The other day I was sitting in a meeting with my brand analysis hat on, listening to Pam, my business partner, present a plan for brand alignment to a very bright client. I like listening to Pam’s presentations because her mind works so differently from mine. I always learn something. This time, though, my attention was distracted by a person sitting near me. The thinning, spikey hair with the lightened tips. The slim, rectangular glasses. The worked-out, aging body clothed in the latest techno-wear from REI, chosen to give a sense of health and youth where health and youth are ebbing. Behold: The Branding Hack.

In computer companies, it has become standard for people to scan their email while sitting in presentations. It's incredibly rude, it’s a waste of time, since you can’t hear when you are reading, but it's pretty much standard. However, the hack was taking this behavior a step further. Pretending to listen to Pam, he was looking down at his G-4, scanning the client’s website, familiarizing himself with the way they thought of themselves, then looking up at her and smiling, as if he were listening to her fresh insights.

I'm snowbound on a small island. In New York this snow would have been plowed and dumped in the river by lunchtime on the day it fell, and nary a reservation at Nobu cancelled. Not here. No, here in the land of the hearty Northwesterner, land of anorak and parka, land of flannel and technical fabric, we have buses sliding down slight inclines. We have cars without snowtires trying to make it up hills, the drivers' faces cartoons of surprise at sliding backward.

Seattle is caught unprepared for this snow. We don't know what to do with it. I've been in my house for a week. Cabin fever doesn't do the feeling justice. There's just so long that you can obsess about folding fresh sheets. Sooner or later you are forced to think, and sometimes those thoughts are not cheery. Cheery and festive as I love to be, sometimes I think thoughts that are not popular. They are not popular because they do not point the way to a cheery, festive future. They are warning thoughts.