“John Carter”, the recent fantasy/sci-fi action movie, is the biggest box office bomb in film history, with a total net loss of $166,566,620. The movie did “just ok” with critics, but most viewers who saw the movie, liked it (70% rating on IMDb & Rotten Tomatoes). So apparently, from entertainment’s point of view, the movie was not a disaster. It entertained better than expected. Marketing was adequate too. So why didn’t more people go to see it? I have a suspicion that I would like to share.

I believe that the reason it didn’t attract larger crowds was because of the theme itself. This is a very old fashioned story, more leaning towards kits fantasy rather than radical, modern sci-fi. When I first saw the trailer for “John Carter” a few months ago, I was left bewildered that Hollywood would finance such a movie. It had a feel of the 1930’s Flash Gordon in it, but with better effects. And that was its flaw: old fashioned, pure cheesiness.

In today’s day and age, most people I know are hungry for smart movies that mess up with their mind a little. That make them think. That have something interesting and new to say, or at least visually show something refreshing. A movie becomes a classic when it speaks about our situation today, or tomorrow. This movie has nothing like that in it. It’s a very sterile & dry interpretation of old epic fantasy films: some guy, fighting bad guys and monsters, amongst laughable technology.

Give me a break. While this might fly with a few young kids and very old people who don’t know better, it won’t fly with most of the rest of us, the main body of customers, who still have a brain and would like to use it occasionally.

“John Carter” deserved the money loss, but I fear that Hollywood will never learn anyway. They pour unnecessarily huge amounts of money on stupid movies such as this. And this, among other things, will be their undoing.

This starts to piss me off more and more as time goes by: Paleo dieters baking stuff using heaps of almond flour. You go to a Paleo recipe site and what you see half the time is variations of cookies and breads. As for those who make an almond-based pizza? Two cups of almond flour are required for the base alone! And don’t let me start about nut butters.

The point of the matter is, nuts should only be consumed in moderation. They’re very high in O-6, and they have lots of phytates and anti-nutrients. On top of all that, almonds used to be poisonous in the Paleolithic times, the kinds of almonds we have today are highly selected. When we are eating such high quantities of nuts, we endanger our health, and we generate a new wheat-like threat. The older varieties of wheat, when were eaten in moderation they weren’t such a big problem, but today, we have in our hands a selected super-gluten which can be found in almost every food.

Ask yourself this question: Would you eat two full cups of almonds for dinner? Most of the time, the answer is “no”. So why the heck would you eat a 12″ pizza made of just that? The almond to almond flour ratio is 1:1, you see. These “allowed” flours (almond, coconut, flax, and tapioca), must be consumed in small quantities, and rarely. Birthdays, holidays, PMS… And try to mix these flours when the recipe allows it, so you at least spread the amount of the various anti-nutrients into smaller quantities.

Personally, I make almond flour-based cheese crackers twice a month (used only with goat/sheep/buffalo fermented dairy, which *is* healthy). We eat 1-3 crackers a day, which is equivalent to 3-5 almonds. A healthy amount of nuts per day, that is. The last time I baked something for indulging reasons was for a coconut birthday cake in January, six almond cookies in November (half a recipe), and coconut donuts in September (threw away half of them, baked too many). As for bread and pizza (any kind), I haven’t had these at all since I started Paleo in September 2011.

In other news, I started a Pinterest group, with categorized Paleo/Primal recipes. So far the dessert category has more pins than the other boards, just because the sites I visited mostly indulged on such comfort food. But I will be correcting this soon, as I add more pins.

It has been a constant complaint in the last few years, especially by genre fans: the countless Hollywood remakes or re-imaginings of older movies and TV shows. I personally prefer original works (even if everything is a remix of previous artistic knowledge in reality), and I don’t discount all direct remakes as useless. But in the last few years there’s definitely an identified problem in the sheer concentration of remakes or blatant copies of older ideas. It feels like there’s nothing really fresh coming out from the world anymore. I believe that it’s a three-tier issue:

1. Hollywood doesn’t take risks anymore
Why would Coca-Cola change its recipe? They normally wouldn’t. Similarly, in these difficult financial times we live in, Hollywood prefers to serve us tried & tested recipes. Can you blame them? Actually, you can. Hollywood is an immense artistic influence and force, we like it or not. While the various execs are in it just for the money, this doesn’t discount the fact that as industry leaders they also have an ethical obligation to be artistically progressive. And this can only happen when some risk is taken. With the explosion of various art mediums in the ’90s, Hollywood has entered a second phase of maturation, which unfortunately made it more bureaucratic, and more concentrated. There are of course a lot of politics behind the scenes, but the gist of it all is that these companies are now running like old oil factories: one step in front, two steps back.

2. Lack of imagination
Has capitalism sank its fangs into us to the point that we’re culturally bankrupt already? I don’t think so, because whereas in the past only a few people would become artists, today almost everyone is one. Human beings are resilient artistically to be able to go around such obstacles, such as a rotten political and economical system. Or could it be that every cool story is already being written and there’s nothing new to provide to the world? Sure, our world is cataclysmically bombarded with various works every day, but not everything is shown on screen, and not absolutely everything has been thought-up yet. And yet, not many radical works are getting released recently. I find the lack of imagination (or at least the exec disapproval of imaginative works) very disturbing. Science Fiction is supposed to be about what it could become, while at the same time is being current to today’s problems. What is our existence without a window to a possible future or solution? What is art if it doesn’t strive to imagine some sort of utopia?

3. Plot timing
As I wrote above, science fiction describes both a possible future but also our present. When remaking an old sci-fi movie, you’re running into the danger of re-discussing a then-current issue that is no more. Often this is “fixed” by re-writing specific plot points, enough to piss off the old fans and sabotage the new movie any way the can. And failing at the box office, it gets the business back to point No 1 above. Rinse, repeat.

The solution? By definition, the new wave will come from indie filmmakers (especially as tools become even more inexpensive), or from an anti-Hollywood conglomerate of international media companies. Hollywood won’t survive this new reality, the same way the big-4 music labels haven’t survived the indie music onslaught in the last few years.

A few weeks ago I saw at some blog a kelp noodles recipe that looked like real rice noodles, so I went ahead to Whole Foods and bought this brand. It costs about $4, and it’s good for 3-4 servings. They have only 5-6 calories per serving, and only 1 carb too. Kelp has a lot of iodine and many other minerals and enzymes, so it’s one of these Paleo super-foods that you shouldn’t miss. It’s too bad that these things are very difficult to find in other countries though, or in rural America even.

Tonight I stir-fried them with peppers, onion, and a range of shellfish, and they came out amazing! They really taste like real noodles! Here’s the recipe I modified to do my own stir-fry. Two things you need to remember though:
1. Without the suggested bone marrow broth the stir fry will taste like nothing. I added a cup of bone marrow broth to give the noodles the taste they deserve, and to also get that dark yellow color.
2. Do not add much soy sauce (maybe 2 TBspoons — and make sure that’s wheat-free tamari soy sauce). You see, soy is an antagonist to iodine, so you don’t want to be eating kelp in order to get iodine, and on the other hand having soy eradicating it. Broccoli is also an antagonist to iodine btw, but not as much as soy.

Update: I liked it so much that I made some today too, this time with chicken breast, zucchini, pepper, onion and a bit of broccoli.

One of my favorite Greek recipes, yuvarlakia, Paleo-ified (with cauliflower instead of rice). If using rice instead, use 1/2 cup of it, uncooked.

Ingredients (makes 3-4 servings, 4 gr of net carbs each)
* 200 gr of beef ground meat
* 200 gr of “riced” cauliflower
* 1 onion, chopped
* 30 gr butter
* 1 cup bone marrow broth
* 1 large egg, in room temperature
* 1 large juicy lemon, or 2 smaller ones
* Salt & pepper to taste

Method
1. In a big bowl, mix the meat, the “riced” cauliflower, and the chopped onion. Generously add salt & pepper, and using your hands mix all ingredients very well. Then create 2″ diameter meatballs.

2. Add the butter and melt it under medium heat. Add the meatballs and brown them well on all sides. The secret for the balls to not “open up” while cooking is to brown them well.

3. Add the bone marrow broth, olive oil, and 1.5 cups additional water. Cook for about 20-30 minutes. There should still be plenty of liquid left, since this is a soup.

4. Remove the pan from the heat. Get a deep plate, and put the egg white in it (keep the egg yolk for later, separately). Start beating the egg white with a whisk for 3-4 minutes, until it becomes a fluffy, creamy substance (picture).

5. Add into the plate the egg yolk and beat again for 1 minute or so. The creamy substance should remain. Add the lemon juice in it, and beat again for 30 seconds. It should look like this now.

6. Using a deep ladle, carefully remove some broth and slowly pour it into the deep plate. Keep beating. Make sure the broth is not super-hot, or the egg will cook. Keep bringing broth to your deep plate. Just pour it slowly, and keep beating! It should look frothy (picture)!

7. Pour the plate’s content back into the pan, and stir carefully. It should now have a thick sauce! Crack some black pepper in it, stir carefully, and serve hot (gently reheat if required). Adjust lemon/salt and enjoy!

One of the best Greek recipes, lahanodolmades (stuffed cabbage), Paleo-ified (with cauliflower instead of rice). If using rice instead, use 1/2 cup of it, uncooked.

Ingredients (makes 3-4 servings, 5 gr of net carbs each)
* 200 gr of beef ground meat
* 200 gr of “riced” cauliflower
* 6-8 large cabbage leaves (of this variety preferably)
* 1 onion, chopped
* 1 TBspoon parsley, chopped
* 2 garlic cloves, minced
* 1 TBspoon olive oil
* 1 cup bone marrow broth
* 1 large egg, in room temperature
* 1 large juicy lemon, or 2 smaller ones
* Salt & pepper to taste

Method
1. Wash the cabbage leaves, but be careful to not perforate them. Boil a lot of water in a big cooking pan and immerse the cabbage leaves in it for about 4-5 minutes. The point is to wilt them so we can roll them easily, not to cook them. Discard that water.

2. In a big bowl, mix the meat, the “riced” cauliflower, and the chopped onion, garlic and parsley. Generously add salt & pepper, and using your hands mix all ingredients very well.

3. Take one cabbage leave, and add a small handful of the meat mix on its lower, thicker side. Roll the cabbage once, then fold inwards the two left & right sides, and then continue rolling. Then place that on a cooking pot (with the opening of the rolling touching the bottom of the pot). Do the same for the rest of the mixture and leaves. The big secret for the stuffed cabbage to not unroll while cooking is to pack them very well at the bottom of the pot, so make sure you choose a cooking pot that’s the right size. The less room they have, the more securely will cook.

4. Start cooking in medium heat. Add the bone marrow broth, olive oil, and 1.5 cup additional water. Cook until the liquid has evaporated enough to reveal the stuffed rolls.

5. Remove the pan from the heat. Get a deep plate, and put the egg white in it (keep the egg yolk for later, separately). Start beating the egg white with a whisk for 3-4 minutes, until it becomes a fluffy, creamy substance (picture).

7. Add into the plate the egg yolk and beat again for 1 minute or so. The creamy substance should remain. Add the lemon juice in it, and beat again for 30 seconds. It should look like this now.

8. Using a deep ladle, carefully remove some broth and slowly pour it into the deep plate. Keep beating. Make sure the broth is not super-hot, or the egg will cook. Keep bringing broth to your deep plate. Just pour it slowly, and keep beating! It should look frothy (picture)!

9. Pour the plate’s content back into the pan, and tilt the pan a bit in all directions. It should now have a thick sauce! Crack some black pepper in it, and serve hot (gently reheat if required). Adjust lemon/salt and enjoy!

Paleo/Primal are the most healthy diets there is on the planet right now. As I’ve written in the past on this blog, they have fixed almost all of my health problems, and daily I read about more miraculous results from others online too. But I don’t believe that its mainstream wisdom is always bullet-proof.

A few weeks ago I started using Cron-o-meter, as a way to track my food intake (calories) and to analyze my carbs, vitamins & minerals. I was expecting to be low on D3, Potassium & Magnesium (modern foods don’t provide enough of these), but what I found out was that I was missing more than just these three.

Granted, I take a lot of different supplements (sometimes up to 10 pills a day), so it’s unlikely that I’m actually deficient in any of these vitamins/minerals, but if I was to do straight Paleo and not take any vitamins, I’d probably be deficient of the following. The percentage in the parenthesis is what I get from food alone on average, and please consider that I eat EVERY kind of Paleo food (including offal, rare/sea veggies, shellfish, nuts, even dairy etc).

Sashimi Dinner from J-Town by Sifu Renka. Licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0.

– D3 (40% RDA)
Not a surprise, modern people stay in front of a computer all day, not out in the sun. I supplement with a 5000 IU pill almost daily.

– Iron (42% RDA)
This one is a mystery to me. I eat a lot of red meat, offal, eggs, greens, even oysters, and yet I’m iron-deficient according to the data (cron-o-meter uses US government’s data to calculate nutrients). I rather not have to supplement for iron (it can be dangerous), but occasionally I just have to. Not sure what’s up with iron yet.

– Folate (44% RDA)
Folate is very important for brain health and women wanting to become pregnant, but liver is pretty much the only Paleo food with high doses of it — and unfortunately most people just don’t eat offal. I eat liver once a week, greens too, and I’m still deficient of it, so I get the rest of my folate via a vitamin pill. Please note that folic acid is not the same as folate.

– Manganese (55% RDA)
Legumes are not allowed on Paleo, and yet manganese can only be found in any significant amount in beans. It is my personal opinion that the 4-5 main Paleo gurus need to come publicly together and agree on letting lentils into the game. Lentils, when soaked for 36 hours, lose most of their lectins and other anti-nutrients they carry (recipe and research), and they become the most benign kind of bean out there. Given that lentils have a LOT of both folate, iron, and manganese, it’s a superfood that is sorely missing on Paleo. You can quote me on that.

Lentils and Peas by Photobunny Earl. Licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0.

– Magnesium (64% RDA)
This one is not a surprise either, as it’s a universal deficiency no matter which diet you follow. Supplementation of it is highly encouraged in the Paleo world, so I take a pill 4-5 times a week, 2 hours before bed.

– Potassium (70% RDA)
Paleo, and especially ketogenic diets, are a bit low on this, while supplements are useless for it (they only sell 99 mg pills, while we need 3500 mg per day). The only major food source for potassium is beet greens. I try to have these 2-3 times a month, but they taste a bit funny. I bought “potassium salt” from Amazon to use occasionally to supplement further.

– Calcium (65% to 75% RDA)
Dairy is the No1 thing I don’t agree with Paleo (soaked lentils being the second one). Paleo gurus will tell you that you don’t need calcium from dairy because our absorption is now better, but I believe this to be wrong. I do dairy, and I’m still below the RDA. And when I have too little of it, my sensitive tooth is killing me. Gulping down a calcium pill makes the pain go away within the hour. I wrote extensively about dairy and Paleo here.

Seaweed salad by Sifu Renka. Licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0.

– E-tocotrienols (traces)
Unless you’re cooking with Red Palm oil, then you’re not getting enough of E-tocotrienols. I cook with coconut oil instead, so I supplement almost daily with it (especially since I’m low on E-tocophenols too). Unfortunately, there’s no food we can buy that has enough of this specific E form.

– K2 (traces)
K2 is rare in the modern diet. Grass-fed offal & butter have some, but not that much. The Japanese natto (fermented soy beans) have a lot of it in it, but if you can eat natto, then you’re probably a super-human (it tastes & smells terrible). I supplement with K2-Mk4 a few times a week.

– Biotin (traces)
Biotin is available on almost every Paleo food, but it’s not included in big quantities in any of them. I supplement for that too, 2-3 times a week, but not at high quantities. Biotin has the opposite effect when taken in high doses.

– Omega-3 ratio
My current omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is between 1:3 and 1:4. This is already pretty good compared to most western people, but ideally it would be best for my ratio to be 1:2. That’s a bit difficult to achieve, even with grass-fed meats and wild fish though. Maybe more fish instead of meat in the week will achieve that, so in the meantime, I supplement with krill oil 3-4 times a week.

For a few weeks now I’m working on a music video that’s animated. I use Creative Commons “Attribution” images as backgrounds, and then I animate the action by hand, frame by frame. I bought a Wacom tablet, and I do all the sketching on it and Photoshop. I used to sketch a lot when I was a kid, and I’m considerably good with it, but I have never done any animation work before. There’s a steep learning curve, but I learn as I go along. So far I have finished animating 16 seconds out of the 2:55 song. I estimate that the video will be ready sometime in May. I work on it a few hours a day.

Introduction scene to the bad guy:

The good guy on the run (scene where he meets the girl for the first time):

I’ve lived in 5 countries so far in my life, and in a variety of places (tiny villages, towns, bigger towns, cities, bigger cities, mega-cities). The places I liked it best at were villages, towns, and small cities (up to ~25k people).

I have a problem with big or mega-cities. A big city stops being a home, and instead it becomes a storage unit for human beings. Floor after floor, crammed in a dusty apartment with no yard, and only a few (over-crowded on weekends) parks to call “nature”. Life in a big city is by definition a routine: wake up, get the bus or drive to work, come back, watch TV, sleep, repeat. Everything looks artificial: the billboard ads, the sky with no stars at night, the countless cars on the street. Most humans resemble flocks of ants waiting for a green light to play Frog, while the rest live on the streets hoping for some change. This situation has a detrimental effect overtime in the human condition. People lose track of what’s important, and they become apathetic shadows of themselves. Violence then erupts at every corner. People still evolve, but they lose authenticity.

Sure, a big City provides big shops, exhibitions & events, entertainment. It all sounds exciting, no doubt, but in reality it’s more an addiction than anything else. Running on a puppy field with a kite, or having a picnic near the water, is more appealing to me than shopping. Storming a local art shop is also more interesting to me than a big art exhibition, because I’m always on the look out of new, revolutionary points of view though art, rather than admiring 100 year old points of view that someone else labelled them “classics”. Art is supposed to look forward, and it can equally happen in a small town, or a big city. It’s just that the art industry today doesn’t look there for talents.

“New York Times Square at Night” by Werner Kunz. Licensed under the CC BY-SA-NC 2.0.

Having lived at my dad’s mountainous village for a few years (400 inhabitants in the 1960s, but only 150 left when I lived there in the ’80s, about 50 today), I got a good idea of what community really means. Sharing your milk, yogurt, eggs, vegetables with your neighbors. Knowing absolutely everyone there, and helping out when they are in need. Even on a town (like the one my family currently lives in Greece), the same feeling of community remains, albeit reduced in intensity. At the village I was among care-free, happy people, bosses of themselves. Even the ones who left for other cities or countries, still go back there as often as possible, and keep in touch with “home” via the village’s newspaper. Interestingly, the village was self-governed in many respects, nearly free of external state influences. Finally, houses are built far apart, as they all have land around them, but they’re still close enough: just 1-2 minutes of walk. The perfect ratio to both feel you’re with others, but also have the space you need to breath.

As with everything, there are some negative points living in such a commune, the biggest one being the unending gossip (everyone about everyone), and the lack of intellectuals. However, it doesn’t have to be this way anymore. When I lived there in the ’80s, most people only had 6 years of schooling on their belt at the time. But today this is not the case. In fact, I would expect the truly smart people to immigrate to such a place. Tele-commuting is a possibility these days for example, for many professions. And robots should soon free up the rest of the professions.

“Mountain life” by John and Melanie Kotsopoulos. Licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Unfortunately, today’s people try to connect with one another by getting physically closer to as many people as possible, by moving to a big city, but that’s a misguided approach. True connection only happens when people are free of multiple fake identity layers, and this can only happen in a relaxed and pure environment where humanity thrives.

When I was a kid in Greece, after finishing my homework, I would run around my village’s steep mountainous terrain, and hang from olive and fig trees, usually upside-down. I had a particular time for this “meditative exercise” of mine: in the summers it was between 4 and 5:30 PM. The sun would have just send down its golden light, and everything looked so beautiful and serene, with only a few goat & sheep bells audible in the background, as they were returning to their stables from a day’s grazing up in our mountain’s top. The view was magnificent: from my village you could see miles and miles away left & right, while at the far front there is another, bigger mountain, just to keep us all in perspective.

This was my bliss. And I was getting it almost daily, in high doses.

When I say “bliss”, I mean it. It’s a very specific feeling, one that can’t be easily described in words. It feels like everything is fine with the world and that there is absolutely no worry, about anything. It’s the ultimate happiness, an explosion of nirvana when the peaceful surroundings touch your inner self.

This was a feeling that I was self-medicating on, since my childhood was pretty bad overall. I grew up in poverty, for one. There were many times we had no money to buy bread for instance, one of the reasons we immigrated back to my dad’s village from the bigger city we were living. My parents would constantly fight, and violence was common. I also can’t claim that I have a gift in making close friends. Acquaintances plenty, but not close friends. Other kids would just not understand me, I was always the weirdo in the bunch. My geeky interests were simply different than theirs, and this only became more evident as I entered my teen years.

So this daily run at the stair-step fields at my village was much needed. It kept me happy, I was able to tap into nature somehow in a way that I could really see it with its true colors. Nature was honest with me. I felt connected, part of a bigger whole, but still being me. I guess you could say that I was getting “naturally high”, in a way.

Childhood, by Hartwig HKD. Licensed under the CC-BY-ND 2.0.

We moved to a nearby town when I was 12 years old. Without access to our big vegetable garden and our beautiful hens in the village anymore, my mom binged us on grains and potatoes; that was the time that my health started declining originally (my first symptoms were some hair loss, and lack of focus when trying to study). I suddenly lost my ability to be happy and one with nature. I still managed to get glimpses of this very specific feeling, but only rarely, and only for a few seconds. As the years went by, I lost the ability almost completely. Maybe in the last 20 years I have had this feeling 4-5 times overall. In the meantime, my health declined more. Sure, I have been happy many times in that time-frame, but that “bliss” feeling is very specific, and just different of just living a “good, happy life”.

And then, Paleo happened to me, 6 months ago now. Nearly all of my health issues have already resolved away, and my life, at last, has started taking a shape that’s not all doom & gloom. I suddenly felt that I still had a chance. During the first 4 months on Paleo, the feeling of bliss came back 2-3 times, at random points. In addition, my ADD was getting better, my situational depression vanished, and anxiety & brain fog was winding down too. My husband noted all this, and many times asked me… “WHO are you?“. He couldn’t believe that the real me had emerged after years of being miserable. See, I became sicker just 3 months after moving to the US to live with him, so in the 12 years we’re together he has seen very little of a happy-me. Not fair for me, and even less fair for him.

Because weight loss was sluggish with plain Paleo for me, I moved to Paleo-ketogenic on January 22nd of this year (25-40 gr of net carbs per day maximum). I knew that a ketogenic diet is the best diet for everyone’s mental health (not only for those with certain disorders), but I thought that the plain Paleo diet gave me most of what it would be possible for me to absorb at this point. Not so. The Paleo-ketogenic diet made me much happier, much more focused, more driven, and with an exceptional mental clarity — in less than a month’s time. I now know what it means to really be healthy and feel “good”. My husband told me a number of times this past month that I radiate from the inside, a rare thing to see in any human being. Additionally, on Paleo I’d still get SIBO/IBS-D symptoms 2-3 times a month too (down from 4-5 times a day on SAD), but since I went Paleo-ketogenic in January, I have had zero symptoms.

As for that specific feeling of bliss, let’s just say that I got it multiple times, in a single month, since I went Paleo-ketogenic. I expect it to become ever more prevalent as the rest of my body heals from years of bad health. Happiness is coming back, big time. I’m considering staying in ketosis for as long as possible, perhaps for life.

Update: Apparently this feeling of bliss has a name, it’s called “ketosis euphoria”, it’s known to scientists, and it’s essentially a natural “high”. Weeeeee…