New York City’s billionaire little-fellow mayor has decided “trans fat” is too difficult for most ordinary nonbillionaire humans to comprehend so he’s passing a law that makes it illegal for NYC restaurants to use trans fat in their menus--oh, I think they can use 2% or something like that. The mayor will close your ass down if you're using trans fat in your restaurant kitchen now.
I’ll be honest as a fictional-writing wolf can be with you and say before recently, I don’t remember hearing the word trans fat used before say a couple of years ago or if I did it didn’t stick in my mind as to definition. I know before maybe six or seven years ago, I don’t remember hearing about the good or the bad fats or not even good or bad cholesterol. I first heard about LDL and HDL when I started working in pharmaceutical advertising—the good liars—and handled a Pfizer account called Lipitor, the clinical trials of which were trying to “prove beyond a shadow of a P value” that Lipitor did actually lower bad cholesterol—proof done using blind tests against that miracle drug the placebo (or sugar pill to you laymen) and after throwing out the outliers (those patients who die or get seriously sick from experimenting with new drugs) and honing in on the results that best fit the promises the drug makes. In the case of Lipitor, that promise was that it would lower high cholesterol (when used with a proper diet and exercise--you have to read that fine print), which means the patient in the pressure cooker existence has been stopping off at McDonald’s too often rather than going home and having an olive oil & vinegar salad and a tunny sandwich on an all-grain baquette.
Drug constructions are an ongoing thing in the R&D adventures of the big pharmas. Finding new drugs is the sole responsibility of biochemists, young druggists before they get their PharmDs and get hired by the pharmaceutical giants right out of pharmacy school and right into biochemical research or databanking with $100,000 signing bonuses and salaries over $80,000 a year. Mother, if you don’t want you son or daughter to grow up to be cowboys or volunteer soldiers, then you better make sure you send them to college with the intention of getting a PharmD one day, a Doctor of Pharmacy, the highest a druggist can go—a doctor of drugs—who eventually hopes to luck into a hot-item drug in his or her petry dish one fine day—like the cure for cancer or a cure for AIDS, though they’ll learn pretty quick in pharmacy college that “cure” is a bad word and should never be used—it is much better to talk about a drug's “mechanism of action,” the process by which a drug works—a process that very seldom is defined in a clinical trial—usually it says in the Prescription Information that the mechanism of action may be unknown and it is in most cases. PIs are small-print inserts you find with all prescription drugs where any truth about a drug (a toxin) is explained in clinical trial “doctor” terms (sometimes clinical trials can be controlled by healthcare providers, who may not be physicians but can be nurses or biochemists), which may or may not be truth, but is as close to truth as you’re going to get in information about a blocker or a modifier or triglycerides in fatty acids that turn into trans fat--whatever else you wish to call the combination of chemical elements you’ve come up with that chemically works on the Central Nervous System, say—the CNS of the new antidepressant and psychotropic drug world; or the GI System, the gastrointestinal system…blah, blah, blah, on and on forever in acronyms or clever ad taglines or brand anthropomorphic symbols, like a banana-grape ape or Speedy Alka Seltzer. Drugs work the same way cleaning fluids work on getting rid of dirt and grime out of the works of your living home. All drugs are toxins, meaning they “kill.” I suppose that's how these statins work in the body to reduce your bad cholesterol count--Lipitor is really chemically an atorvastatin calcium--the calcium being the salt needed to weigh the statin down so it all doesn't go down the toilet the first time you take a piss or a shit. So now, I see--from trans fatty acids the FDA has come up with the term "trans fat." And oh my God, I grew up on trans fat; I find the FDA says trans fat is in everything made with partially hydrogenated substances and is stealthfully heavy in vegetable oils, vegetable shortenings, magarines, crackers, candies, baked goods, snack foods, fried food, salad dressings, and most processed foods. Crackers? Oh no; I love crackers. What if all food becomes bad for you to eat?
OK, so now I know what trans fat is. Now, I’m wondering, what gives a mayor, even a billionaire mayor, the right to decide whether the citizens of and visitors to New York City shouldn’t be given trans fat with the overpriced foods they are going to be scarfing while they’re overspending like good Amuricans? All my restaurant-owner friends tell me they can’t depend on tourists for their clientele; tourists they say take one look at the prices on their menus and ask, “Where’s the nearest Burger King?” That’s right. Tourists don’t eat in good restaurants, not when you’ve got a couple of towheaded kids along with you and you’re paying $450 a night for a crummy old scumbag-filthy hotel room—or even more in these new trendy exclusive little hotels being opened up especially to draw in the businessman/executive types with the huge expense accounts who pay the tab no matter the overcharges, taxes, tips, and service charges added into the final total. I am amazed at how many tourists there are in NYC at any given moment. Our little-man billionaire mayor says that tourism’s our number 1 industry now so we have to be nice and courteous to these hayseed louts who bring their wide-eyed bumble-brained wives, husbands, lovers, and kids up here—to see what? the garbage that flies about the streets in thick smelly swirls? the pigeons who are returning to Pigeon Capistrano (NYC of yesteryear) by the droves again? the Statue of Libertarian Bullshit? Rockefeller Up Yours Center, the white elephant piece of real estate that helped wreck that great Japanese economy the US had given them after WWII when old crafty-asses Larry and David Rockefeller sold Rockefeller Center to the Japanese and they renigged on the multibillion-dollar deal—hey, turistas, take a good look at that corporate plantation space thar--Wow? or maybe it's the old mudbound Intrepid they're here to see, the WWII aircraft carrier that is anchored in the Hudson River as a war-machine museum—hey the towheaded kids might like playing around on all those military killing toys—a piece of war junk here in NYC thanks to some rich joker who bought it and brought it here and left it on the hands of the citizens of NYC. Oh, it’s a good tourist trap, but I don’t know any New Yorkers who’ve been on it and I certainly never have. It doesn’t represent NYC to me—and now they’re trying to float it down to some drydock for repairs. I say junk it and give the proceeds to the poor and needy, the sick and those with despair, the hungry, the tired, the oppressed…oh, I’m sorry, that’s the Statue of Libertarian Bullshit that offers that open-arm policy, isn’t it. Too bad the Mexicans don’t come into this country via way of the Statue of Libertarian Bullshit rather than wading the Rio Bravo or now trying to scale G.W. Bush’s brilliant Great Wall of Capitalism. There is no plaque on that wall welcoming any poor, hungry, tired, or oppressed to these shores. “Messkins need not apply…” “Whites Only…” That’s true Amurican welcome right there!
All of this ‘round Robin’s barn palaver over the definition of trans fat! Surely there's trans fat in lard—the boiled out fats of animals of any kind. I’m sure the fat industry has made lard out of god knows what animals. I once visited the Swift Packing Plant in Chicago with an army buddy of mine who had worked at Swift and Armour as a kid going to college and whewwww-boy, what a place. “Yeah, in the mornings when you’d come on your shift the first thing you’d do is shovel up all the dead rats and toss them in the meat-grinding machine—that one over there, see it, yeah, that stainless steel contraption—you throw the rats in there and that machine grinds ‘em up, processes the mess, extracting as much bones and hair as it can—hey, it does a pretty good job—I eat Swift wieners and bologna—it’s good; hey, so there’s some fresh rat remains in there! Who the hell cares! It’s perfectly legal according to the meat inspectors.”
There sure is a lot of killing going on in this country on a second-by-second basis. Just think of how many chickens have to be killed every second of every day just to keep the billion-dollar-a-year Buffalo wing industry going full wing ahead. Death just won’t leave us alone, will it?
Hey, the Wolf Man says, go on and gobble down those French fries (are they still officially Freedom fries in Bush's official antiterrerist book of protocol), go on eat another one of those chopped steak specials--yeah, go ahead, pour on that mushroom gravy--oooh, look at those happy fatty acids clogging up your arteries. Another order of French fries fried in bacon fat, please--and a couple'a bloomin' onions, too, just to be on the safe side.
Trans fat. I guess I should thank our billionaire little-man mayor for saving my life--my God, no more onion rings at my favorite Irish pub; hell, no more pecan pie either. F that. I'm a Texan; pecan pie is manna from hebbin' down thar--don't tell me 5-alarm chili is full of trans fat. Holy cow! How the hell have I lived this long. My brother who died several years ago now of brain cancer got brain cancer because in 1987 he got a heart transplant--his heart was simply turning to dust in his body--he got a fresh cycle-donor heart just in time--the doc that did the heart transplant said my brother's heart turned to powder in his hands as he removed it from my brother's ripped-open chest. A few years before a doctor had told my brother he had a heart like a horse and though my brother weighed 250 lbs., he said my brother did not have a high cholesterol level. Oh well. Or should I say "Orwell."In the meantime, we have a maniac, numbskull, frat-rat-mentality, AWOL coward, lyin' son of a bitch, massive weapon of mass destruction (he's killed over 100,000 souls in his war on terrerism) phony "president" who is taking us all straight down to hell in a handbasket--that doesn't seem to bother a living soul in Washington, District of Corruption, nor here in good ole New York City where we're scared to death now of trans fat. The Dumbocrats took over Congress on the basis of the people being sick and tired of this Iraq killing field and the crookedness that is running the military--oh, hell, it's a waste of time to growl on and on about why this "president" isn't impeached and sent to Gitmo to pay for his crimes--and I say throw his old Pappy in Gitmo, too. Pappy's out promoting his favorite son Jeb with tears in his eyes as our next president--oh God, please no, but it's a possibility, especially if the stupid Dumbocrats run Hillary Clinton--and don't kid yourself, Hillary's running in 2008; she literally seems to own the Dumbocratic Party. Hillary's rise to such power is an amazing thing to me, even more scary than trans fat. I mean, all she ever was was a 2nd-story, two-bit, Little Rock, Arkansas, lawyer as a professional; as a politician, all she was was a president's wife. Amazing! I'm sorry; I would love to see a woman president--like I say, I'd prefer Chelsea to Hillary--but by God, Hillary can be beaten by some sleazebag like Jeb Bush. I give up. I'm going into my den and listen to Charles Ives.
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
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