Monthly Archive for August, 2011

Research Shows Constipation Is Primary Cause Of Crime

Boulder, Col,, Aug. 25th…An explosive new study  claims that constipation is the number one cause of crime in the developed world.

“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.”

THE DAILY EVENT FUTURE BEAT:EXOPLANET IN DEFAULT BLAMES “EARTHGREED”

 Reprint from March 27, 2009

THE DAILY EVENT FUTURE BEAT

Sparing no expense in its determination to pique the interest of its demanding, easily distracted readership, the Daily Event has sent reporter Dale Arden hurtling at near light speed–and great personal risk–through a space/time wormhole into the future. This is her first dispatch.

EXOPLANET IN DEFAULT BLAMES “EARTHGREED”

SPACE STATION MAMMON, March 27, 2059…Plagued by non-performing loans, fund redemptions and collateral calls the planet Gliese 581c edged closer to bankruptcy yesterday.

Trading on the Gliesian “Astral” was halted after it plunged to As11,000 to the dollar on the Near Space Currency Exchange.

Rhapsodia, which is what Gliesians called their planet, B.C. (Before Contact) had been trying to negotiate bridge loans and an extension on payments due, said Chief Monetizer Etaoin Shrdlu, but “our terrestrial counter-parties have turned their backs on us.” He said that Gliese 581c with a mass 1.5 times the size of earth is “too big to fail,” and warned that “unless we receive emergency aid we’ll all be consumed in a financial super nova that will reduce our bi-solar system to a shantytown of barren asteroids.”

In Beijing, Galactic Reserve Bank Chairman Heng Mao agreed that “we cannot easily overcome the gravity of this situation,” but accused Gliese of “gamma ray rhetoric.”

“The Gliesians have created an unsustainable consumer economy based on easy credit, baseless speculation and chaotic deregulation,” Heng said. “To bail them out now would be to throw more money down a black hole.”

The Earth-Gliese Articles of Confederation promise “sempiternal harmony” to the peoples of both planets, but in recent years the union has been shaken by accusations of mismanagement, malfeasance and corruption. This is a tragic development to elderly earth scientists who remember the morning of April 24, 2007 when news came from the La Silla Paranol Observatory in Southern Chile that an exoplanet had been discovered orbiting the red dwarf Gliese about 20.5 light years from earth. To the gleeful astronomers who had been “planet hunting” for years it was a possible kindred spirit in the vast, ever-expanding universe. Orbiting in what they called “the Goldilocks zone,” not too hot or too cold, it had atmospheric conditions that could support life forms similar to earth’ s. The temperature range was between 32 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Some computer models posited a rocky, mountainous surface; others detected a “seaworld” of temperate oceans with a profusion of life forms flourishing beneath the surface.

Radio waves were instantly beamed from observatories and satellites all over the planet. For years there was no response, but the scientists persisted. Then on December 24, 2015, a faint wave was received. Some described it as “tentative, almost reluctant.” Later it emerged that the Gliesians, a shy people, had been unnerved by this bombardment of signals, not understanding that there was an intense competition on earth to see who would be the first to communicate with them.

Scientists on both planets worked tirelessly to develop a rudimentary code. A technology was perfected to transmit graphics…then photographs…then videos. Linguistics specialists created a new language and soon the planets were conversing with fluent comprehension.

In those heady days the two planets were exhilarated to learn that they were not alone in the universe. Every bit of information was a revelation. The computer models had been half right. Gliese 581c was half-rock, half-ocean. In grainy images transmitted across 20.5 light years the rock people looked like centaurs, half-being, half-vehicle with bulbous heads and four suction casters for climbing. The sea dwellers were like mermaids, half-being, half-motorized tail. Anthropologists were amazed at how closely they resembled creatures from earthly myths. But some were alarmed. On Fox News Network Bill O’Reilly warned that “these Gliesians obviously visited earth in our prehistory, planted commands in our preconscious minds, and now plan to return to enslave us.”

In spite of their physical differences the Gliesians were a united people. They were stressless and amiable, each group supplying the needs of the other. They had achieved voluntary immortality, controlling their moments of what they called “inception” and “cessation.” Eager to please their new friends on earth they agreed to change the name of their planet to Gliese.

“They live in tranquil cooperation,” Dr. Phil said, and was overheard muttering to an assistant: “if this spreads to earth it will put us all out of business.”

But analysts soon found that there was one area in which the Gliesians were deficient: They had no economy.

“They were less sophisticated than the most primitive village in the Amazon,” says economist Elliot Gruber-Yonge. “They didn’t even understand potlatch.”

“We had been humbled by their superior lifestyle,” adds psychologist Anne Grosspiske. “Now we realized we had something to teach them.”

Economists set to work helping the Gliesians build an economic system.

“First, we created a currency, the astral, which would replace barter and capricious generosity as a way of dispensing and acquiring services ” says Gruber-Yonge. “Then, we encouraged the Gliesians to value their assets. This was tremendously exciting as they realized that some of them owned property that was more valuable than their neighbors.” A flourishing real estate market grew up overnight. Luxurious caves and underwater palaces were built. Earth attorneys helped the Gliesians devise a legal system to enforce contracts and settle disputes.

“The next step was to get the Gliesians to value their own labor,” says Gruber-Yonge. “Many were delighted to see that their skills were worth more than their neighbors.” Compensation schedules were created. An elite separated itself from the mass. Comparative wealth created rich and poor, upper and lower class…” Gruber-Yonge pauses with a reverent look. “It was alike watching the six days of creation.”

The inevitable conflicts of a flourishing economy caused tension and resentment, which the legal system expanded to resolve. Police agencies were created to enforce the laws. Prisons were built.

Meanwhile, bankers on earth created an exchange to trade in Gliesian stocks, property and currency. The Chinese, who had run out of places on earth to invest, were enthusiastic about this new market. Astrals were converted to dollars. Fortunes were made.

“The Gliesians were amazed at how we could create wealth out of thin air,” says Gruber-Yonge. “They formed hundreds of corporations for their new stock exchange. They checked the prices every day. Used their astrals to invest in the earth markets.”

Earth bankers converted stimulus billions into astrals, which they lent to Gliesian monetizers, who then lent them to their fledgling capitalists and returned the interest to earth in the form of astrals, which were quickly converted into dollars. Earth bankers traded astral futures among themselves and made gigantic bets in the Gliesian markets.

“Gliesians were fascinated by the concept of leverage,” Gruber-Yonge says. “To them it was magical. They praised us to the sky.”

With the astral pegged at one to two dollars profits were astronomical.

“In a leveraged developing economy there are no losers,” Gruber-Yonge says. “A fishtail (we called them rockheads and fishtails) borrowed a milliion astrals to build an underwater yo yo factory and sold it for forty million three months later.”

But slowly, imperceptibly a consumer economy took hold.

“Gliesans were purchasing and manufacturing products they didn’t really need,” says Gruber-Yonge ruefully. “They were caught up in a spending and leveraging frenzy. Then, they woke up one morning and there was nothing left to buy.”

With sagging demand factories closed, jobs were lost, loans and mortgages were delinquent. Earth banks began to report losses as Gliesians defaulted. The astral plunged. The dollar was in crisis. The Chinese, enraged that once again their trillion dollar investment had been devalued, called for the creation of “an intergalactic reserve currency that is disconnected from individual planets and remains stable.”

Earth governments intervened and nationalized the banks, wiping out the Gliesian shareholders.

Gliese, faced with massive unemployment, plunging property values and social unrest, appealed to earth.

“Your greed has brought us to the brink of this precipice. You will create more credit for your banks and recover your wealth, but we are ruined.”

And now the Gliesians learned a new economic concept–the write-off. Earth bankers sent their regrets. There was nothing they could do.

This morning in what was described as an energy-saving move, Earth switched off its communication links with Gliese.

As the signal faded, a Gliesian could be heard lamenting:

“We’ll never be able to call ourselves Rhapsodia again.”

Heywood Gould interviews Heywood Gould for Nigel Bird @Sea Minor

   INTERVIEW

Heywood Gould Interviews Heywood Gould

Why are you doing this interview?

 To promote my new book The Serial Killer’s Daughter.

 Why should people buy your book?

 To generate enough sales so I can publish another one. And maybe get a movie deal.

 Let me rephrase the question: with so many books available why should people buy Serial Killer’s Daughter?

 Because if won’t do me any good if they buy somebody else’s book, yo…

Okay. What’s special about Serial Killer’s Daughter?

It’s a sexy, suspenseful thriller that will keep you guessing at every turn, while providing a life affirming, redemptive, poetic exploration of man’s place in the universe.

So you have moderately good sales. What happens next?

I raise my profile in the market place.  I e mail a hundred publishers and accept the least insulting advance. My next book drops stillborn from the press with no advertising and no book tour unless I pay for one myself. I  drive hours to a signing attended by an old lady on a walker who thought she was coming for Mary Higgins Clark and a homeless guy who eats all the cupcakes. A producer  calls, full of extravagant praise, although he’s only skimmed the three page “coverage” written by his assistant who read the book after being stood up by a Match. com date. I give him a free option for twenty years or the term of my natural life, whichever comes first.

That doesn’t sound so great..

It is for me and for the people around me. Consider the alternative. The book bombs. No publishers, no producers. I sit in the dark in my underwear, muttering imprecations. I become a burden on family and friends. Vast sums are spent on pharmaceuticals…

If your book doesn’t sell will you be able to muster the energy to write another one?

Oh sure. Writing is a compulsion, not a profession. I’ve been doing it since I was six and will continue until the day I die. I’m just lucky I can make a living at it. But repeated failure will cause me to doubt myself. Have I dried up?  Has age taken its toll?  I’ll write and rewrite, first the same page, then the same sentence, the same word. I’ll be attacked by punctuation anxiety. They’ll rush in to find me rolling on the floor screaming. “A comma…You idiot, it’s a semi-colon…No, goddamit, a comma…”

How about a brief biographical sketch.

I only recall fragments and images from my childhood.

Fine, give me fragments.

At the end of long dark hallway in my grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx a monster lurks waiting to eat me. My aunt’s false teeth are in a jelly jar on the bathroom sink. A memorial candle for my grandfather flickers in the kitchen. I see his ghost’s shadow flitting along the walls. A kid in a sandbox is raising a toy shovel and hitting me in the head. I open the bedroom closet and find my mother, hiding among the coats, sobbing…

Can we move on?

My adolescence is devoted to basketball and self-abuse; the sport changes to baseball during the summer. As I get older I diversify my self-abuse to include, alcohol, drugs, pathetic attempts at seduction, frustration at not being able to write a simple short story like Chekhov…

Thank you,  I think we’re okay on biography. Can you give us a brief synopsis of Serial Killer’s Daughter?

I’ll let Peter Vogel, the protagonist describe the book. After all, he lived through it, not me…Take it away, Peter 

This is so typical of me. I make a sex- for term papers- deal with a whacko chick in my American Lit. class. She sticks around just long enough to make me fall crazy in love with her, then disappears. Six months later she’s back like nothing happened. But then the weirdness starts. My apartment is invaded. Bodies are found in a dumpster. Thugs try to run me off the road.  One night she confesses: she’s the daughter of a notorious serial killer, doing life in a super max for eleven murders. Somebody is trying to kill her and I’m the only one who can protect her. But now they’re after me, too. They stalk us on the road, in hotels, everywhere. The cops don’t believe us. They think we’re renegade drug mules being hunted by the cartel. I get so freaked out I kill a dude who’s been tailing us. So now I’m on the run. Our only chance is to figure out who’s after us and get them first. And the only person who can help us is her dad.

Sounds like a thriller.

It’s a thriller wrapped up in a mystery. But it’s really a love story.

Covering all bases?

I’m trying to break into the cosy market.

Is this book autobiographical?

Yes, except for the sex scenes.

Can you describe the book in one word?

It’s a warning.

About what?

About hot women—they’re always in trouble.
About getting what you wish for—you pay plenty and you’re always disappointed. About trying to save someone’s life—you won’t and the bad guys will come after you as well.
About commiting murder—it’s easier than it seems.
About criminals—they never feel guilty
About cops—they see a guy with a beautiful woman they want to throw him in jail.
About the world—it’s an unjust, capricious, place. Stay indoors as much as possible. 

That’s pretty bleak.

Really? I think it’s positively Buddhist. Once you cleanse yourself of all passion, ambition and illusion, you can begin to find peace…only if you have abandoned all hope…

Okay, I get it. Let’s talk about your career.

My career has been a series of lucky encounters. A guy I met in Greenwich Village told me they needed copy boys at the NY Post. A man from IBM came into my office by mistake, then mistook me for someone else and hired me as a consultant. A woman I talked to on a bus was an editor at a paperback publishing house. A guy I played poker with was a producer for the TV show NYPD. An agent I knew had two partners  looking for someone to write a cheap  script about two cops in the South Bronx. A friend’s upstairs neighbor worked with Bill Devane who needed a rewrite for a movie called Rolling Thunder.

Didn’t talent have anything to do with it?

If you factor talent into the equation how do you explain the no-talent bums who are doing so much better than you?

Okay, so it’s all coincidence and luck and who you know. Does that mean there are geniuses out there whose work has never been discovered?

And never will be.

Well, that’s encouraging.

Oh it is.  You see it’s so much easier to accept failure when you see life as a series of random collisions…

Thank you. I think we’re covered on the zen fatalism. You were involved in some pretty glamorous Hollywood projects. That must have been fun.

Oh yeah, laughs galore.. On Fort Apache the Bronx I was called a racist and chased down the street. Then, sued by a cop who said I stole his script. Then somebody posted a slanderous Wikiipedia piece about the movie

Everybody loves Cocktail now, but it was slammed so badly by the critics that I took to my bed for three days. I still meet people who say, “how could you destroy your own novel?” And I say, “what do you want me to do, send the fucking check back?”

One Good Cop was…

I think I get your drift. What’s your new book about?

A bitter writer  wreaking horrific vengeance on people who exploited him…

Is it autobiographical?

Of course not. What would give you that idea?

Any place we can get a drink around here?

You buying?

 For the original interview and other author’s interviewing themselves visit:

http://nigelpbird.blogspot.com/2011/07/dancing-with-myself-heywood-gould.html