Everything Is Dope On Dopamine
Why Your Body Is A Business & The Only Question That Makes Big Food Choke
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 as an 18-year-old door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.
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 makes good business sense.
I manage to one question and one question only.
“Will she buy it?”
To get the answer I want, Mrs. Jones has to 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. Mine is gold. Sleek. Shiny.
I hand her the canister. “Notice when ya hold it, Mrs. Jones, it actually feels lighter?”
“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. Life went on—until the day I morphed into 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 died on the trauma table. I was gone. I never saw that chicken sandwich coming. Never really saw the McDonald’s. The Dunkin’ Donuts. A bit of napkin math suggests that I’ve spent five full years of my adult life on the road eating 4,000-calorie lunches at Legal Sea Foods. Look at me! Of course a widowmaker took me out!
When Oreos and Lay’s and Oscar Mayer look at you, they see a business. They see an asset manager. They see somebody who has something they want.
Your Piehole.
When they look at your child, they see a small business. They see generational, dopamine-fueled recurring revenue that is the stuff of every objectively poor business decision.
When I woke up in the ICU with a couple of stents and learned that I had died on the table, I declared myself an addict. I asked myself, “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 hit me that Wall Street looks at my piehole and sees a cash register, I issued 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 produced the culture that killed me. 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 don’t give a damn about wellness. I care about writing jokes and funny sketches and producing 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 one-question 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 are sympathetic to the Orthorexia Community.
Again — I am not out to delay death. I am prolonging my best work. Parents are honored. Kids are grown. Synapses are firing. John Oliver proves people like to laugh while they learn.
As for you, my gentle reader, football starts Thursday with the Hall of Fame Game. Halloween candy is already in the stores. 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. Create a culture of death that bankrupts my business, 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!