Hi Lovely Simplerista,

I'm writing this with a hand and a half.

I know I live in arguably the city with the most great excellent restaurants in the entire world. But I love cooking. It really gives me immense satisfaction and pleasure. It's got sounds, smells, touch, taste, visuals, and that sixth dimension of love and consciousness and energy. It's decidedly unlike computers and software. And it so happens that New York has incredible sources of produce and other things you need for cooking, so cooking at home here is such a joy every time.

Today I was going to make a chili. Fall is clearly here, the heat has left the city for a bit, and I just got this sudden urge for chili. I stepped out early to do my grocery shopping so I could give it plenty of time to simmer. There's something about tomatoes and salt and acid that just hit that amazing "zing" spot when allowed to cook for three, four, maybe even five hours.

I'd just started doing the prep when I accidentally cut myself in my left ring finger. I almost cut the entire tip off. Right through the nail and everything. Just a millimeter more, and the tip would have been completely off. Bugger. The knife I use is a 26-layered beautiful and very sharp tojiro knife, so I almost didn't feel it. But there was blood all over the chopping board. Thankfully I was cutting red bell peppers, so it was pretty red already.

Went to the emergency room on 16th and 1st Ave. The wait wasn't too long. They were sweet. Eli, my PA was excellent. Six stitches and 90 minutes later I was back home ... cooking. I finished my chili with my left hand in a glove, and it was so worth it. Damn, I love good food.

Embarrassingly, it's not the first time this happens. Some six or seven years ago I did the same thing with my left pinkie. It's grown so well together you have to look really hard to see the scar. The tip is a tiny bit less sensitive than the other finger tips, but nothing that has any consequences day-to-day.

So that's a little from my world.

John Oliver's show

There's something else I wanted to share, this one for entirely selfish reasons. I went to see the taping of John Oliver's show Last Week Tonight this Sunday. If you haven't seen the show, you should. I think it's the best show out there. No guests. No correspondents. Just 30 minutes of pure hard-hitting comedy genius. I love how comedy is the one place where the truth can actually be spoken - not that it is all the time, but it can be, more than in most other contexts. It's always been that way, since the court jester. But I digress.

You see, I want to do stand-up myself. I have no plans of going to club after club. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what my objective is, other than (a) I want to at least give stand-up a serious try, and (b) I'd love to have my own TV show some day. My heart is still in software and entrepreneurship and spirituality but something about this really draws me.

What do I need to do? All I need to do is prepare five minutes worth of material, go to an open mic, sign up, and do five minutes. Open mics are in abundant supply around me. In fact, there's an open mic two blocks from here tomorrow night. And another one one half block from here Thursday night, produced by one of my friends. Getting a spot at an open mic is not hard. At all.

But it's still scary. I know I'm naturally funny. I make people laugh. When I'm relaxed, I just come up with funny shit, and I say it in a funny way. It's how my mind works.

But I'm still scared!

I'm terrified that no-one will laugh. And it's in part because I don't laugh. I find things funny, but it's very rare that I'll laugh out loud at something. So when I try to think through what I'd say, I'm not laughing, and I assume no-one else will be either.

But secondly, I realized it's all about me outsourcing my power to the mysterious, anonymous "audience", to "those people out there", who suddenly have the power to judge me by whether or not they find my material (or me!) funny, whether or not they laugh.

So, folks, Thursday of this week, if not sooner, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do my five minutes. I'm going to try and be my most natural self, and I pray that I'm gonna get a few good laughs in.

Actually, seeing John Oliver and Stephen Colbert has been really healing in that regard. Because at both shows, they've been practically begging us in the audience to laugh at the jokes. "Even if you don't find them funny, laugh really hard. Even if you're the type of person who normally laughs on the inside, laugh really loud." And it wasn't just the warm-up guy. John Oliver himself, right before starting the show, literally pleaded with us, please laugh. Wow. It seems it's not just me. Maybe it's okay. to be a bit scared about not getting the laughs. 

Damn, I thought this was going to be a short newsletter due to cut-off finger. Oh, well.

News from the blog

I wrote something related on my personal blog (not sure why I went there and not on the Simplero blog): "Ramblings of a Man Desperately Trying to Distract Himself from Stepping Into His Purpose".

News from Simplero

Mostly bug fixes this week. We've radically improved the robustness of our text message deliver especially to the US, and of our bounce handling, where before an email considered spam by various mail servers could cause those recipients to be unsubscribed. We're much smarter about this stuff now.

Still working on new marketing site and onboarding. Sometimes new features just take a long time. I personally don't like it when it takes much more than a few weeks.

Random stuff from around the interwebs

I love gadgets. Here's one for sous-vide cooking (slow cooking of things immersed in hot-ish water, something I only learned about recently). The gadget doesn't come out till April next year, but I pre-ordered it now. And here's one for women to pee standing up. Seems pretty practical.

Classic "Microsoft has no taste" clip by Steve Jobs. I will say this: The outrage over the U2 album release to 500 million iTunes accounts is wildly overblown, but the whole gimmick and particularly that force fake spontaneous dialogue between Tim Cook and Bono on stage was incredibly tone deaf and awkward. Took away from how great the event was overall. Such a shame. But nothing to be that upset about.

How Beefeater gin is made. I've started to get into mixology a bit. It's so interesting, and a great way to expand my culinary horizons.

The 1948 book titled The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks is amazing. This Sunday I woke up, took a big chunk of chocolate cake from the fridge, and hopped in the bath tub for 90 minutes, reading about cocktails. So great.

This Gazpacho is amazing. Made it for friends Friday. Uhm!

Wish me luck this Thursday!

See you next week.

With love,
-Calvin