Restrictions Apply

      When the idea of a very low-carb diet is bruited about to family, friends, and even enemies, a common refrain is that it is too "restrictive".  Spoiler alert.  It is restrictive, very much so.  However, this restriction is not mere accident or cussedness on part of the proponent, it is in fact the entire point of the exercise.

     When someone is drying out from an alcoholic binge, they do not hear claims that they are pursuing a course of unhealthy restriction of their alcohol intake.  Nor do smoking quitters hear blather about their balefully low and restrictive tobacco consumption.   In the case of low-carbers, they are battling carbohydrate toxicity, and yes that's a thing, a monstrously huge thing, so restricting all that carbage is the most efficacious way to overcome it.  Additionally, at the same time the low-carber is battling carbohydrate addiction.  Which is also very much a real thing and is easily proven by most people's entrenched reluctance to quit their beloved "comfort" foods. Unfortunately, in this context the proper synonyms for comfort are, or should be, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, numerous autoimmune conditions, kidney disease, and fatty liver.

     "Autoimmune" covers a lot of sickly ground.  Conditions and diseases that once affected tiny percentages of the population are now rampant and increasing in lockstep with our miserable diets.  Walk down the aisles of any big box or grocery store in the U.S. and witness the prevalence of quasi-mobile human parade balloons.  A week ago, at a Wally World, I saw a husband, wife, and teenaged daughter who collectively had to weigh in excess of a thousand pounds.  This trio is, literally, a burden on society.  And as time goes on they will be a tremendous burden and drain on the medical system, along with a hundred million of their hefty compatriots.  Even now that system is becoming ever more ramshackle and swamped by a populous that is bound and determined to eat themselves to an early death.  A populous, and a medical establishment, that is sneeringly derisive of the idea of "restriction".

       

Span of Life

      I have become convinced that an ultra-low-carb lifestyle will result in a significant increase in lifespan for those who stick with it.  And it will be an increased lifespan almost by default.  By that I mean if you are not beset by any of the panorama of chronic conditions abetted by the catastrophically awful Standard American Diet, then of course you are going to live longer.  Almost all of those chronic autoimmune conditions are ultimately deadly.  They kill millions of people each year, which drags down the average lifespan of the population.  Which, after decades of increasing average lifespans, are once again on the decline. And that decline includes the many surgical and chemical interventions that were responsible for the rise in the first place.  It is more than fair to say that we are in the middle of an epidemic of chronic metabolic malfunctions.

     Without those medical interventions the average lifespan would not be merely in decline, but in free fall.  What is most certainly true is that the population's level of suffering has steadily increased despite all the drugs and surgeries thrown at the problem.  For instance.  Deaths from heart disease have, until recently, been on the decline, but the incidence of heart disease has increased substantially.  The same can be said for almost all other autoimmune conditions, which include diabetes, psoriasis, arthritis, Chrone's disease, IBS, cognitive decline, and Alzheimer's to name but a few.  All of which, and I do mean all, have a direct causal relationship with our excremental carbage saturated lifestyles.  And they all produce physical, and mental, suffering that would test the patience of Saint Bernadette.

     I would not be the least bit surprised to see in the coming years that ultra-low-carb eaters' lifespans increase substantially.  Baring the usual caveat of being hit by a bus, or having some other kind of fatal accident, lifespans could easily exceed a century or more.  There is a term of art in the low-carb community known as "healthspan".  Which means the amount of time you are metabolically and mentally healthy.  Again by default, if you have an increased health span you will ipso facto have an increased lifespan.  The biggest problem with this scenario will be the psychic pain induced by watching your age cohort dropping like flies far sooner than necessary because of their wretched dietary haabits.  

     No one wants to live to, or past, a hundred as a cognitively challenged, immobile, and pharmaceutically dependent lump of senile nursing home protoplasm.  Conversely, everyone would like to live past a hundred if they are metabolically and mentally healthy, active, and not in a nursing home drooling into their Ensure and swallowing twenty pills a day.  Such is now within our grasp. 

     

    

    

     

Correlation Is Not You Know What.

       As everyone knows, or bloody well should know, in the scientific world correlation is not causation.  However, in the fields of nutrition and chronic disease the confusion of corr. with cause is rampant.  Rampant and deadly.  Current nutritional dogma, and dogma it certainly is, demonizes meat consumption and glorifies plant consumption.   You've heard of the big lie?  This is one of the biggest lies around.  The lie is based on what is called "epidemiology".  Epidemiology works well for the control of infectious diseases, but when confronted with the explosive "epidemic" of chronic conditions we are currently experiencing, its usefulness is questionable, to put it mildly.

     When doing a nutrition "study", the standard investigative tool is the food frequency questionnaire.  The "data" derived from said questionnaires is entirely dependent on the subject's memory of how much and how frequently they eat the foodstuffs enumerated in the questions.  Can you accurately determine how much of anything you ate over the last year?  Didn't think so.  Can you accurately remember what you ate over that span of time?  And, even if you've written down everything you've eaten, are you honest about it?  Or are your answers meant to play to someone's idea of a "healthy diet"?

     Then there are the "confounders".  Which are circumstances which should be taken into account, but  are often discounted, or outright ignored in pursuit of what a researcher seeks to prove.  A typical such circumstance in nutritional epidemiological studies is baying to the public that "meat increases your risk of heart disease."  Only the putative level attested to by respondents is considered, and not what else a heavy meat eater normally consumes.  Such as fries, bread, cookies, ice cream, and the vast panorama of carbage processed food.  Meat is essentially guilty until proven innocent, which it almost never is.  Only if one is eating very few carbs, or none, can a reasonably statistical inference be drawn about the "dangers" of eating meat.

      Such a study has yet to be done, although there are increased efforts to do so in light of the near miraculous ability of ultra low-carb diets to ameliorate, or reverse, a wide variety of chronic conditions.  As they say, "More research is needed."  Which frequently only means "We need more funding.", but is literally true in the case of low-carb nutritional research.

      

Inflamming The Populace

     There is a lot of chatter these days about "inflammation" being the boogeyman for all things metabolic.  I used to think that such talk was overly alarmist, but no more.  "Inflammation" just means tissue irritation, but years or decades of that constant irritation can be more accurately described as "damage".  But what is doing all this damage to our metabolisms?  There care a number of factors, including sundry environmental issues, but the vast majority of this damage is caused by what we stuff down our pie-holes.  In and of itself this is not that controversial, but the remedy for all this damaging inflammation is controversial as hell.

     Vegan activists, and their sycophants in the meedja, swear up and down that a plant based diet is the way to go to reduce said inflammation.  To a limited extent this is true, initially.  When one goes on a vegan or vegetarian diet there is a strong tendency to avoid the tsunami of sugar saturated junk food available to us.  This alone will result in some health improvements.  However, as time passes the low nutritional level of plants becomes a problem, a bigger and bigger problem over the years, until the veggies' health takes a nose dive which no amount of supplementation can reverse.

     A meat based way of eating with a very low level of carbs needs no serious supplementation.  The only supplement I use is Vitamin D because I don't get enough sun.  Since I eat eggs I may well not need the Vitamin D, but I take is a a purely precautionary measure.  That's it, and I have zero symptoms of any other vitamin or mineral deficiency, including Vitamin C.

     A meat heavy very low-carb diet is the least inflammatory regimen there is, period.  And since inflammation damage is a principle cause of auto-immune conditions, and a wide variety of other chronic conditions, all of those things can be prevented, ameliorated, or even completely reversed.  Hyper-insulinemia, the result of binging on carbs, is the number one cause of the explosion of obesity, diabetes, and many other maladies that are plaguing the populations of the industrialized countries.  So, eat your carbs, the ones you just can't do without, and enjoy your life while you can.  But, if they don't cause early death from a wide variety of chronic conditions, you will slowly and painfully deteriorate in body and mind until your last years will be occupied by being immobile, confused, and in constant pain while swallowing a handful of pills every few hours in a nursing home.  What you "gotta have" will be replaced by what you actually got.

Carnivore Causes Depression

     No, not that kind of depression.  Carnivore, and low-carb generally, does in fact greatly alleviate, even completely reverses, what we normally think of the sundry dysfunctional mental states we lump together as depression.  The depression of which I am speaking is the realization that the people of the modern world, and our friends and acquaintances specifically, are in so many cases enduring needless suffering from a wide variety of nasty "chronic" autoimmune diseases while not coincidentally puffing up the profits of big pharma and food.  And there is very little, if anything, that we personally can do about it.

    About all we can do is offer our own experiences as a model for possible emulation.  Which is pretty weak tea, rhetorically speaking.  The concepts of the "balanced diet", the inherent goodness of whole grains, fruit, and vegetables paradigm, and that saturated fat is bad for you, are so embedded in the public psyche that even if near death most people are unwilling to change to a meat based way of eating.  Six decades of institutional, governmental and private, hostility towards animal products, red meat in particular, has seen to that.

     That hostility is getting worse, not better, and is now clothed in the holy vestments of climate change, the histrionics of the "meat is murder" enthusiasts, and the relentless drumbeat of vegan fear mongering.  These malign influences get stronger by the day, and they extend from the WHO all the way down the nutritional and medical chain to your local doc.  That is what is so appalling, frustrating, and yes depressing.  Holding up one's own greatly improved health as an example cuts little ice in the face of such embedded, not to say adamantinely fossilized, hostility.  

Runs In The Family

      An old joke goes:  Doc., "Does obesity run in your family?"  Patient, "Nobody runs in my family".   Funny, but obfuscatory.  Much is made these days about chronic diseases that are hereditary in nature.  A constant refrain is, (insert chronic disease of your choice) runs in my family".  The clear implication is that there is nothing to be done.  Genetics wins out in the end, or if that doesn't convince, you may prefer the unhelpful verdict of "bad luck". 

     This is all, to put it gently, blithering malarkey.  Look at what your family ate and drank in the previous generations.  The degenerative and chronic conditions they suffered were directly related to what they ate. drank, and smoked.  Not bad luck, not genetics, and not the will of the almighty.  It is what they stuffed down their pieholes that was responsible for their many ills and seemingly inevitable cognitive decline.  And more and more frequently the sick aged population is expanding into not only into the middle-aged, but children as well.  No age group is immune to chronic diseases anymore.  Diseases which in large part are the wages of decades of carboholism.

     Obesity, diabetes, epilepsy, autism, and a wide variety of chronic diseases ever more afflict all age groups.  It's entirely fair to characterize this as an epidemic.  Our population is almost violently fatter than our parents generation, and their parents before them.  Walk into any grocery or big box store and behold the numerous parade balloon shaped people, male and female, old and young, galumping through the aisles.  Watch shopping carts fill to the brim with sugary sodas, cookies, crackers, chips, candy, ice cream, bread, pastry, potatoes, mac & cheese, pizza, "skim" milk, and margarine, on and on carbs without end.  Merely witnessing this is liable to spike your own blood sugar.  Those parade balloons did not get that way through "bad luck".

     So America, enjoy your diabetes, arthritis, psoriasis, heart disease, Alzheimers, atherosclerosis, fatty liver, kidney failure, depression, cognitive decline etc. etc. etc.  None if it is your fault because as we all know, those things run in the family.

    

The Big Switch

     There are an increasing number of reports of people switching from veganism to the carnivore diet.  A web search will turn up dozens if not hundreds of such tales.  Switching from carnivore to vegan is much rarer, vanishingly so.  But, doing a web search on carnivore to vegan will turn up just as many or more sites.  After reading a goodly number of such stories I realized that we are dealing with a rather large disparity in defining what carnivore is.  Currently, those on a strict carnivore way of eating limit themselves to animal food products almost exclusively.  In my case, and very many others, I consume only one plant product in quantity, which is coffee.  Fortunately, coffee has had no noticeable affect on my overall health.

     What the vegan community considers carnivore is anyone who includes any sort of animal food product in their diet.  This is of course how the bulk of the U.S. population eats, especially the bulky part.  Those on the "Standard American Diet" normally include meat, dairy, and fish on a regular basis, but they also include large amounts of starchy carbohydrates, sugar, fruit, and vegetable oils.  Some consume as much as 80% of their diet in carbs and sugar.  So the vegan idea of carnivore, and the strict carnivore idea are at complete odds.

     In the wild, mammal predators eat only other animals they can kill or scavenge.  Their systems have been fine tuned to digest meat, and plant matter doesn't enter into the picture at all.  Such predators are called "obligate" carnivores, meaning that they must eat meat to survive.  Mammals who eat mostly meat but can tolerate some carbs are called "facultative" carnivores.  Dogs and bears fall into the facultative category.  Cats, even housecats, are virtually all obligate carnivores.  Housecats eat plant foods only at their peril, and the peril of their owners' vet bills.  Many consider humans to be facultative carnivores, therefore capable of eating a wide variety of things.  However arguably true that is, the fact remains that humans eat a huge variety of things that can and do harm them if consumed for a long enough period.  So we are then indeed facultative carnivores, but that does not mean we can just stuff whatever strikes our fancy down our gullets for decades free of consequences. The more of that "facultative" junk food we eat, the worse our health outcomes will be.

        It is my contention that modern humans need to be obligate carnivores to truly thrive and to repair the ravages of decades of carb and sugar consumption.  The older we are, the more imperative it is that we avoid carbs and sugar seeing as how they are the proximate cause of virtually all human chronic conditions, including the bane of the aged, cognitive decline.  Ignore the utterly misguided drumbeat of the anti-meat activists.  Eat mostly meat, and watch it improve your life in ways you never imagined.  In short, you can live to eat, as most people do, or eat to live, as most people most assuredly do not.

My Parents Ruined My Life

      A clickbaity title for sure, but essentially true.  Of course it was not remotely their fault, and in fact they spent large amounts of money, and eons of time, trying to deal with my many childhood and teen-aged maladies.  Obesity, acne, asthma, and severe eczema to name but a few.  Everything they tried, following a "doctor's" advice, failed utterly.  Lotions, potions, creams, pills, shots, dietary interventions, chiropractic, temporary removal to other locations in the country, and even gruesome "Aveeno" baths, which was merely powdered oatmeal stirred into bathwater.  It was supposed to sooth eczema racked skin, and it sort of did, but only while actually sitting in the noxious mixture.

     I was hyper-sensitive to skin infections, including a particularly nasty one called impetigo, which was a routine occurrence.  As an obese asthmatic my ability to exercise was very limited.  All in all it was a miserable childhood for me, and a frustrating expensive nightmare for my parents.  I recall one attempt at a dietary intervention in the early 1960s which involved "gluten" bread.  An odd name for bread that was supposed to be devoid of gluten.  In any case, the experiment was just another failure.  Any benefits were swamped by an otherwise extremely high-carb diet.  They tried cutting out several different foods in the quest for my relief, but oddly they never considered limiting starch, sugar, or fruit.  

     It's not that we didn't eat meat.  We ate quite a lot, but it was always accompanied by mounds of  potatoes, rice, bread, and other starchy vegetables.  And there was an endless parade of sugary cereals, sugary soft drinks, candy, cakes, pies, spaghetti, toast, jams, jellies, oatmeal, pancakes, waffles, syrup, brownies, fudge, cookies, donuts, fried pies, milk chocolate, ice cream, bananas, watermelon, Jello "salads", fried everything, etc. etc. etc, ad, literally, nauseum.  Oh, and barrels of "vegetable" oils of one kind or another, especially Crisco and Mazola corn oil.  All of which were, essentially, poisonous to me.

     The utterly clueless doctors in our town, and everywhere else for that matter, told them I might grow out of all the problems in time.  Some of the problems did ease up after puberty, but many did not, and in fact got worse.  Suffice to say that doctors were not my favorite class of people, and they still aren't.  And now doctors who are clueless about the healing powers of low-carb eating are even more deserving of my disdain.  They receive little nutrition training, and what there is, is just the old tired mantra of recommending low-fat, low-cholesterol, low red meat diets filled with vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and "healthy" vegetable oils.  It's all a huge crock of debunked doody, and it was no less so sixty years ago.  It has to be counted a near miracle that I did not end up a diabetic with a missing foot, have a fatal heart attack, a stroke, contract cancer of some kind, or already be in cognitive decline.

     It took me seventy years to work my way around to realizing the benefits of low-carb eating, losing a wife to the ravages of sugar and carbs along the way.  Seventy years in distress and difficulty because virtually the entire medical establishment was/is dead set against nutritional sanity.  Annnd, the increasingly shrill propaganda of vegan kooks and the PETA-philes affects docs no less than the public.  Propaganda that is aided and abetted by a welter of corporate and governmental interests.  In short, if you break an arm, or have another traumatic injury, the doctor is your huckleberry.  If you have an autoimmune condition, they won't help worth a damn, and very likely will make things worse.  

     This disgusting state of affairs is changing, but at a glacial pace.  Unsurprising considering that real change in this arena is battling entrenched social headwinds.  Every time a doc recommends the government food pyramid, they are violating their Hippocratic oath.  They don't know they are doing it, but as they say in law, ignorance is no excuse.

How Do You Know?

    How do you know which autoimmune diseases can be significantly improved or reversed by an ultra-low carb way of eating?  Easy answer.  All of them.  Diabetes Type 1 and 2, Chrone's, IBS and IBD, SIBO, psoriasis, eczema, epilepsy, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, MS, Parkinsons, lupus, myasthenia gravis, celiac disease, pernicious anemia, and Alzheimers.  Not a complete list by any means, but you get the drift.  Some are harder to control than others, with T2 diabetes being one of the easiest, and MS one of the hardest.

     Going beyond the world of auto-immune, technically speaking, are such conditions as obesity, fatty liver, gout, atherosclerosis, gastroparesis, asthma, periodontitis, severe acne, and osteoporosis/osteopenia.  An even more incomplete list.  Then there are mental conditions such as depression in all its many variants, schizophrenia, cognitive decline/Alzheimer's, and very nearly the rest of the mental disability list in textbooks that respond very well to very low-carb eating.  Scoff as you will, but emerging research, and by now millions of anecdotal successes dealing with those many ailments are ever more coming to light.  Which makes the increasing drumbeat of the deluded plant people, and their demonization of animal products, red meat especially, ever more dangerous to public health, and evermore makes our population sicker and beholden to big food and big pharma.  As Professor Harold Hill said, "Makes your blood boil?  Well I should say!"     

 

Fate Train

 

      Hi-ho Chickweed fans.  How's about another little ramble about our favorite cartoon characters.  I felt moved to write this short scribble after seeing Mary's humiliation during her visit to Amos and Edda last winter.  I, irrationally perhaps, thought she didn't deserve what happened, so I thought and thought, then in alternate Chickweed world I fixed it.  It was written in a great rush, so don't be too hard on me.  Warning: semi-X-rated

                                                              Fate Train

      I have just spent the most humiliating day of my life.  And I've spent several hundred dollars I can ill afford to boot.  Right now I can't remember what possessed me to come to the city and look up Edda and Amos.  But also right now I'm in the middle of an absurd elemental depression.  At this moment it seems that my entire life has been one failure after another.  Which isn't strictly true since I'm a fairly competent Physician's Assistant, but in just about every other personal metric, especially those of a romantic nature, I'm a dismal failure.
     Humiliation sounds like a strong word, but I can't characterize what has happened any other way.  It kicked off when Amos didn't seem to know me.  I say "seem" because it's entirely possible he was pretending not to know me.  I can't decide which is worse.  Then, after I'd gussied myself up in my hotel room to at least a minimally glamorous level, I went to the tango parlor they and their friends frequented.  I encountered two other couples, friends of Edda and Amos, who appeared to be wildly happy in their relationships.  So happy, and apparently so besotted with each other, they both promptly escaped back into the night bent on delightfully dissipating the libidinous tango parlor ambiance.  Even the van Hoesen's were in no mood to tango, so we retired to their apartment.  Then after a quick meal I was sent on my way.  Not exactly the bum's rush, but close.
     Edda seemed quite cool to me, and Amos entirely indifferent.  I was dressed to the nines, my version of it at least, and I suppose it's possible she thought that I was trying to attract Amos' attention.  That was certainly not true.  That ship sailed well over a decade ago and I am resigned to it.  I just wanted to take advantage of an excuse to dress up, something I very rarely have an opportunity to do.  As the saying goes, I still have my figure, which these days is indeed an accomplishment for a thirty year-old.  Not that I was ever voluptuous, but I've managed to maintain my senior high school weight for twelve years.
     After I left the van Hoesen's Brooklyn digs I scooted back to my hotel room, crammed my belongings into my bag and headed for the train station, where I caught the last train headed to New Hampshire and points northeast.  The car was nearly empty, the only occupant was a guy sitting close to the back reading a book.  I sat somewhere in the middle on the window seat.  As I glumly watched the lights flash by, the whole wretched affair of the evening, and most of my adult life, crashed down around me.  Tears blurred my eyes and in less than a minute I was heaving in sobs.
     I've never cried in public before, but I was past caring about such niceties.  I also don't think I've ever cried that hard at all.  At that moment my life seemed nothing but missed chances.  What had I been thinking coming to New York?  I no longer have the slightest connection with the van Hoesen's lives, and this night has driven that home in sledgehammer fashion.  Yes, I was feeling sorry for myself.  Crushingly sorry, so the tears rolled, and rolled.  Crying so hard I could hardly draw breath.
     Abruptly, through my swimming tears I saw someone plop down beside me, put their arm around my shoulder, then say,  "Mary Louise, lean on me, sweetie.  Let it all out."
     So I did.  I hadn't the slightest idea who had their arm around me, but hearing my name I couldn't resist.  I melted into the person's, guy's, suit clad chest and sobbed on.  He gently stroked my hair, but didn't say a thing.  Some minutes later I ran out of sobs, and had soaked his shirt with tears.  The fellow put a handkerchief in my hands. Who carries a handkerchief any more?  I blew my nose and wiped at my eyes with the hanky, but didn't lean away from him.  I didn't want to abandon the warm solid presence of him, even if his actions were pure pity.  After a couple more minutes of leaning on his chest, I slowly pushed away from him and asked,  "You know my name.  Do I know you?"
     He smiled.  It was a very nice smile in a very nice face.  Not an especially handsome face but a nice face despite that, with big brown eyes that were boring into mine.
     "You do know me, or of me at least.  But, I look a lot different than when we were at St. Camilla's.  I'm Del Taylor."
    "Oh lord, Del.  Sorry I didn't remember you.  And so sorry we had to meet like this.  I must look like pure hell."
    "Yes, you do, but I can make allowances because I've had a major crush on you since tenth grade.  The prettiest girl at school, in my considered opinion.  And you still are, present circumstances notwithstanding."
    I gaped at him.  "Del, this is a really bad time for someone to be hitting on me."
    "I'm absolutely not hitting on you.  I'm just providing a handy shoulder to cry on.  Anyway, I'm not surprised you didn't recognize me.  I'm about eighty pounds lighter than I was in high school.  And I was shy beyond words back then."
    "Why didn't you ever ask me out?"
    "That whole shyness thing I suppose.  I was an overweight geek, and you seemed way out of my league."
    I snorted.  "Out of your league?  There's a laugh.  Del, I've never thought I was out of anyone's league.  I hardly dated at all back then."
    "Amos never asked you out?  I know he was crushing on you really hard for several years."
    "No, he didn't.  There was a very strange dynamic going on there.  I didn't like him at all at first, despite him being Edda's best friend.  I spent a lot of years at St. Camilla's treating him like dirt because he kept pursuing me.  But, I eventually realized that Edda was his soulmate and even if I had thrown myself at him it wouldn't have done any good.  Unfortunately, I'd fallen in love with him.  Really stupid of me I know.  Listen, we're almost at the station.  I know it's late, but I could use someone to talk to, if you don't mind.  Are you up for coffee at my apartment?"
    "I'll be glad to do that very thing, but are you sure about this?  You hardly know me at all."
    "Maybe not, but at least I remember you now, and you seem like a good listener, and that's what I need right now, desperately.  But, a listener is all I need right now.  Understand?"
    "Yes, I do.  I'll take a hands-off approach."
    "Thank you, although I have to say that your arm around my shoulder was exactly what I needed at that moment."

                                                                     ...........

    "How do you like your coffee?"
    "Black, with a pinch of salt."
    "Really?  Never heard of that before."
    "Just a personal quirk of mine.  Salt helps to take the bitterness out of black coffee."
    "No sweetener?"
    "Nope.  I swore off.  I swore off a lot of things.  It's why I don't look like the Pillsbury Doughboy anymore."
    I put a salt shaker down next to his cup of coffee, then he shook it a few times and stirred thoroughly.  Odd.
    He said, "Okay.  Before we get started, could you do me a favor?"
    "Such as?"
    "Could you change into some jeans and a shirt?  That dress is incredibly distracting."
    "Distracting?"
    "Yeah.  You are just scorching hot in it, especially in the décolleté department.  I just want to focus on what you say, not how delightfully enticing your lovely bosom, and your shrink-wrapped derriere, is."
    I chuckled.  "That may be the weirdest compliment anyone's ever given me, but I'll take it.  Give me two minutes."
    More modestly attired, I sat back down across from Del at my little kitchen/dining table, still a bit numb that Del had called my rather indifferent not quite a B-cup bosom "lovely".  It's still firm and doesn't sag at all, I work out often, but honestly there's just not all that much to sag.  At least his comment meant that he had been looking at my top and bottom, which ordinarily would put me right off, but in this case it didn't bother me at all because I had glanced several times at the way his chest and arms filled out his shirt.   
    As I sat he said,  "Okay, much better.  Thank you.  So, just how did you get to such a state on the train?"
    I laid it all out for him.  It didn't take but a few minutes.  Dell sat, a hand on his chin as he listened.  After I wound down he was silent for a few seconds, then said, "That totally sucks, Mary, but that still doesn't add up to why you were so distraught on the train."
    "Oh, that was just the trigger.  Del, I have just not been able to make a relationship work, at all.  I mean two divorces in five years for heaven's sake!"
    "And you blame yourself for that?"
    "Not entirely, but I do blame myself for having seriously bad judgement when it comes to men.  Del, you can't imagine how ashamed I am.  I shouldn't be telling you this, but  I... I've been married and divorced twice, and believe it or not I'm still a virgin.  Still a virgin!  Even the affair I had during my brief second marriage didn't involve sex.  What does that say about me?"
    He sat back in his chair, his mouth open in shock.  Then, "Good God, woman!  How is that even possible?  No, scratch that.  Obviously it's possible, but how on earth did that happen, or uh, not happen?"
    "Do you really want the gory details?  Or how much I think all that's my fault?"
    "Um, when you put it that way then no.  I'll take what you said as a given and go from there.  I am however having trouble wrapping my head around why a beautiful sexy vital woman like you is still a virgin after two marriages.  As for myself I'd be delighted to alter that doleful circumstance.  Assuming of course that you want to be a virgin no more.  If that is not a goal of yours then that's fine.  But, I don't think that's the case."
    "No, it isn't.  Wait a minute.  You think I'm a beautiful sexy woman?"
    "Now you're just fishing for compliments.  But yeah, I absolutely think you're beautiful and sexy.  You fueled my teenaged fantasies because I thought you were smart, pretty, and sexy.  And if I'm being honest, you're fueling my adult fantasies right this minute.  I'm afraid that you changing outfits didn't affect those fantasies at all.  To me you are downright hot, even with red eyes and a sniffly nose.  You are a highly intelligent woman, sweetie, and to me that is one of your sexiest attributes.  Sure you have your share of neuroses due to a turbulent romantic life, who doesn't?  That does not diminish your innate attractiveness, on several levels.  I'd like to bask in your intelligence, and conduct a thorough inspection of every square inch of the rest of you."

    I felt my face heat as he continued.  "If I was a smidgen less civilized, you'd be in my arms and I'd be marching smartly to your bedroom.  Unless you find me repellent, that's exactly what I would do."
    I sat there, stunned, for at least two yawning minutes, then said.  "First, I don't find you the least bit repellent, and second, what are waiting for?"  It might have taken as long as five seconds before I was being carried in his arms with our mouths plastered together.
    There was no sleep that night.  It was replaced by a carnal extravaganza of extremely non-virginal activities.  It was glorious.  All the more so since it was ten years overdue.  I discovered that I was highly orgasmic, and Del discovered a delicious variety of ways to make that happen.  During "intermissions" we talked ourselves silly until by means oral, digital, and plain horniness, he rose to the occasion.  I lost count of how many times that happened.  

     He was initially afraid he would hurt me, but I had put paid to my hymen with a dildo some years ago.  Therefore, his lovely fat member had free reign to do what it so beautifully did.  I luxuriated in the feel of him inside me, with an idiotic grin plastered on my face.  We were both insatiable.  Not surprising since we both had a lot of celibate years for which to atone.  I'm sure it was my imagination, but I swear I thought I could feel myself getting pregnant.  Or maybe it was just my desperation in hoping that would be the case.  Either way I fancied I could feel the same thing as he impregnated me five times in the next ten years.

    

                                                               *********

    Ten A.M. on Sunday morning, after a sleepless night of frantic, wonderful, debauchery, we had showered together to get the near overwhelming, and exquisite, stench of sweat and bodily fluids washed off.   Now I was pouring coffee.  "What would you like for breakfast?"
    "You.  Failing that, some bacon and eggs would be perfect, if you have 'em."
    "I do.  How do you like your eggs?"
    "Thoroughly scrambled with lots of butter.  No toast though."
    "Got it."  Ten minutes later I sat our plates down and we both dug in.  Our reserves needed replenishing, to put it mildly.  A smile kept creeping in as I ate, thinking fondly of our night together.    We were both a bit sore, and not regretting it in the least.
    Strangely, we hardly talked during our late breakfast.  As I began to wash the dishes, a hard insistent form enveloped me from behind, undid my robe belt, and warm hands slid from thighs to belly to breasts.  My robe hit the floor and he spun me around to press me against his now robe-less body and began to smash kiss me.   With my eager help he rapidly hardened, broke our tongue battle, then bent me over the kitchen table and entered me from behind, thrusting hard and fast.  In only a couple of minutes I felt his warm flood, and that goofy smile appeared on my face again as I clamped around him and shuddered.
    Afterward, he grabbed both our robes and wrapped me up in mine then did the same for himself.  He pulled out the chair, guided me into it, sat across from me and said, "Now do you believe I think you're the sexiest thing on two legs?"
    I grinned.  "Oh yes.  I think it was your relentlessly hard third leg that convinced me."
    Now he grinned.  "Good thing you're a leg woman.  And by the way.  For about the tenth time, I'm in love with you.  Have been for donkey's years."
    "Del, I love you back.  You know, I can accept that fate put us both on that train, but where the devil were you ten years ago?  It's almost painful that we weren't together, and even more painful are the wretched mistakes I made."
    "Sheer perversity of the universe, my darling girl.  And the fact that ten years ago I wouldn't have been even remotely considered by you, or anyone else, as a fit romantic partner.  I was eighty pounds heavier, marshmallow soft, and church-mouse poor.  Now I'm none of those things.  I thought of you countless times those years, but never had the courage to approach you.  That's the neurosis that crippled me, and then you were married and my dream began to fade, until that usually fickle bitch fate had mercy on us and put us together on that train.  If that isn't kismet I don't know what is.  I should send Edda and Amos a thank you note for giving you the cold shoulder.  Unless it pains you to answer, how are they doing anyway?"
    "By all appearances, absolutely splendid.  And they have twin girls that are spooky smart."
    "I see.  Well, um, how'd you like to start catching up with them?"
    "Does that mean what I think it means."
    "If you think it means us making babies, then yes."
    I grabbed both his hands and almost yelled, "Yes yes yes!  Are you asking me to marry you?"
    "I am, if the m-word isn't too painful to hear."

    "Del, I feel like my life started from scratch last night.  I love you like crazy and I don't give a hoot about what's happened before."
    "Glad to hear it, Mrs. Taylor.  Um, did you change your name before?"
    "No, and I'm glad I didn't.  But, I'll be eager to change it now.  I swear Del, it's as if you've pumped me full of clean fresh air, not to mention other wonderful things."
    "Mary Louise, I want to be serious for a moment.  This isn't happening way too fast for you?"
    I sighed.  "That's a definite no.  It's very clear to me now that this is the opportunity of my lifetime.  Someone who loves me, holds me, caresses me, has rip-roaring bed-pounding sex with me while burying me in orgasms.  I don't want to look a sweet gift horse in the mouth, especially not a fairly well-hung gift horse."  He actually blushed cherry red.  So cute.
    "I...I..."
    "No argument now.  You have a delightful hard and lean body, and don't deny that you are not only well-endowed, but you know just what to do with said appendage.  It's my body, and appendage, now.  Mine I tell you.  And I'm not letting either, or any of the rest of you, get away from me.  You get me, husband?"
    "I get you, wife.  Well then.  No one can say we didn't have a whirlwind romance.  More like a force 5 tornado.  Say, why don't we enjoy some real romance for a couple of months before we get hitched.  Let you see some of my quirks for starters.  Then let my ply you with gifts, small and large, take you out dressed to the nines to fine restaurants, do the obligatory walks on the beach, gaze at the moonlight, etc.  Let me kiss you, stroke you, entertain you rip-roaringly several times a day.  Whisper sweet nothings and obscene suggestions in your shell-likes.  Take you on wild shopping sprees for clothes and jewelry.  Fly you to the Seychelles for a week.  So on and so forth."  I mutely goggled at him, thunderstruck. 
    He grinned.  "Oh, there's one thing I forgot to tell you.  I'm loaded.  Since you knew me before as a hard core geek, I'm sure it's no surprise to you that I'm a software engineer, but it may surprise you that I work exclusively from home.  The reason I was on that train is that I'd just finished up some biz in the City that had to be face to face.  Five years ago, after two years of intense work, I licensed the sale of a major software package that is used in routing servers around the world.  I collect about four million a year in licensing fees, and I have fifteen mil. in the bank.  I probably only spend a hundred K a year all told, but I can easily afford to spend ten times that much.  As in keeping my wife in the lap of luxury for the foreseeable future.  And I want to build you the house and home you've always wanted."
    I did what any normal woman would do after hearing all that.  I fainted.  Slumped right over onto the table.  I was only out for a few seconds.  I pushed myself up and sputtered at him,  "Why...why hasn't some woman snapped you up by now?"
    "I'm practically a hermit. Don't get out much.  But, I fully intend to get out a heck of a lot more now.  Also I've only been in good physical shape for about two years.  Before that I was a sedentary lump.  I weighed nearly 300 pounds for heaven's sake.  I weigh about 220 now, which for my height is a very good number.  And I am a hell of a lot healthier than I was, to put it as mildly as possible.  All of which enables me to get out and do what I couldn't before."

     "All that time I was, for all intents and purposes, waiting on you, as feckless at that sounds.  Waiting for the chaos of your life to subside.  I was very close to reconnecting with you when fate intervened.  No really, I was.  When I heard you sob on the train I didn't know it was you.  I was so absorbed in my book I didn't see you get on.  I waited a little bit, then went to see if I could help, and there you were.  Heck, I nearly fainted.  I sure wasn't going to let the opportunity to get to really know you regardless of what had elicited those sobs.  What I didn't expect was, last night.  I was determined to be gallant, but you overwhelmed me.  Couldn't resist you, so I didn't.  Sweetie, I don't have any hidden agendas.  I don't want a wife as an ornament or plaything.  I want a partner, an intellectual equal, a wife, and a mother for our children."
    "Del, that's the first time I've ever overwhelmed anyone.  Underwhelmed mostly.  Listen, let's get married and pregnant right away.  We can still get in a few months of what you mentioned before we buckle down to be parents.  It's late enough in the day as it is.  Is it a deal, my love?"
    "Deal.  Say, can you take off tomorrow?"
    "Yes, I can."
    "Good.  I don't want to see that robe, or anything else, on you until tomorrow unless we go out somewhere.  I adore your body, and I want to bask in its bare glory as much as possible.  But, I need to run home at some point and pick up some steaks.  We're going to need the energy.  Hmmm.  You know, you won't have to work if you don't want to.  Can you quit over the phone?  No contract or anything?"
    "No, no contract.  I do want to give notice though.  A couple of weeks at least while I bask in my friends' jealousy.  Is that okay?"
    "Of course, take all the time you want.  And if you really don't want to quit we'll work around it.  I'd view with concern if you want to work more than a couple of months after you get pregnant.  Speaking of which.  Where are you in your cycle?"
    "Right in the middle of it.  Fertile as a turtle I think.  If I'm not already pregnant, I hope I soon will be."
    He smiled hugely and said.  "Look at us.  Making all kinds of plans and things.  Ain't we just the pair.  Now.  Shuck that robe, woman, and head for the bedroom.  There's lots more filling to be done."
"Race you."
   "Deal."  I won the race, and lost my heart.  About bloody time.  From frustrated virgin to phallus worshiping libertine in less than a day.  Sweetest of all is that I became a mom on that same day.  I hit the life, love, and family lotto, and I didn't even have to buy a ticket.  What so many women see as a fate worse than death, a houseful of noisy kids taking up every minute of every hour, I discovered I reveled in that noise and semi-chaos.  It tapped strengths I never suspected I had.  The old phrase "happy wife happy life" works for husbands as well.  And one of the (many) ways to keep a husband happy is plenty of sex, as in once or twice a day at least.  Not always possible in the chaos of life, but regularly worshiping your husband's body is a very good way to keep your husband worshiping your own body.

     I try to keep our sex from becoming pro-forma, but even pro-forma sex is a heck of a lot better than none.  And a reasonable frequency of wife induced husbandly squirting pretty much squelches any tendency towards a roving eye.  Kiss your mate frequently, and no desultory pecks on the cheek please, but rather full-blown tongue battles, even in front of the kids, that are a promise of husbandly, and wifely, orgasms.  Happy satiated husband and wife, happy satiated life.  And oh yes.  Marrying a man who adores you, worships your body and mind as you worship his, and never having any money problems, is the ultimate hat trick of marital circumstances.  A vanishingly rare set of circumstances I admit, but I tend to view it as compensation for fifteen loveless years of loneliness, a doleful lack of physical intimacy, and two miserably failed marriages.  Woe is me no more.


                                                        End.    

 

 
 
   

American Death Association

      Heard today that the American Diabetes Association is recommending that children not be put on low carb diets.  This is in the face of a rapid increase of both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, a host of auto-immune issues, and obesity in young children.  This recommendation is not merely insane, it is outright criminal behavior.  This can only have the effect of worsening all of the chronic diseases mentioned above.

     They are making it very hard not to think of deep dark conspiracies that are driving such a recommendation.  However, there is no conspiracy in the sense of a secret agenda.  The facts are out in plain view, and the facts are that the ADA is heavily financed by big food and big pharma, and abetted by federal agencies that dance to the same corporate tune.  Delusions of conspiracies?   Sorry, but there is no interpretation left that admits to other reasons.  Certainly not concern for children's, or for that matter  adults', overall state of health.  The only safe and sane thing left to do is to assiduously ignore anything any alphabet agency, "private" or governmental, says about nutrition.   

Carnivore Queen

   

  

 

     Meet Maggie White, who runs the Haven Ranch in western Canada.  She is 82 years old.  You read that right.  She has been a carnivore for 65 years.  Going on appearance alone she looks to be no older than 60, possibly even younger.   This is not an altered or Photoshopped image.  She is a very real, and  very active, ranch owner, who is on no medications, and has no major, or even minor, health problems.   She eats 99% ruminant meat and drinks only water.  Barring accident, not an inconsequential probability for a rancher, she could easily live well past a hundred.

     The skeptical might claim that she is the beneficiary of remarkable genes.   Clearly she doesn't have bad genes, but rest assured that anyone eating the standard American carb and sugar saturated diet for eighty years is not going to be remotely as healthy and attractive as this intelligent and voluble lady at 82 years of age, regardless of their genetic heritage.  And keep in mind that as a rancher this lady spends a great deal of time outside soaking up the sun, but her diet has bestowed upon her visage a near complete lack of age and sun related weathering.  Truly remarkable, astonishing even.

Marietta Maternity.

     New book finished.  It is the first book that uses the carnivore way of eating as a plot driver.  A very small niche indeed, consisting of one work, this one, so far as I'm aware.  It is not for the faint of heart considering that it has a number of alarmingly frank sexual situations in it.  You have been warned.    Available on Amazon.

Marrieta Maternity

Causality

     It appears that the medical establishment in this country, and virtually all others, is simply not interested in the root causes of chronic disease.  There are a few exceptions, such as warnings against smoking, but by and large medicos of every stripe only want to treat diseases, not prevent them.  They "know" that patients are often not going to adhere to their advice about nutrition.  And by often they really mean virtually never.  The perverse situation as it stands today is that not only do medical folks think patients will not follow their advice, they also almost always give nutritional advice that is plain dead wrong.  They parrot the "eat whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, eat low fat, cut back on salt and avoid red meat" holy mantra of the overall medical profession.

     Such advice is a killer, and that's not mere metaphor.  That advice kills people, period.  Adhering to the holy mantra will make virtually every chronic disease worse.  It also weakens people's immune systems thereby reducing the effectiveness of that system in the face of bacterial or viral diseases.  The successes of the low-carb way of eating have made few inroads into the solid granite nutritional mindset of most doctors, and "nutritionists" of course.

     One can go to a doctor's appointment having reversed Type 2 diabetes, ameliorated or eliminated a wide variety of gastrointestinal malfunctions, eliminated psoriasis, lost significant weight, increased heart function, mitigated arthritis and other forms of joint pain, eliminated fatty liver, decreased cognitive decline significantly, etc. etc, and when the doc sees that you have elevated cholesterol they go into panic mode and demand that you go on a cholesterol lowering statin drug.  Which is most especially ironic because an increase in dietary saturated fat is part and parcel of why so many chronic ailments have been conquered by low-carb eating.   

     The myth of harmful dietary cholesterol refuses to die regardless of the fact that study after study, real controlled clinical studies, have long since disproven the myth.  They have also proven that statins increase all cause mortality.  You might, emphasize might, have a very slightly lower risk of heart attacks if you take a statin after a heart attack, but you are more likely to die from something else as a result of lowering cholesterol to dangerous levels.  And all of this is a result of the medical profession wanting to throw drugs at chronic illnesses rather than establishing root causes.  It's just easier, and far  more profitable, than trying to suggest truly effective dietary changes to an increasingly fat and sick population who would rather gobble pills by the handful than alter their dietary habits.

    Low-carb eating is very nearly miraculously effective in the reversal of chronic diseases, and not a penny has to be spent on drugs to do it.  You can well imagine how dim a view of low-carb eating big pharma and big food have.  They hate it, and they are marshaling heavily financed forces against it.  "They" have real blood on their hands.  Vast buckets of blood, endless, needless, suffering and death.  The overall medical system, as it is currently constituted, is far far more interested in treating chronic diseases with drugs instead of addressing the real root causes of them.  The "First, do no harm." injunction of the Hippocratic Oath signed by doctors is largely irrelevant now. 

    

The Attack Of The Plant People.

     As the carnivore lifestyle gains momentum, the pro-plant anti-meat zealots are ramping up their levels of high dudgeon.  The "meat is murder" crowd misrepresent and just plain lie about the supposed benefits of plant only diets.  The emphasis is on the ethics of animal food production, but further justification is sought by dissing animal foods as unhealthy.  The ethics of animal food production are only a set of opinions and are not based in anything resembling science.  It is pure emotion, devoid of rational fact. 

     The alleged unhealthiness of animal foods, meat in particular, is a different matter.  It is, simply, a vicious stupid lie meant solely to buttress claims of the alleged ethical horror of eating meat with no basis in real clinical science whatsoever.  Add to this putrid mess the phony claims that meat production contributes significantly to climate change.  A highly debatable issue to put it as mildly as possible, but even if that were true, the veggies ignore the vast environmental damage wrought by grand scale crop monoculture.

     Hundreds of millions of tons of fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides are washed into the world's oceans every year.  Add in the many millions of tons of diesel fuel required to run farm equipment, which are poor candidates for electrification, and it's easy to see that animal husbandry lies easy on the land compared to crop agriculture.

    Of course convincing the alphabet agencies that animal food is far superior to plants is a lost cause considering how deep into the pockets of big food and big pharma they are.  That is not conspiratical  conjecture.  It is plain easily discoverable fact.  Finally, for the vegetative the most offensive facet of low-carb eating is that it works.  It does what it purports to do.  It puts a wide range of chronic conditions into remission while at the same time strengthening the immune system to fight off infection.  Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, psoriasis, fatty liver, eczema, obesity, IBS, Crohn's disease, PCOS, fibromyalgia, depression, and cognitive decline, which comprise a very short list of the conditions that low/no-carb eating can greatly ameliorate or completely reverse.

     This incredible, seemingly miraculous, ability of low-carb to wildly improve the physical and mental health of anyone who tries it, is improving the lives of millions, and it won't be suppressed however loud the strident and sneering attacks by the Plant People become. 

The Most Important Meal Of The Day

     Breakfast is, as has been pounded into our skulls for the best part of a century, the most important meal of the day.  Bluntly put, this is nonsense on stilts.  I eat two meals a day, four to six hours apart.  That I happen to eat fairly early is largely a product of the fact that my mid-day meal is approximately eighteen hours previous.  So in the literal meaning of the word, I do indeed "break my fast".  However, breaking my fast with meat is about as far from the typical sugar saturated carb heavy breakfast eaten by countless millions of peeps as it is possible to get.

     Even at that I do not immediately eat upon rising.  Usually my morning meal is one to two hours after I wake up, and then my mid-day meal is noonish.  This results in what is called an "eating window" of from four to six hours.  This loose regimen is what seems to suit me best, but everyone will be different in this regard.  A mid-day meal, then an evening meal 4-6 hours later is just as viable and may mesh better with a person's schedule better than my method.  Even more work friendly is a big meal before work, don't eat at work at all, then have another big meal as soon before bedtime as can be managed.

     Some in the low-carb sphere practice OMAD, which means one meal a day, usually mid-day.  But in my case I'd have to stuff myself well past satiety to make it practical.  Plus it is impractical for working folks of almost every stripe.  2MAD, as it's sometimes called, will suit most work schedules just fine.  Even 2MAD is difficult to maintain if the meals are loaded with carbs.  Carbs simply don't have the long lasting satiety levels of animal protein and fat.  On a diet that is between 60 and 80% carbs, very common these days, going eighteen hours without eating, or even more than eight hours, is extremely difficult, and not sustainable for most people.  

     I do not "track macros" as is common for those beginning a low-carb journey.  I don't count calories either, but I estimate I eat 2000 to 2500 calories per day, so I'm hardly calorie deficient.  But, the number of calories per day is dramatically less important than what one is eating.  Calories in/calories out is an absurd paradigm because we do not have a coal burning steam engine inside of us.  We have a physiology that metabolizes carbs, proteins, and fats very differently.  We do not "burn" calories.  We chemically break down food into the particular substances our body uses to go about its business.  This is not just semantics because poisoning ourselves with ultra-carbs, sugar for instance, bollixes up our metabolism and can, usually does, eventually drive us into chronic illness.  Grains and fruit are perhaps a tiny, very tiny, bit better than direct ingestion of table sugar, but the doleful results are largely the same.

     A low-carb eater almost by default practices what is called "intermittent fasting".  All this really means is that a person is going longer without food than is the norm.  Even just going without food while sleeping eight hours is technically intermittent fasting.  But, by fasting from 16-18 hours our bodies respond by ramping up cell repair processes (autophagy) then carry them out for a while before eating is resumed.  Eating animal products and intermittent fasting mimics how our distant ancestors would have done it.  Frequently they were forced to do it because of the spotty nature of food supplies hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Homo sapiens evolved to be able to go without eating for extended periods, days or even weeks, without noticeable problems.  Which tamed the famine/feast nature of paleological life.

     Eat mostly animal products.  Practice intermittent fasting.  Live long and prosper. 

Linus and Sabrina.

      Although the 1953 film Sabrina has been acclaimed as a timeless classic by millions, there is a significant number of people who have carped and kvetched that Humphrey Bogart's Linus Larrabee was simply too old to convincingly be the love interest for Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina Fairchild.  I would argue that casting someone like Bogi was absolutely crucial for the story to work.  In the film, Billy Wilder's best in my opinion, Sabrina was convinced that she was in love with William Holden's David Larrabee.  The character of David was a young impetuous pretty playboy plagued by serial matrimony.  Linus was a gruff no-nonsense middle-aged jowly ultra-successful businessman.  They were, intentionally, complete and utter opposites.  

     Casting someone like Cary Grant, who was considered for the role, simply wouldn't have worked because he was far too good looking, which would have sharply narrowed the psychological distance between the characters Linus and David.  The naif Sabrina simply wouldn't have responded to to Grant the way she did to Bogart.  The older Larrabee brother was the perfect persona for Sabrina to transition from her teenaged infatuation with dilettante David to real love with the mature and serious, if rather craggy, Linus.

     Significant age difference was something of a hallmark of 40s and 50s romantic comedies, especially so in Audrey Hepburn's case.  In addition to Sabrina, there was Roman Holiday, Love In The Afternoon, and Charade.  It was also a feature of many other flicks such as,  South Pacific, Susan Slept Here, The Big Sleep, To Have And Have Not, Key Largo, The Prince And The Showgirl, North By Northwest, Teacher's Pet, Houseboat, To Catch A Thief, and That Touch Of Mink, to name but a few.  I note that Cary was extremely over-represented in these efforts.  More recent entries include On A Clear Day, Last Tango In Paris, Network, and Manhattan.  There are even May/December rom-coms featuring older women and younger men such as Harold and Maude and 40 Carets.  It almost seems as if the M/D scenario is the rule rather than the exception.

     In any case, these age differences have never mattered a whit to me in terms of my enjoyment of these films over the last 60 years.  As for Sabrina, a movie has rarely, if ever, been cast as perfectly or directed and acted with more skill by everyone involved.  And Audrey's four M/D films are some of the best ever made, with Roman Holiday atop the heap.  Holiday is a stunningly fine film, with an utterly luminous Audrey in her major film debut, but I note that it was her only rom-com that had a less than happy ending.

Long Term

     Much ado has been made by the anti-meat crowd that the keto/carnivore way of eating is not sustainable long term.  Their reasoning, if it can be called that, essentially boils down to the assertion that no diet can succeed long term without plants, specifically grains, vegetables, and fruit.  The embarrassing problem comes when they are asked to specifically name which particular carbohydrates are absolutely necessary for good health.  Much hemming and hawing ensues, sometimes ending up in near brain lockup when no such carb can be named.  (I have actually witnessed this phenom.)

     They lock up because they are reflexively inclined (brainwashed) to honor the dubious concept of the "balanced" diet.  Why a diet should be balanced is never considered, only the blind belief that it should be.  It just must be true.  It has to be right.  Because if it isn't then their entire plant based mental edifice comes crumbling down.  Eat all the colors I hear them cry.  Colors are, somehow, good.  Why?  Phytonutrients, they say reverently.  You will die of a heart attack if you don't eat a balanced diet, they confidently state.  High cholesterol will clog your arteries, they adamantly insist.  Climate change, meat is murder, blah blah blah.

     Not one word of any of that is true.  Not.  One.  Word.  The reasons for that are many and varied, but too numerous to go into here.  I have been on the carnivore way of eating for five years, and have been researching every conceivable aspect of it for just as long, so my personal experience is that not only is it sustainable in the long run, it is essential if by the long run you mean the rest of your life, which is very likely to be much longer, and much healthier, in every respect, than it otherwise would be.

     What prompted this post is an interview I saw with an eighty-two year-old woman Canadian rancher.  She has been carnivore for sixty-five years.  She looks to be about sixty, at the most.  And she is as healthy as the horses and cattle she regeneratively raises.  No heart disease, no arthritis, no GI problems, no cognitive decline, etc. etc.  She wears no glasses, has a full head of hair, and even her voice is that of a woman far younger than her calendar years.  She is a walking riding, and probably roping, highly active senior who sneers at the concept of dotage.

     There are now hundreds of thousands of people on this and other continents whos are experiencing the near miraculous healing power of ultra low-carb eating.  Anecdotes are flooding into social media of success with this way of eating.  To be sure they are "only" anecdotes, but pile enough anecdotes up and they morph into data.  Extremely encouraging data.

Expertise

     I am an "expert" in very few things, although I am quite knowledgeable in a number of areas  There is however one very tiny, microscopic really, niche of art in which I can claim the provisional title of expert.  That is the world of the comic strips 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn, both created by artist Brooke McEldowney.  In the overall scheme of things my knowledge of these two enterprises is entirely inconsequential, except to those who love the brilliant art and word play of the two strips.

     I have a near encyclopedic knowledge of the fifteen thousand or so strips that make up the two works of Mr. McEldowney.  Which serves me well as an administrator of the the three Facebook pages devoted to his work.  However, I make no claims of authority as to matters of interpretation, only those of plain fact.   Both "strips" are unique in their delightful combination of erudition and visual sensuality.  It's not fair to call Pibgorn a comic "strip" at all.  It solely inhabits the often seedy and grotesque world of the web comic and was never published in any newspaper.  

     9 Chickweed Lane still runs in some newspapers, although that is rapidly dwindling along with the dwindling of newspapers in general.  At some point Chickweed will become a web only strip unless Mr. Mac decides to close out the strip before that becomes necessary.  But the work will remain archived on the web, for my lifetime at least, I hope.  I also hope that the relative anonymity of both strips will mean that it won't catch the baleful eye of the bowdlerizers who infest literature these days.  Chickweed has already suffered from such interference, but to date Pibgorn has not, although it has encountered one or two censorious issues concerning prurience.  Oh well.  Sic transit gloria mundi and like that there.

      

Evil Compass

     A new nutritional food ranking system is being evaluated by federal """""""""experts""""""""".  It's called the "Food Compass", which purports to rank several thousand food item in terms of their nutritional value.  If adopted, this will replace the current utterly moronic "My Plate" food recommendations currently promulgated by the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned FDA.  However, Food Compass makes the odious My Plate seem like sober science by comparison.  Food Compass ranks food items on a scale of 1 to 100.  Near the top of the rankings are such healthy fare as Frosted Flakes, Honey-Nut Cheerios, and a parade of other sugar saturated breakfast cereals, including Reese's Puffs.  Meat and eggs are at the bottom of the scale with ratings of 1. 

     How did this blind idiocy come to be?  Well sir I'll tell 'ya.  The "Compass" comes from the allegedly prominent Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition.  The school is generously supported, to the tune of millions of dollars, by health conscious civic-minded corporations like Kellogg, General Mills, and Post to mention but a few.  Of course animal products are at the bottom of this tissue of lies.   Academia is fully on board with the current anti-meat jihad and is thrilled to have it subsidized by whatever means possible.  This spinning "Compass" is a well and truly intergalactic scale corruption of science.  It's as if Tufts has a mandate to promote early death from diabetes, heart disease, and a host of autoimmune diseases so as to keep their big food funding stream intact.

     The Food Compass is pure evil.  Kill it with fire, and hang every corrupt "scientist" and venal bureaucrat who puts his name to this death-dealing lunacy.  Kill it before it kills millions more people.

     

      

Ensurance

     If you take a notion to, or are advised by a quack Doc. to, drink Ensure, or any of its many variants, don't do it.  And by that I mean don't frickin' do it!  It is toxic garbage, with sugar, safflower oil, and soy protein among its ingredients.  It has no more meaningful nutrition than a milkshake despite the pittance of vitamins it, supposedly, has.  It is in fact an anti-nutrient.  It is straight-up medical malpractice to feed this crap to hospital patients and nursing home residents.   The same can be said for any and all of the many "diet" shakes available.  Don't touch any of them.  Not eating anything at all (fasting) is far far healthier than drinking metabolic poison.  I might drink one if I had been lost in the desert for a month without any food, but short of that no way in hell would I consume that horrid liquid.

I Approve Of This Message

     I think this doc, among an increasing number of others, is entirely correct and what he says accords with my direct experiences.  Please to watch. 

 Plants

Alphabet Villainy

     The, formerly, prestigious American Academy of Pediatrics has come out with a recommendation that powerful appetite suppression drugs and bariatric surgery should be used on obese 12 and 13 year-olds.  Drugging and mutilating children has received the imprimatur of one of the medical alphabet agency crowd.  I consider this no less than outright villainy.  First of all, there has been no long term, or short term for that matter, clinical study of the effects of the likes of Ozempic and Wegovy on the health of children.  These are powerful drugs with a parade of known serious side effects.  To think those effects would be no worse in children is the very worst sort of hubris. 

     The possible hideous side effects of the so called "puberty blocker" drugs are equally minimized, even approved, by the medical alphabet soup, but confining the discussion to the scourge of childhood obesity, subjecting children to surgical procedures such as "stomach stapling" that will permanently damage their digestive systems is simply beyond the pale.  Millions of adults have subjected themselves to similar mutilation, but adults are, presumably, capable of making an informed decision about the procedure.  Children are manifestly, and legally, not capable of such an informed decision.  However, they are susceptible to the importunings of medically corrupt doctors and ignorant parents.

     Modern medicine does not in general concern itself with true root causes.  It is all about treatment, with drugs and surgery, of conditions that in reality are almost all highly responsive to dietary interventions.  So, instead of informing clueless tetchy parents, largely overweight themselves, that they are responsible for their children's obesity by feeding them unbelievably crappy carb and sugar saturated diets, medicos take the easy, and profitable, way out by suggesting drugs and irreversible surgical interventions.  However convenient this is for the medical establishment, it is nothing less than blatant Hippocratic malfeasance.  

     We now live in a world of steadily declining sanity, with few countervailing influences.   So eat and drink up everyone, for we may die tomorrow, if not sooner.

    

     

     

Too Bad

 So S.A.D.

Too many carbs.

Too fat.

Too sick.

Too many pills.

Too soon feeble.

Too soon senile.

Too soon deceased.

No Mo' Oil?

      I have to, ruefully, laugh when I see eco-activists swanning about in one public venue or other waving signs that proclaim "NO MORE OIL".  This is a slogan born of a very fine and special kind of blithering stupidity.  Where do these ignoramuses think the bulk of what they use daily comes from?  They simply do not know how pervasive, and necessary, crude oil is to a modern technological existence.  Damn near everything comes from, however far removed, crude oil.  Virtually the entire chemical industry depends on crude oil feedstocks.  The entirety of composite and polymer production depends on it.  And before I hear you cry "But what about plastic in the oceans?"  I'll point out that the U.S. dumps virtually no plastics into the ocean.  Some of it is recycled and most of the rest is in landfills.  China and India alone account for ninety percent of the plastics found in the ocean, and we can't do a darned thing about that.

     A thousand different types of synthetic rubber depend on crude oil feedstocks.  Many thousands of different types of paint and coatings ultimately come from crude.  A large percentage of medical equipment depends on it.  Countless types of electrical insulators come from it.  Millions of gallons of transformer oil and a bewildering array of lubricating oils and greases come from it.  And that includes lubricants needed in electric motors, of which there are hundreds of millions in use in this country alone.  The blades of giant wind turbines are made entirely from composite materials, all sourced from crude oil. I could go in this oily vein for some time, but you get my point.

      There is at present no substitute for crude oil for all these crucial products.  There isn't even a hint of what might replace it.  Sometime in the future a universal petrochemical feedstock might be invented, but it would have to essentially be crude oil synthesized from some other organic materials.  And we would need hundreds of billions of tons of said materials to synthesize enough of it.  There is nothing on the technological horizon that can do the job.  Even if the problem is solved in the lab, it won't be implemented without the investment of very many trillions of dollars to build new synthetic petroleum refineries.  And without any doubt synthetic crude will be cost far more than current crude prices.  Far more.  And it is a one hundred percent solid bet that such processes will entail carbon emissions.

     What those gormless protesters may mean is that they don't want oil to be used for motor fuels so there will be plenty of crude left for other uses.  That's fine, assuming the protestors have a clue about how important crude is to the world economy.  So, No More folks, pony up the much larger than the total world GNP cost of doing that.  For all those countless trillions we'll just, A, Soak billionaires for the costs, or B, just declare the supply of money octupled and bugger the economic consequences.  The first simply won't happen because there aren't enough billionaires to soak, and the second is already in progress.  Let me know how that works out.  So far it's not looking good.

Common

Quote o' the day from writer and essayist David Bentley Hart.  

"If you attempt always to descend to the lowest common denominator, you will never hit bottom."

The Thoraxian Incident

 

 

     

      Next on the menu is yet another rumination on the doings at the comic strip 9 Chickweed Lane.  My writing it was prompted by the recent marriage of the whacky yet enigmatic "itinerant dairyman" named Thorax, and deputy sheriff Esme Meadow.  A strange pairing, but any pairing at all with Thorax would have to be considered strange.  I first thought to write a short exploration of what their married relationship might look like, taking into consideration what we've seen of Thorax to date, and how it would affect his few close friends.

     It did not stay short.  Once I jumped on this horse it galloped off at a dead run into unknown territory.  Strange and wonderful territory.  It's a broad ranging exploration of an alien's love for a human woman.  Not an original premise, at all, but I hope my treatment of it will be an enjoyable read for Chickweed fans.  It is, as I said, not short.  It is much longer than my other pieces on the subject of 9CL.  When finished, it turned out to be a medium length novel.

     Most of the characters in 9CL are in it, and their assorted reactions to Thorax's marriage, and the subsequent life changes that occur for all of them, are what constitute the bulk of the tale.  If anyone is offended by the uber-frank language and vividly rendered sexual situations, too bad.  If a high level of loving and gently graphic eroticism is not your cup of tea, then I suggest you go elsewhere. 

      There are also several brief references to events that "happened" in my other efforts in regard to 9CL, but did not actually occur in the strip.  This piece starts out "in canon" as they say, but it quickly diverts into territory that is light years, literally, away from canon.  My previous pieces are explorations of what happened in the strip's past, or to expand upon some aspect of it left unexplored.  This one is different because it projects events well into the future.  

     Nothing of what I wrote has the remotest chance of ever appearing in the strip, to put it as mildly as possible.  If the inestimable Brooke McEldowny gets wind of this piece, I hope he is not outraged by my presumption.  My apologies to him in advance, along with my assurances that this tale will never be monetized in any way, shape, or form.

     I emphasize that before reading this, one should be familiar with not only my shorter pieces of Chickweed fiction, but also be reasonably conversant with all the characters and their life stories up to the time this was written, which was in the fall of 2020.

     This piece is too long to include in this blog, so I've made it available as a free PDF which can be downloaded or read online.  The link below will take you to it.  Thank you.

      Warning Warning!  This novel is significantly lustier, but just as loving as my other pieces.  Significantly lustier as in wildly erotic.  Fully and baldly X-rated, with possibly another handful of Xes thrown in for good measure.  Alarmingly frank I would call it.  But every outre' happenstance occurs in the context of deep and abiding love.  If you can not abide such eroticism then I strongly suggest you not read this novel.

     Addendum, 21/09/03:  Recent plot developments in Chickweed make this piece even more speculative than it was before.  Alas, being overtaken this way this is a distinct hazard of writing fan-fic about an ongoing creative project.  I'll just call it an alternate history of Chickweed that diverges, drastically, from canon shortly after William and Esme's marriage. 

The Thoraxian Incident