Obesity Researcher's Theory Full of Fat

By Dennis Domrzalski

In the summers, after a breakfast of cornflakes and milk with a teaspoon of sugar—for treats, sugar-coated Frosted Flakes and Trix—we were out the door by eight.

There was only one rule: be home for supper at five in the afternoon.

We walked, we ran, we bicycled, we crawled, we hid, we played, we jumped hedges; we climbed fences, lampposts, buildings, garages and trees—we roamed our Chicago neighborhood at will until we dropped. After supper we went out again and played until dark. We slept soundly and jumped out of bed in the mornings, ready for another satisfying breakfast of cornflakes and a day of nonstop playing.

We were kids, and with a couple of exceptions, none of us were fat. How could we have been, what with engaging in eight to 10 hours of physical activity every day?

I mention this because there’s another idiotic theory on the obesity epidemic that has supposedly turned America into a nation of 300 million butterballs. This one, by Melinda Sothern, a fitness and nutrition expert at Louisiana State University, says that we’re all fat because of mothers in the 1950s and 1960s. Those moms smoked during pregnancies, didn’t breast feed and had kids too often. That has, according to Sothern, led to metabolic and physiological body changes that have turned us all into waddling, diabetic slobs.

If my ma were alive and had read Sothern’s theory she would have rolled her eyes, waved a hand and proclaimed, “That’s so silly. Doesn’t she have any common sense?” She would have answered herself, “no.” There are so many complex theories about obesity by over-educated PhDs., sociologists and other alleged deep thinkers that someone needs to throw simplicity into all the yakking and handwringing. So here it is:

Maybe we’ve turned into a nation of tubbos because we’ve become inert slobs who stuff our faces with chips while vacantly staring at wide-screen TVs and computer screens. Maybe we’re fat because we don’t do anything anymore—none of us.

I’ll start where obesity starts, with kids and their parents.

Our parents weren’t fat. Oh, some of the women were stout, and some of the men had beer bellies—back then a sign of prosperity and a nobly-lived life. They couldn’t have been fat because they actually did stuff. Most of the men worked in factories or machine shops and spent their eight hours lugging around hunks of steel. Others were mechanics or carpenters or printers, and who knows what else. But they moved all day and, for the most part, didn’t sit in offices and at desks. There were no computers or cell phones, so they couldn’t waste hours sitting still playing solitaire or checking stock prices.

Most of our moms were housewives. They didn’t sit around like lumps either. They washed clothes, ironed, vacuumed, swept, dusted, washed floors on their hands and knees and made breakfast, lunch and dinner. When they needed groceries or clothes for us kids, they—a shocker here—walked to the neighborhood stores. They had to walk because most families had one car, and the fathers took those to work. My ma walked somewhere every day.

Those moms weren’t fitness freaks who believed that kids could live on ionized air and melted glacier water. No, they believed in hearty meals. We ate fatty foods—lots of sour cream, butter and rich and tasty gravies. Pie crusts were made with lard, and fillings with real sugar.

Cauliflower was boiled and then slathered with bread crumbs and melted butter. Same with cabbage. Pork chops were fried in bacon grease. Chicken was baked in a roaster with a couple of sticks of butter for gravy. Pound cake and mashed potatoes were made with butter. We drank chocolate milk and ate cheesy, greasy pizza.

So why weren’t we fat? Because we moved—constantly.

If we weren’t out of the house by eight in the summers, we were told to get out and stay out. It’s not that the parents didn’t love us; they just knew instinctively that kids had to be out in the fresh air playing with their friends. So we did. And it was fun and glorious because we were with our pals and there were no parents hovering around worrying that we might fall and scrape our hands and knees, bump our heads or break a fingernail.

We walked and biked everywhere—to parks where we played ball, to junk-strewn lots where we played guns and army, to the railroad tracks where we put rocks and pennies on the tracks, to magic shops a couple of miles away. We played football, baseball, hide n seek and guns in the narrow streets and 16-foot-wide alleys. We caught spiders, hunted grasshoppers and raced each other for the hell of it. Our dads made us dig weeds in the lawns and cut the grass—with push mowers! We had to wash windows and blinds, sweep sidewalks and basements and otherwise work around the house. Later on, many of the guys had paper routes, which they walked.

During the school months we were in our play clothes and out of the house within 10 minutes of getting home. Here’s another shocker: We walked to and from school! For some kids it was a six-block walk. In kindergarten we were walked by parents, but from the first grade on, by older brothers and sisters. In nine years (1959-1968) of walking to the same grammar school, none of us was ever kidnapped.

We walked home for lunch and then back where we had Playground, which is now called recess, and which is increasingly banned by sissified and terrified school administrators. We chased each other, fought each other, played basketball, dodge ball and other games that are now considered horrifyingly dangerous by parents who are afraid of everything and who think that life is a risk-free proposition.

In the winters we shoveled snow, built snow forts, had snowball fights and played hockey. During the two-week Christmas break we were at Koz or Mozart parks every day, where they flooded the ball fields to make ice rinks, and skated until we dropped or our toes went numb. Then we’d go home, warm up, eat and go back to the park at night to skate some more.

The girls played too, maybe hopscotch and jump rope, who knows. But they were active because none of them were fat either.

As evidence that obesity is related to metabolic and physiological changes in Americans, one journalist who wrote about Sothern’s theory cited statistics. In 2002, middle-aged American men were 27 pounds heavier than guys in 1960, and gals 25 pounds heavier.

To that, we in the neighborhood would say, “No shit.”

In 1960, men and women moved and did physical labor. By 2002, most were behind computer screens and sedentary, and so were their kids. If you eat the same or more and become less physically active, you turn fat.

Rather than blaming obesity on 1950s moms, Sothern should cheer them for having had the common sense to have known that kids needed to be out playing constantly by themselves and burning up all that energy and all those cornflake calories. If she wants to end obesity, it’s simple: stop babying kids and get them playing, walking, fighting, jumping rope and running again, and get Americans out from behind their desks, computers and all-you-can-eat buffets.

And if Sothern wants to be taken seriously, she should slim down her mind; it’s obese with over-educated theory.

Abolish Political Parties

Political Parties are Gangs and Politicians are Gangbangers

It’s safe to say that most people are revolted at the sight of glaring, snarling slogan shouting gangbangers whose loyalty is to the gang and nothing else.

They live for the gang, dress for the gang, fight for the gang and die for the gang. They slavishly obey orders from their leaders and live to destroy rival gangs. Nothing matters to them but the survival and supremacy of their gang and the destruction of a rival gang, and they will do anything and everything to achieve those two goals.

In polite quarters, gangbangers are considered misguided and oppressed. In more realistic ones they’re thought to be pathetic, hopeless, scum, dangerous and a threat to everything decent, moral, productive and honorable.

While we can’t outlaw gangs, we abhor and shun them, and we know instinctively that the world would be safer and better off without them.

So why don’t we feel the same about political parties? They’re nothing but gangs, and their leaders and members, especially elected officials, are nothing but gang members. Politics is gang warfare waged by people in nice clothes.

What else can it be?

Republicans and Democrats legislate and govern only with the party in mind. Everything they do is to ensure that more of their party (gang) members get elected and that the other party (gang) is destroyed. Each party has its own slogans—Tax the rich! No more taxes!—which their members mechanically spout to anyone who will listen. Members who think and vote contrary to orders from party leaders are ostracized and punished. Majority leaders and minority whips work to ensure party discipline. Votes in Congress, state legislatures and city councils are routinely along party lines.

In New Mexico, former Democratic state Senator Manny Aragon, who’s now serving prison time on a bribery and corruption conviction, bullied and threatened his fellow Democrats during his rise to and grip on power. Although many Democrats abhorred what Aragon was doing, they kept silent. They were afraid that Aragon would punish them by denying them capital improvement money and committee appointments. They sold out the truth, and all New Mexicans, out of fear and a lust for power, money and the gang.

Every chance they get, party members denounce the other guys. Democrats are turning us into a self-destructive welfare state and forcing us all to marry gay people, the Republicans cry. Republicans, snarl the Democrats, are out to make all widows and orphans homeless and deny old people their heart pills. Their lives are dedicated to the party and its subgangs—unions, trial lawyers, Wall Street and chambers of commerce. They wage turf warfare and call it politics.

So if these people care about the party and nothing else, who cares about the rest of us? The answer is no one.

That’s why we have to abolish political parties. Their gang warfare is destroying us.

Minnesota government has been shut down for two weeks as Republicans and Democrats wage their gang warfare. Obama and the Republicans can’t reach a budget deficit or debt cap deal because they’re locked into party—gang—mentalities. Any compromise means the other side wins, and that just can’t be tolerated. In Wisconsin, Democratic state senators ran away and fled the state in a move they thought would prevent Republicans from passing a budget bill.

Let’s stop the gang warfare. Although we should, we can’t abolish political parties because we have free speech and the right to organize and affiliate with whom we please. But we as individuals can do something about it.

Go to your county clerk’s office and change your voter registration to independent or not affiliated. If the rules don’t allow that, bitch and moan to your elected officials, neighbors and the news media and demand a change.

If every American registered as an independent, the gangs would be exposed as meaningless. Candidates could then run as citizens and spout their own ideas, not those of the gang.

Let candidates know that you won’t for anyone who affiliates themselves with a political party or spouts divisive party—gang—slogans. Demand that they run as independents and as citizens, not as party members. Demand that their loyalty be to the nation and its citizens, not to the party.

If one of these nitwits comes to your door and identifies him or herself as a party member, tell them they’re a sleazy, unprincipled gangbanger and slam the door in their face.

Don’t put up with this gang warfare a second longer. It’s destroying us. The nation and the government belong to us, not to political parties.

Police departments in major cities have gang units that track gangs and work to dismantle them. Let’s do the same with politics.

Destroy the political parties.

F. Chris Garcia: Elitist Pig

Accused UNM Sex Ring Prof Wants "Professional Courtesy"

By Dennis Domrzalski

We don’t know if former University of New Mexico President and alleged scholar F. Chris Garcia will be convicted of charges that he recruited women to earn their—and his—livings by giving blow jobs and other sexual delights to strangers for money.

The 71-year-old prof, whom the local media fawned over when he taught political science at UNM, is charged with helping run an online prostitution ring that served more than 1,400 horny customers. Garcia, supposedly know as BurquePops, is charged with recruiting women to spread their legs and open their orifices for cash.

He is presumed innocent until proven guilty. That’s the way it should be.

But Garcia has already proven himself to be an elitist pig unworthy of anyone’s sympathy.

Today’s (July 12) edition of the Albuquerque Journal includes a front-page story about a letter that Garcia wrote to UNM President David Schmidly shortly after he was arrested. Schmidly barred Garcia from campus and his UNM office and suspended his teaching privileges while police were still collecting evidence in the case. Schmidly also thought it proper to keep Garcia away from the campus and young, female students while the case against him is resolved.

Garcia’s letter to Schmidly protesting the ban smacks of arrogant elitism and the attitude that those in high positions deserve not to be held to the same standards as the rest of us fools.

“I had hoped that you might give me the benefit of the doubt and at least somewhat take into consideration my many years of contribution to the university...but apparently have not,” the Journal quoted Garcia’s letter as saying.

Here’s the translation to that: You and I are in the same club and I am shocked and appalled that you would treat me like an ordinary student, kitchen worker, car mechanic or bus driver. I am a professor!

Garcia’s letter continued: “I would expect that a person of your academic and administrative experience would be far more understanding and perhaps even show some compassion towards me in my current situation.”

Translation: The rules and laws that apply to other rubes don’t apply to you or me. We are better than everyone else.

And then the kicker to Garcia’s letter: “Given my long and meritorious serviced to the university, I am extremely disappointed in the lack of professional courtesy extended to me.”

The kicker is the line about extending professional courtesy. It means that Garcia feels he should be afforded special privileges and treatment because of who he is and the club he belongs to.

Professional courtesy works like this: When an off-duty cop is stopped for smashing his car into a wall and reeks of alcohol, the cops on the scene laugh, let the cop go and doctor a police report to make it appear to be an “ordinary” accident, or never write a report at all.

Professional courtesy means that when lawyers, judges, firefighters or high-ranking public and business officials and other members of the club are caught drinking and driving, doing drugs or beating their spouses, they get a pass. It means there’s a double standard for club members and the rest of us. Club members walk, and the rest of us get arrested, go to jail, get finger printed, scramble to post bond, and then, humiliated, leaved to face family, friends and co-workers.

Professional courtesy was rampant here when I arrived 25 years ago. Cops protected themselves and other club members. Even the great Steve Schiff got caught up in extending professional courtesy to club members when he was the district attorney here in the mid-1980s.

Schiff admitted that the practice existed and vowed to end it. In the past 25 years it has been significantly eroded as we’ve seen judges, lawyers, cops, state legislators, state treasurers and other club members arrested, jailed, disbarred and convicted for a host of crimes.

That’s good. In America, and anywhere else, we should all stand equal before the law and rules and regulations and not get special treatment because of rank or club membership.

Garcia appears to be outraged that Schmidly gave him no special treatment and that he treated him as he would everyone else at the university who’s accused of a crime.

To demand special treatment based on rank or club membership is the height of piggishness and a lack of respect for blind justice. It’s the ultimate in contempt for basic human rights.

Garcia whined in his letter that he’s accused of a non-violent crime.

Really?

Prostitution might someday be legal here, but right now it isn’t. It’s associated with human trafficking— meaning slavery—violence, addiction, disease, early death and much more. I’m guessing that if you ask prostitutes if they’d like to make a 30-or-40-year career out of drugs, violence, slavery, disease, crime and sleazy sex, most would say no.

And, if he is convicted of having recruited women into the sex ring, Garcia would be guilty of having put them at risk of contracting diseases, being arrested, convicted, imprisoned, and having their lives forever ruined. How sensitive.

If Garcia wants professional courtesy, let it be the courtesy the rest of us get.

Mary and the IRS

Mary had a little lamb,
She took it out to play,
Then an IRS guy came
And snatched the lamb away.

"That lamb was a gift to me,"
Little Mary said.
"Sorry, kid," the agent sneered.
"It's income to the fed."

Mary then began to cry,
And she began to wail.
Horrified, the agent snapped
And hauled her off to jail.

"We own you, you dumb-assed kid,"
The laughing agent said.
"You owe us the day you're born
Until the day you're dead."

Mary's parents had some cash
To get her out of jail,
But it was just not enough
To make the girl's bail.

"Mary's cell has been her home
For most of this long day,
And home to us is income, fools,
And on it she will pay.

"Little Mary breathed our air,
And that is income, too.
Pay us now," the agent said.
"Or it's a cell for you!"

Mary's parents had no choice;
They joined her in the cell,
And for the rest of their poor lives
That is where they'll dwell.

Every day the agents come
And taunt that family,
They sing the IRS's song
And gush it out with glee:

"We'll tax you from the day you're born.
We'll tax you when you're dead.
We'll tax the dirt you're buried in,
We are the mighty fed.

"You're all the slaves of government.
You're bred to give us cash
And when you can't give us no more
We'll tax your dead fat ass.

"Tax and spend and tax and spend!
Oh let us tax and spend!
Get this straight you slaving fools:
The tax will never end!"

Ambrosia

To him she was ambrosia,
Sweet to the taste and touch,
He couldn't shake her from his mind,
He loved her way too much.

Every night she was right there,
In all his many dreams,
The love they made made angels sing,
They were such wonderous scenes.

She wasn't there when he awoke;
It happened once again,
And so he dozed back off to sleep
To dream what should have been.

The Amazing Maisel!

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and meet…
The Amazing Maisel…
The most daring man on earth!

By Brenda Kay Dunagan

The man inside the front-loading washing machine can’t hear the screams of terror from those on the outside. His sore limbs, bound by leg irons and handcuffs, are painfully cramped. Something has gone terribly wrong with his signature and world famous escape stunt. The soapy water chokes him, stinging his eyes and throat, as he spins at 50 rpms. The machine’s deadly spin cycle is about to start, and it will pulverize him, if he doesn’t escape NOW.

Tension builds outside the washing machine as the man inside tries desperately to free himself from his cuffs and leg irons. It’s been way too long., though—it’s never taken this long!—and his anxious assistant awaits the emergency signal from him that she never sees. Through the machine’s small glass window, she sees that blood is starting to tint the sudsy water.

This time, time really is running out!

“Get him out!” the director of a crew filming the escape for a worldwide TV audience screams. “Get him out!”

The assistant reaches to push the large red emergency handle that will shut off the machine.She pushes, but the handle breaks off from the washer—everything is going wrong!—and she screams. This wasn’t in the script!

The emergency crew storms in.

The electricity is cut, and the washing machine’s door is pried open.
The man inside tumbles out ,somersaults out onto a red carpet, leaps to his feet, and with a grin that says he has effortlessly nailed another death-defying escape, victoriously shakes his fists at a shaken film crew.

Albuquerque’s world-record-breaking daredevil is at it again, entertaining millions with his shocking stunts and unassuming boy-next-door grin.

“I just want to sound like a normal guy,” Rick Maisel says, emphatically, peering over the rim of his glasses with huge brown eyes.

Nice try, Rick!

This man is anything but ordinary! Inventor, educator, author, motivational speaker, magician, escape artist…is there anything he can’t do?

“Nothing’s impossible,” Rick chuckles, fidgeting.

“Just don’t try anything I do at home!”

Fans instantly recognize Rick’s Vegas-style red satin sequined jacket and quirky “Ricky Megawatt” rap song, his Weird Al Yankovich humor and mad-scientist mannerisms.

Having logged appearances in 42 countries, Rick has astonished over one billion TV viewers with his myriad of super-human feats. Besides his washing machine act, he conducts over half a million volts of electricity across his skin and through his body, escapes from a strait-jacket while suspended 2,200 feet from a hot-air balloon, and survives being arc-welded into a milk-can, shackled and submerged in 45 gallons of water. Then, there’s the Tank of Death, Rick’s very own macabre invention, a 500-gallon Plexiglas tank filled with water, into which a crane lowers him, upside down in restraints!





Rick boasts an extensive list of television appearances, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Today Show, Kathy and Regis Lee, and Maury Povich Show. Ripley’s Believe it or Not! featured him in 225 shows in its live review show in Branson, Mo, as well as its TV series and museums worldwide. The Guiness Book of World Records lists him holding the world record since 1996, escaping upside-down from a straitjacket in 2.23 seconds. And Escape and Beyond, a one-hour television show, features him breaking four world records in escapes that he himself conceived and designed.

Of the thousands of shows in the last forty-two years, his favorites were his childhood performances. The only boy in a family of sisters and female pets, Rick developed a close bond with his father, “Buddy” S.L. Maisel, who died in April 2008.

“Dad wrote my first scripts,” Rick recalls, “He wrote silly one-liner jokes for me that the audiences just loved!”

Buddy encouraged young Rick, and his son joined the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM), which, after 35 years of membership, awarded him the Order of the Merlin’s Shield.. Later, Rick joined the Society of American Magicans, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

“I performed my first professional magic show when I was eight,” Rick grins from ear to ear. Amy, his younger sister, was his assistant.

“Of one hundred contestants, I came in second place with The Illusion of the Appearing Wand, and was awarded $10.. The applause was addictive!”

Sponsored by the IBM at the Silver Spur Family Restaurant, the contest was held for Sorcerers’ Apprentices, a magic club for children ages 8-18. A family friend and life-long IBM member, Stan Jennings, introduced Rick to the brotherhood to which he still belongs.

At 10 years old, Rick had his own professional listing in the Yellow Pages. At 12, he was earning $100 a show at the Petroleum Club in downtown Albuquerque.

His show, billed Ricky Maisel the Amazing, included illusions like the linking handkerchiefs, doll-house production boxes, levitations, dye boxes, appearing goldfish, and the sword box.

The legendary Dai Vernon, considered by many to be the greatest sleight-of-hand magician in the history of magic, gave young Rick this piece of advice:

“Listen, kid, if you do just one trick better than everyone else in the world, or perform an act that no one else has ever performed, you can make it in this business.”

This advice echoed through Rick’s mind throughout his teen years.

“I remembered some video footage of fraternity boys in the 1950s, climbing into dryers with crash helmets. I wanted to perform Harry Houdini’s underwater escapes, but the tank would have cost $25,000. I saw a front-loading washing machine, and thought, This is it!”



He had discovered his niche in the world of magic.

Did he just climb in a washer and start it up?

“No, I had to condition myself,” Rick explains, “with the help of a gastro-endocrinologist doctor, B.W. Brown Laundry Supply, and anti-nausea drugs like Dramamine, I overcame motion sickness before we ever added water.”

Then came the water. And the claustrophobia.

“I never knew that I would be afraid of tight spaces, but when the washer filled with soap and water, I panicked. There just wasn’t much room in there.”

Rick almost drowned the first two times he practiced the escape, but he overcame his claustrophobia.

The washing machine escape catapulted him into world-wide notoriety.
“Houdini, Move Over!” the National Enquirer’s headline proclaimed in 1990 after its reporters had seen Rick’s washing machine escape.

Does he have a death-wish?

“I’m not afraid of dying,” he laughs,” I just don’t want to do it any time soon!”

Rick takes the arts of escape and illusion a step forward, not only hearkening back to vaudevillian stage magic and side-show theatrics, but also employing futuristic, high-tech post-modernism, science fiction, and educational physics in his acts.

Rick’s message to the world is simple:

“I want for people to be exited and curious about the world in which they live. I want for them to challenge illusions and overcome self-limiting fear.”

If anyone knows something about fear, it’s Rick.

He’s overcome fear of heights, tight spaces, and large audiences, just to name a few.. He also has to deal with the risk of injury.

He smashed both wrists in a silver-smithing accident. When his doctor told him to find a new career, Rick found a new doctor instead, and was performing for the National Enquirer the next year.

He’s undergone three spinal surgeries after suffering a broken back from two automobile accidents. He didn’t realize, as he was being lowered by crane over Albuquerque’s Civic Plaza on New Year’s Eve, 2000, that he had a ruptured disk.

His worst injury, however, occurred while filming before a live studio audience for A Current Affair. While being arc-welded inside 50-gallon stainless steel drum, something malfunctioned. After freeing himself from the handcuffs, he couldn’t escape the welds. What happened next, Rick says, was a near-death experience.

“It seemed like the inside of the can was filled with lights. I could see what was happening all around me, even though my eyes were closed. I had been submerged in water for over 90 seconds. I was one second from breathing in the water. Then, the can opened up.”

They re-filmed the scene immediately, even though he nearly drowned.

A venerate performer, Rick shrugged off his near death. “The show must go on!” he now laughs.

“People call me a daredevil. I’m actually a safety expert. I cope with my fear of the unknown by educating myself.”

He makes things look dangerous, although he claims they are very safe.

The only person authorized by the FAA to suspend himself from 30,000 feet by rope restrained in a straitjacket, he has perfected emergency signals, hires trustworthy safety personnel and uses only equipment with which he trusts his life.

His most valuable instruments are his body and his mind. He exercises several hours a day to maintain his flexibility, strength, and cardiovascular stamina. Likewise, he plans every moment of each act with the precision of a mathematician.

What will Rick pull out of his hat next?

Courageous, yet unassuming, Rick has overcome the impossible. Now, he wants to share fearlessness with the mere mortals of the world.

Escape or Die! The Guide to Overcoming Fear, a motivational book, once published, will be available in bookstores around the country. Rick bases it on his personal experiences, his studies in multi-dimensional and quantum physics, and his strong desire to help others live happier, less fearful lives. He will share his invincible genius and charismatic charm with audiences worldwide, combining inspirational talks with death-defying feats, proving once and for all that the human spirit can overcome challenges, limitations, and disabilities, and live in fearless fulfillment!