Hedonic Hyperphagia

Announcing an alliteration to accompany my entry to Club Septuagenarius. Have I mentioned being born on my mother’s birthday: September 17, 1947? Well, I found a clinical word pair to celebrate a new decade — hedonic hyperphagia — eat one and you’ll eat them all. Whether potato chips (or crisps), Oreos®, All Hallows Eve candy: ad nauseam. It literally describes a fulsome moment. I raise my hand to admit something to a jury of my peers.

“My name is Bill and I am an hyperphagic.”

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“Revealing the scientific secrets of why people can’t stop after eating one potato chip” couches that couch-potato moment in an article from Eurekalert.

Here are fifteen words to digest while digesting the last thing you consumed, such as Deep-fried Oreos® breaded with finely crushed chips (the crisp variety).

I know from studied experience that animal-based product may result in hedonic hyperphagia. You might not wish to know that the consumption of humus, not to be confused with hummus, is termed “geophagia.” I once (circa 1970) read an article in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers that earth-eating is associated with a low mineral diet. I also recall that Frank Zappa once warned about eating yellow snow.

Every time you eat or drink, you are either feeding disease or fighting it.

Heather Morgan

As a former loyal-to-a-fault meat and hide consumer I know that items containing meat and meat by-products are based on animalian cells. These cells are comprised of molecules that have a psychoactive effect on an homo sapiens’ brain, “hedonic hyperphagia.”  Detox from such a diet is enervating to the extreme, both painful and discouraging. I had previously gone cold Tofurky® from tobacco and alcohol consumption before abstaining from animal-fare. I admit to the character flaw that accompanies total abstention however. Ambrose Bierce tosses well deserved water on my countenance. It’s called “total abstention.”  🙂

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Vegans stand as infuriating reminders that they serve sentient beings to man. Damon Knight wrote the definitive “To Serve Man,” most familiarly associated with its adaptation into a Twilight Zone episode. I wish Rod Serling had kicked smoking. You too?

That introductory pith drawn from the work of Heather Morgan inspires me to join Morgan by paraphrasing her:

Every time you eat or drink the lifeblood of another, you are either feeding nihilism or fighting it.”  — Bill Ziegler

I leave tales of nihilism for a future post.

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Here is another envisaged scenario: what would occur were I to show up at a pro-life rally with an enlarged photograph of an aborted calf fetus? It’s surely happened at some rally somewhere. Would one or more protesters counter that there’s a deity-informed difference between the immortal soul of a God-created icon found in a book called Genesis? Who made homo sapiens the boss of other sentient beings? May I beg to differ?

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

The ingenuous Indigenous

Today I am putting on my Mad Alliterator hat to celebrate the penultimate day of the week. It seems to be a tradition for blogs to toss out loose threads on the day of Fri, so here are some non sequiturs. Speaking of Latin, did you know that the Arabic names for the days o’ the week are based on the sequential numbers 1 through 7? Seven sequential sequiturs.

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PATRIOTISM, n.Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

-Ambrose Bierce

Only in America... can...

I'm proud to be an...where at least...?

What corrupts absolutely? Macht macht  es recht, oder? (Power makes it right, right?)

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I glance askance as a perfect storm approaches and I shudder. A quick aside to my reader:

“Actually it looks like a great many storms are lining up and spreading out. But not to worry, climate change is real, but not as real as reality-TV. So put it on the back burner for now (ever). Slogan to accompany: “A miracle a day keeps climate change at bay.”

Halloween rescheduled this year to Election Day.

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2016 to date: Native Americans lead the list of persons killed by the police

At this moment there are twice as many chickens on the planet as homo sapiens. Details at your local ultra-mega-super market. A pop quiz: what do advertising and marketing have in common?

Answer to follow.

Thanks for reading

Jimmy Carter: Epic Underdog

Google parses data and presents common search terms: a mix of auto-correct and auto-suggest. I just typed in “jimmy carter”:

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Then I typed in “george w bush”:

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net worth? National Enquiring minds want to know. Unless that worth is not monetary value. Speaking of net worth, I also read that Michael Pence would like to be a Vice-President like Dick Cheney.

The conundrum of the curmudgeon: pessimism and honesty are not mutually exclusive positions. Feel-good news about humane factory farms is not news. We are witnessing the disappearance of journalism, I am much afraid to report.

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While we are yet upon a theme of curmudgeons and conundrums, allow me to recommend Ambrose Bierce. There are yet a few months remaining in the fell year 2016, so consider the Bierce definition of  PATRIOTISM,

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Let me suggest that Dick Cheney take the net worth award, W take the quotes award. Period. Full Stop.

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What gives with this “net worth” fascination?

Google provides no suggestions for ‘dick cheney gross worth’

However, the clarity of Carter’s insight, restraint and persistence lifts my spirit. His quiet presence as a defender of minority views and marginalized peoples makes him my role model. Search the internet for guinea worm to discover the name of its mortal enemy. Here is a small hint: it’s not the rabbit.

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Peace not Apartheid

I like to imagine an alternate history where a Carter second term sends Reagan back where he always belonged: Hollywood. Privatizing everything does not advance the common good. But it may often advance the common bad.
Carter learns from his mistakes. Negotiation is a better for genuine peace, why do countless Presidents select “war without end Amen.”

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Carter did not drop a single literal bomb on any political opponent. The Camp David Accords accorded hope for the ever bedeviling slaughter in Israel-Palestine/Palestine-Israel.
500,000 nails sealed the coffin memorialized by an imagined headstone: Oslo Accords of 1993: Epic Fail. RIP

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I also imagine an alternate history where Gore actually occupies the office he legitimately won.

And I voted for McGovern in 1972.

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