“Colonic blockage is a  more important factor in predicting criminal activity than poverty, drugs or mental illness,” declares study co-author, Dr. Analle Fisher. “Constipation is at once the  metaphor and the concrete manifestation of the suppression of cathartic impulses in the body politic.”

Fisher and co-author, Dr. Heinz Bupke, of the Frankfurt Institute in Grand Teuton, Wyoming, described themselves as “medical muckrakers” in a presentation  at the at the annual Conference of Gastrointestinal Professionals on the University of Colorado’s Dry Rock campus.

“We prove that violence and constipation go hand in hand,” says Bupke. “And that this inconvenient truth has been shoved up a pigeonhole by the pharmaceutical industry.”

The study has made a splash in the placid waters of the academic community with its accusation that eminent researchers collude with the drug companies to continue the “counterproductive prescribing of psychotropics for  anti-social behavior when a simple laxative would achieve better results.”

“Our investigations show that Big Pharma has dammed up the free flow of information on this vital subject,” Bupke says. At a press conference they issued a  thunderous denunciation of colleagues who had leaked parts of the study to the drug companies in exchange for cash and grants. “They are a stain on the unsullied garment of disinterested research,” Fisher said.

The study, seven years in the making,  began with a comparison of crime statistics from what the authors called “low and high fiber localities.” Areas where fried food, white flour, sugary drinks and snack foods were consumed reported twice the number of crimes as those where a more balanced diet predominated. 

“There were more ER visits for bloating, irritability, discomfort, flatulence, seepage, noisome afflatus and sexual dysfunction,” Bupke says. “More reports  of anxiety, stress, paranoia, homicidal and suicidal impulses.  More outbursts of inexplicable violence. More arrests and referrals to psychiatric facilities.”

Authorities view criminality as  psychopathology  and treat it with psychotropic medications, Fisher says. “

“They blame the brain, we finger the bowels,” says Bupke.

“Anyone who has  taken a pain killer or an anti-depressant, knows that they lower the sex drive and block the gut,” says Fisher. 

Bupke adds: “And anyone who has taken a laxative knows that the feeling of relief and well-being far surpasses that produced by psychotropic medication.”

The authors reviewed transcripts of thousands of interrogations of homicide suspects. “Over ninety per cent were  on licit or illicit  drugs,” says Bupke. “Twenty-seven per cent said they had not evacuated  for days.”

Fisher says she was mulling over these statistics when the truth slowly emerged.   “Suddenly, I knew how Archimedes felt when he saw the bubbles in his bathtub,” says Fisher. “I shouted Eureka!, I’ve gotten to the bottom of crime.”

“Most of the violent  perpetrators we examined were straining to excrete on the day they committed their act” says Bupke. “Murder was their purgation.”

” A timely enema would have saved a life,” says Fisher.

Their investigations next took them to prisons. “Incarceration is existential constipation,” says Bupke. “The individual is locked up and cannot escape.”

They found that digestive problems  are more prevalent among the inmates than in the normal population. 

“Women’s prisons are a hell hole of cloggage, incontinence and nocturnal enuresis,” says Fisher. ” But men’s prisons are even worse. Drugs are put in the food to suppress sexual urges. They are forcibly administered to all inmates. Compounded by the high fat, low fiber, sugary  prison  diet this overdosing produces a condition of total impaction…”

“Imagine a corridor jammed with gassy felons,” Bupke says. “Unable to escape. No exit for them or their roughage.” He breaks off with a look of horror…

Fisher raises a cautioning finger. “And yet prison violence is often misunderstood. Anal penetration by a foreign object is seen as sadistic depravity when it is frequently an attempt to dislodge a stubborn mass.”

Recently, there has been a flood of inmate lawsuits, alleging that prison diets are causing severe health problems. Oklahoma City Bomber Terry Nichols  sued the Colorado Supermax Federal Penitentiary, claiming that  prison meals made him “sin against God.”  He was joined by fellow inmate Eric Rudolph who bombed abortion clinics and the Atlanta Olympics . Their suit charges that prison food causes “constipation and gas, leading to severe hemorrhoids” and is a violation of the Constitutional prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Bupke notes  that both men had used “detonations” to relieve their frustrations. “Who knows how many lives could have been saved if they had been properly toilet trained.”

Critics accuse Fisher and Bupke of  lumping  conflicting variables into one indigestible theory. “They think that defecation is the Holy Grail of psychopathology, sputters Professor Fred Plotznick. 

“”Yes we do,” Bupke retorts.  And points to the success of a recent experiment they conducted at Hershey State Prison. 

“We divided the Maximum Security Unit into two groups,” he says. “One was continued on heavy medication and given the standard prison diet. The other group  was taken off psychotropics and fed light meals, featuring dried figs, baked beans and espresso.

“When we returned  two weeks later we found the first group had rioted, burnt their mattresses and taken guards hostage. We were greeted with curses and threats. and had to be escorted by armed guards.”

Dr. Fisher continues: “But as we approached the second unit we heard laughter and singing. The cell block was spotless and fragrant.  The inmates, in freshly laundered overalls, were in the rec room, doing a folk dance and singing Hava Nargila.

“They welcomed us with open arms,” Bupke says. He tries to contain his emotions. “They lifted us onto their shoulders and marched around the block,chanting: 

“We don’t chill with Lexipro/ Ducolax is the way we go…”

Fisher brushes away a tear of her own. “I put in long years of hard, lonely work with nothing to show for it. But it was worth the effort. If I can soften the stool of one hardened criminal I will not have  lived in vain.”

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/suspensemagazine/2011/05/07/suspense-radio-with-heywood-gould

 THE WHIRLWIND TOUR CONTINUES

RELEASE PARTIES & BOOK SIGNINGS

 May 21, 2011  1:00 – 3:00 pm

THE BOOK CARNIVAL
348 South Tustin Street
Orange, CA 92866-2502
(714) 538-3210

May 22, 2011 1:00 – 2:30

THE FIREHOUSE RESTAURANT & BAR
213 Rose Ave  (in Venice)
Los Angeles, CA 90291
(310) 396-6810

This will be followed by a general Q&A about the process of thriller and screenwriting.

The economy was in recession. Unemployment had risen from 5% to 9% in a year and a half. The prime rate was 10.2%. Inflation was at 7.4%.

Real Estate was in the toilet. You could buy a three-story brownstone in the 80′s on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for $60,000, but they wanted 20% down and nobody had 60 cents worth of collateral.

You moved warily through the city like a mouse rushing from one hole to another. The subways were a no-go after 10 p.m. Mugging was a simple speedy transaction by which money was transferred in exchange for safety. But the hard core pros complicated it by slashing you on the arm or even the face to keep you from pursuing, so you had to run or yell for help or even fight back and that’s how people got killed.

The murder rate was up to 11.5 per 100,000. Blacks were eight times as likely to be murdered as whites. The police shot 54 people to death that year.

We had stopped fighting in Vietnam, but Nixon was still bombing Cambodia. The Senate ignored Kissinger’s heartfelt pleas and blocked funding for the attacks.

Oh yeah, and the whole country was mesmerized by the Watergate Hearings. Watching in astonishment as White House Counsel John Dean ratted out Nixon, saying they had discussed the break-in 35 times.

So now we knew that our President, who had won by a landslide in ’72, was a burglar, a blackmailer and a drunk.

But my big problem was glassware.

I was working at a place called “Maude’s” in the Summit Hotel on 51st. and Lexington. “A commercial caravansary,” W.C. Fields would have called it. A no-frills flop for the professional traveler. The guys with the dog-eared address books and smudged invoice pads…Suits getting shiny in the seat.

The Gay ’90′s red-light bordello theme played well with this crowd. They liked the all- you-can-eat buffets, the sullen waitresses in low-cut leotards, spangles and tights. But they didn’t like the drinks.

In line with the Art Nouveau knockoffs, the Tiffany lamps and the plush booths management had given us their version of period glassware. The rocks glasses were what were once known as “double old fashioned,” designed for a voluminous drink with whiskey, mulled sugar, and soda.They were as big and hefty as cut glass vases. if you threw them against a wall the building would crumble. I could empty a ten ounce bottle of soda into them with room to spare. No way I could make the “house pour” an ounce and a half shot look respectable in a glass that big.

Inverted shot glasses stood on a towel on the bar. We had to pour a shot into the glass right in front of the customer so he would know what he was getting, then pour it into the glass where it hardly covered the bottom. Piling the glass with ice just made the drink disappear altogether.

The waitresses complained bitterly. I was killing their tips. They thought I was short-pouring them to make up for my own larceny. Any hopes of a romantic interlude were dashed.

I actually felt for the customers. They would belly up, bright-eyed and expectant. But even veteran tipplers could be thrown by faulty glassware. If a drink didn’t sparkle or look generous their moods would quickly sour. It was the same volume of alcohol they got everywhere else, but it looked like a squirt in the big glass and they took it as a personal affront.

The cocktail glasses were 8 ounce “double martinis” with thick braided stems. They had a line bisecting the bowl at the four ounce mark. It was the high water mark for cocktails—we surpassed it on pain of dismissal. All the cocktails looked incomplete as if the bartender hadn’t made them properly, when in fact much skill had been employed toeing the line.

The customers would squint pointedly at their glasses while I stood there with a hapless smile, all hopes of a gratuity cruelly dashed.

It was killing the business. Hotel guests were going down the block to Kenny’s Steak Pub where the bartenders free-poured into conventional glassware, making the same ounce and a half look like the Johnstown Flood.

I complained to the the General Manager, a Cornell Hotel Management grad, but he was besotted with the design scheme.

“If we put in standard glassware it’ll ruin the look,” he said.

The bartenders were dying, too. Sure, we were the High Priests of the Sacred Fount, dispensing good cheer, sage advice and the occasional condign chastisement. But we made less money than a plumber’s apprentice.

Shift pay was $30 a night. The union deducted dues for a pension which vested after ten years, (effectively meaning never for an itinerant bartender) and health insurance which gave you the right to spend the whole day in a clinic while screeching children and croaking oldsters were triaged ahead of you.

The servers who we called “the floor” made more money than we did. So did the cooks who we called “the help.” Only the porters made less. But they had the hereditary right to plunder lost wallets and loose change on the floor. Once in a while you’d hear a shriek of glee as a porter reaped a bonanza from a dropped purse.

The bartenders huddled. There were four of us, each with a pressing need for money. I had to make my alimony. Danny had to pay his bookie. Freddie’s daughter was at Iona College. Jack was a cross-dresser and his hosiery bills were enormous. We couldn’t complain to the union, couldn’t go on strike.

The glassware issue had risen from my pocket to my psyche. I was going through life with my head down. Cashiers were short changing me. I was saying “excuse me,” and “sorry” more than I ever had in my life.

I dreamt I was in my high school locker room. The other guys on the basketball team were pointing at me and laughing. I looked down and saw that my penis had shrunk to a nub.

That night the place was dead. I stepped behind the bar, ready for another $20 shift, if I was lucky.

“Hey pal, can we get a cocktail?”

I looked up. “Irish” Jerry Quarry, the “Bellflower Bomber,”who had fought Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship, was at the end of the bar with his brother Mike, another ranked boxer and two knockaround pals. Big smiles, twenties up on the bar, getting a head start on the evening.

Jameson on the rocks, VO and Coke and two vodka tonics.

Was I going to short pour these guys?

No way. Let ‘em fire me.

Their eyes sparkled as I filled their glasses to the brim.

“Can I get a whiskey sour?”

I knew that clucking voice from commercials. Standing in the middle of the bar was Frank Perdue, of Perdue Farms, the largest chicken producer in the country. With his pointy head, beak nose and bobbing Adam’s Apple he looked like the world’s largest chicken.

I reversed the recipe. Three ounces of booze to an ounce and a half of lemon juice.

“How ya doin’?”

Two substantial black guys flashing gold from wrist to tooth, slid in. They were members of B.B. King’s Blues Band, I had seen them in the lobby the night before.

“Beefeater and Coke…Wild Turkey with a splash of Seven Up…Just a splash…”

“Just a splash, sir, don’t worry.”

They had never highballs like these, even when they made them for themselves.

The waitresses came up with their table orders. Their eyes widened as I made them huge drinks.

“Is that okay?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Make money my children.”

I hadn’t heard laughter at the bar in months. Everybody was all smiles. I was making people happy.

“Can we get another round?”

“You bet.”

Pretty soon the King sidemen recognized Jerry Quarry.

“Hey champ…”

Perdue looked up from his second sour and squawked:

“Jerry Quarry. I thought that was you…”

Now they were all clustered together, laughing and telling war stories.

“It’s my turn…”

“No, this one’s on me.”

Jerry Quarry leaned over the bar.

“Hey, is it against the rules to buy the bartender a drink?”

“It is strictly verboten,”I said in a burlesque German accent, while pouring myself a triple Hennessy to general hilarity.

At closing I had two hundred bucks in my pocket.

Quarry and Perdue were off to Toots Shor’s. The sidemen were tottering to a gig.

Olga, the Norwegian waitress followed me out into the street.

“You think you can get away with this?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I said. “I’m sick and tired of those stupid glasses.”

“Well, I did really well tonight thanks to you,” she said.

“Your legs helped….”

“So I’m going to buy you a drink now. “Okay?”

“Absolutely not.”

She laughed and took my arm. She pressed against me as we crossed the street.

Oh yeah…I was a man again.