Greetings and salutations. My name is Everett Vector. You may know me from my TED Talk, “Disruption Is A Mindset (And Also A Yacht),” or from the Senate hearing where I said “I don’t recall” seventy-one times and then took a helicopter to lunch.
But today, think of me as not as a prominent thought leader, and instead your friendly and concerned neighbor. Because when I heard that ordinary people were suffering in this heat wave, I put down my nitrogen-chilled negroni and thought: not on my watch. Although technically it is on my watch because I own the watch company. But you understand.
As the heat increases day by day, year by year, for reasons we will never understand, I want to share the following tips that saved my life this summer, and they can save yours too if you simply apply yourself.
Freeze your cash. Fill your primary bathtub with Perrier (Pelligrino works in a pinch if you’re in crisis mode), submerge several stacks of hundreds, and freeze the entire tub overnight in your walk-in freezer. Slide the frozen currency bricks between your sheets, but be wary of the thread count (anything under 1,200 and the bills will chafe). You’ll sleep like a bébé.
Stay hydrated. SO important. My hydration guy recommends water harvested from a Norwegian glacier that only three people legally have access to. If your glacier access is limited right now, I’ve been made aware that tap water is technically potable in many zip codes. Be resourceful!
Seek shade. The largest shadow on any property is cast by the yacht. Simply have your captain reposition the vessel throughout the day and it will track the sun like an 80-meter Italian-built sundial. No yacht? Your second biggest shadow is the guest chateau.
Dress for the weather. Linen, linen, linen. I wear a single garment made from flax grown on my own estate, woven by a named named Paolo who I flew in from a village that exists primarily in a Frances Mayes novel. The cost per wear is wholly irrelevant. Never think about the cost per wear, as thinking those thoughts will raise your core body temperature.
Limit outdoor exposure. I simply do not go outside between May and October. My homes are connected by climate-controlled tunnels. If you must go outside, do so by private jet.
Cool your home efficiently. If your air conditioning fails, do what my family has always done during hard times: open the panic room. It’s temperature stable, blast-rated, and stocked with enough Ladurée macarons to outlast the collapse of the electrical grid that some of my company portfolios are working on (causing, not preventing).
Take a cold plunge. Any body of water will do. An infinity pool, a plunge pool, the moat. If you don’t have a moat, ask yourself why and then perhaps do some journaling or, as my Executive Vice President of Reality Optimization recommends, “radical manifesting.”
Check on your elderly neighbors. I had my assistant’s assistant send a drone over to both of my neighbors’ compounds. We think one of them waved, so we know the system works.
Know the warning signs of heat exhaustion. Symptoms include dizziness, confusion, and the creeping suspicion that rules that apply to other people may someday apply to you. If you’re experiencing any of these, lie down immediately in your coldest wine cellar (the Burgundy room, obviously, never the Bordeaux room. The Bordeaux room runs warm but worry not, my architect is on it.)
Remember: heat is temporary, but grit is forever. My grandfather survived the Dust Bowl. Did he complain? No. He foreclosed on eleven thousand family farms and bought the town that named the heat index. That's the American spirit, and it lives in all of us. Some of us just keep it in a climate-controlled vault in Zurich.
Stay cool out there. And if you can’t, well… some people just don’t want it bad enough.
NOTE: The author’s carbon footprint has been offset by a tree on his property that you can’t see.
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