which everyone is on Piehole and the term “Piehole Score” is ubiquitous. A world in which your first date goes well, your second date goes well, thinking about getting serious, and you pop the question, “What’s your Piehole?”

Think about it. If your date isn’t intentional about what he puts in his mouth, in what universe are you putting that date in your mouth?

Piehole is not a diet. “I am on a diet.” A diet is something you stop. The root word is literally “die.” Piehole tracks your piehole, tabulates your intention. Subscribe to this newsletter for free and and I will make you a beta tester.

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When you open your Piehole and populate the grid you systematically force yourself out of a reckless, reactive death loop, into a transactional state of calculation.

The Piehole framework is the ultimate nightmare of a Wall Street-traded, ultra-processed rat shit factory. The syndicates calculate their financial projections on the assumption that you will remain numb to their many Froot Loopholes. As a Pro, I no longer play that game. If I eat a burger, I log it and take the -3 Death Points.

The mainstream wellness industry has spent decades scamming you by selling outcomes as targets. They tell you to chase weight loss, chase energy, and chase lower cholesterol like they are elusive trophies to be won through sheer misery and starvation. As a Pro, I know that the foregoing follies are the illusions of amateurs.

Everything everybody wants — less waist, less sickness, non-zero prescription costs, perfect numbers at your annual physical — such are the involuntary, mathematical consequences of populating Piehole and engaging in a bit of regular exercise.

If I’ve learned one thing as an entrepreneur for forty-five years it is this: Goals are for amateurs. I do not do goals. I do purpose. Purpose is for Pros. Goals are arbitrary. You hit them or you don’t and you go to lunch, which means you’re in a restaurant. (Don’t even get me started!) Purpose is unchanging and your ultimate purpose is to be there for your family, your friends, and the people who care about you.

If your purpose is to be a more effective creator, a more lethal litigator, a more decisive executive, or a more present parent. Every single one of those initiatives is either systematically strengthened or actively weakened by the actual items you cram into your beloved piehole.

It’s all about the numbers. Your CPA and your PCP use the same nomenclature. “These numbers look great!” or “These numbers are concerning.” When your cardiovascular system is flooded with a shit ton of un-audited, industrial processed sludge, your energy collapses, your prefrontal cortex is hijacked by marketing algorithms, and your capacity to protect your assets evaporates.

Which brings us back to the question I asked at the outset: Is Selena Gomez trying to kill you?

One minute you’re a globally adored pop icon. Next you present like a billionaire drug mule for Mondelēz. As an end user of a widow maker, I cannot unsee what I just articulated.

Such is life (and death) in the land of the free and the home of the (as-it-turned-out in my case) $12,329.42 co-pay.

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One minute I’m choking down a freebie on National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day. Next minute I’m flatlining naked in the ER, shitting myself for the same level-one trauma team I’m going to see Tuesday at Trader Joe’s.

That brings us to the Comfortable Cholesterol Class which is in a state of high behavioral panic over a lettuce parasite. The diarrhea will pass. See what I did there? Fine. I’ll see myself out.

Taco Bell is nothing if not transparent when it comes to ingredients. Take the Caramel Cold Foam:

• Buttermilk, hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm, palm kernel, coconut and/or cottonseed), water, cream (from milk), corn syrup, sugar, lactose (from milk), contains 2% or less of the following: natural flavor, modified cornstarch, sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 60, disodium phosphate, guar gum, locust bean gum, carrageenan, soy lecithin. Contains: Milk, Soy, Caramel Sauce: Sugar, water, nonfat dry milk, corn syrup, butterfat, fructose, natural flavors, modified food starch, caramel color, salt, mono & diglycerides, disodium phosphate, potassium sorbate (P), citric acid

Taco Bell unloads this contraceptive into your cold brew and the A.P. is talking lettuce bugs.

And the political haymaking. Presumptive 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidate, Gavin Newsom is apoplectic.

You wouldn’t catch me dead at Taco Bell. But you would at Legal Seafood. To set the stage, here’s a clip from my 2010 two-week residency at Washington D.C.’s iconic Studio Theatre, in which I talk about the critical role played by questions when closing the deal.

The tumor I’m carrying around in this clip, the one in which I look three to four months pregnant, that’s Legal Seafood.

I sit at the bar. Bowl of chowdah. Fish n chips. Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice. Bartender keeps the free refills coming. So, make that three glasses of cranberry juice. They give ya’ a basket of rolls and a bowl of butter. I’m alone. I eat them all. In fact, “Can I get another round of rolls?”

2500 calories. 4,000 milligrams of sodium. 45 grams of saturated fat. In my First Life I called this health hazard “lunch”. It was a highlight of the tour. Today I call it 15 Death Points.

The bottom line is not diarrhea, though diarrhea can line your bottom. The bottom line is that Taco Bell looks at your mouth and sees a cash register. It has one question: “Will you eat it?” The dark reveal of a Breaking News Lettuce Bug is that when it comes to Taco Bell, Legal Seafood and your local sales floor (I mean grocery store) we are on autopilot. We have zero questions. We are beaten down from decision fatigue.

When you mindlessly say “I’ll take the number one,” you cannot be surprised by the unwieldy number two. Or the shortness of breath. Or the cold sweats. Or the defibrillator.

I was meant to stay dead. If I hadn’t blown my audition at the Pearly Gates Improv, I wouldn’t even be here. God was like, “Thought you’d be funnier. I’m sending you back on a mission from me — God.”

I write from Del Mar where a spiritual health cleanse can run $1,500.00. The Taco Bug is included in your meal deal, and you don’t need an appointment.

When Big Cholesterol asks: “Will you eat it?” you need to answer that question with two questions.

• Q1: Why do I eat it?

• A1: Because crack is illegal.

• Q2: Is it good for me?

• A2: No.

We need to put this diarrhea behind us. Truth is, we love the drive-up because the drive-up is delicious. But, we forget, the trauma center is a drive up, too.

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