Author: matthew

So I read this disturbing article today from Googling for "Atkins nutritionally incomplete". I picked up on that phrase from Medical Research Council’s Dr. Susan Jebb.

Although I realize that people are allowed to have differing opinions on Atkins-type diets, such as the South Beach Diet, Somersizing, Cave Man, etc., it really bugs me when articles completely distort the truth. I feel the need to refute a few glaring misconceptions. I believe the misconceptions are on the part of the reporter writing the article, not on the part of Dr. Jebb who was very selectively quoted. It’s natural for the medical establishment to go slowly when entering new territory; it’s the nature of the Hippocratic oath to “first, do no harm”. So I don’t blame her, but it seems like these misconceptions are endemic to the misconceptions of people who have not read the available literature and many long-term (thirty years so far, in some cases!) studies thoroughly.

1. “The Atkins diet cuts out carbohydrates and boosts consumption of protein without having to avoid fatty foods.”

   This is a totally misleading statement. I’ve now read two of Dr. Atkins’ books, and nowhere do they say to "cut out carbohydrates". It’s true that, for the first two weeks of the diet, he encourages those who are significantly overweight (more than 10-20 lbs for women, or 20-30 lbs for men) to go into “induction”, which involves reducing total carbohydrates to below 20 grams per day. Those 20 grams must come from green leafy vegetables, certain low-carbohydrate but highly nutritive vegetables such as broccoli, and cheeses or other foods in great moderation. "Cut out" carbs? I think not. Sensible low-carb plans obviously reduce carbs, but carbohydrates are a vital part of one’s body chemistry. We low-carbers simply become more selective about which carbohydrates we’ll allow to pass our lips, and in what quantity.

2. “On the other hand, large-scale studies looking at the general effects of eating different kinds of food had yielded a wealth of data.
   They showed that people who ate the most carbohydrates had the lowest rates of heart disease.”

   The unfortunate fact is that, in combination with a way of eating high in refined carbohydrates, saturated fat kills. On the other hand, in combination with low-carbohydrate eating habits, all the classic warning signs of heart disease tend to drop dramatically. Atkins developed his original plan for heart patients, and it was enormously successful in that capacity, often allowing patients to get off cardiac medication.

   On the third hand, Dr. Atkins went into cardiac arrest in a restaurant at the age of 72, roughly one year before his death from a fall. However, it wasn’t due to the traditional clogged pipes; instead, his heart had been damaged by an infection for which he’d been in treatment for two years, which was the cause of his arrest. All the pipes leading to his ticker, and the muscle that had not been damaged by the infection, were in perfect working order.

   Low-carb eating patterns improve cardiovascular health, lower triglycerides, improved HDL concentrations, and tend to lower LDL. We’re all going to die from something, but the chances are good if you begin low-carbing early enough in life, that it won’t be from clogged arteries.

   One important exception: idiots that attempt to go low-carb/low-fat kill themselves. Now that has been well-documented. In addition, as more people hop on the low-carb bandwagon, people will focus on their diet rather than thinking of these deaths as a tragic accident. It’s kind of like when a Catholic priest molests a child, it’s front-page news, whereas when Joe Schmoe molests a child, it ends up on the court report page. When someone who has done Atkins dies of heart problems, it’s a big deal. When someone who isn’t on Atkins dies of a heart problem, it’s not. I have to find myself wondering, as well, if these “Atkins-related deaths” that are fashionable in the news lately were from people that really were going about it in a safe, sensible way and had read the book, or if they’d tried to concoct their own diet regimen that resulted in heart damage. An interesting thought that needs more study to find out, I think.

3. “Fibre, found in carbohydrate food, helped the body eliminate toxins and was associated with reduced levels of cholesterol.”

   The reporter here seems to assume that those on Atkins don’t get enough fiber. I beg to differ; I’m eating more fiber today than I ever did on any other “diet”. And I’m eating significantly more healthy dietary fiber as a result of following Dr. Atkins plan, even though I’m on induction, than I did in my usual standard American diet (SAD).

   Atkins does, however, recommend fiber supplements for those people who get clogged up. I’d recommend the same to anybody on any diet — if you’re getting backed up, start taking some stuff to flush it out rather than crapping a brick once every two weeks. As for me, my intestinal problems tend to err on the other side of that scale, and all the bloating, cramps, and other symptoms of irritable bowel seem to have largely disappeared for me. Except when I got too excited about some imitation sweets… even a few of those seem to cause pretty severe gastro troubles for me, as well as a bunch of other people.

4. “Carbohydrates were also the source of essential vitamins and plant nutrients, which anyone on the Atkins diet would have to consume as supplements.”

   Another totally off-base statement. Dr. Atkins recommends supplements to fend off dietary insufficiencies due to many vegetables and fruits found in supermarkets today lacking the nutrients they would possess if grown more organically, rather than mass-produced in soil that is long-since depleted and living on fertilizer. You could choose to address those deficiencies by using organically-grown fruits and vegetables with the diet.

   The supplements Dr. Atkins recommends are the same that most Americans should probably be taking anyway. Cover your bases, be sure you have sufficient vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids. The dude went from being a cardiologist to a specialist in nutrition therapy; it’s natural that he suggests supplementation or behavioral changes in certain areas to correct problems without traditional medications. The problem is not a low-carbohydrate diet; it is that man evolved for millions of years living off the land. Only in the last six thousand years have we learned agriculture, and with that monoculture, we introduce some dietary deficiencies that today we can alleviate using supplements. People who supplement B vitamins, even on the best of diets, tend to have fewer mood swings. People who supplement potassium, or make sure that their diet includes potassium-rich foods, avoid muscle cramps from the lack of it. Supplementation on Atkins is just that — a supplement, not a replacement for proper nutrition from one’s diet. I personally have mega-dosed vitamin C for a long time to avoid colds, and it seems to work like a charm. Although I can get sufficient from my diet, why not use a tool if it’s available?

5. “There was also good evidence that eating excess protein can cause kidney damage, and may lead the body to lose calcium.”

   This is simply untrue, an urban legend, and a twisting of evidence to fit opinion. There has never been a single case where someone with healthy kidneys damaged them by doing Atkins. In the case of individuals with advanced kidney disease, a diet high in protein or in water can further damage already sensitive kidneys. But in most cases, the kidney damage was caused by excessive glucose in the bloodstream in the first place, which is directly attributable to a high-carbohydrate diet! In some cases I’ve read about, going to low-carb diets allows the kidneys to repair some of the damage caused by the high-carb diets.

   Additionally, Atkins need not be considered “high-protein”. It’s only “high fat” or “high protein” compared to low-fat diets and the horribly imbalanced “food pyramid” idea, really. Induction isn’t nearly the entire eating plan, and the other phases of Atkins feature a pretty darn significant percentage of calories from carbs as well as proteins and fats.

   But people in advanced stages of kidney failure shouldn’t be making drastic changes in their diet without the supervision of a knowledgeable physician, anyway.

6. “A study published in the Lancet last month also shows that eating too much fat can double a woman’s risk of breast cancer.”

   Once again, this is only in the case of a high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. High-fat, low-carbohydrate diets, with adequate fiber (which the Atkins plan provides for easily) appear to reduce cancer risk across the board.

   One must wonder, though, if they reduce the cancer risk just because people are finally really watching what they eat 🙂 Similar cancer risks happen in healthy, non-overweight vegetarians, so one has to wonder if perhaps reduction in cancer risk is simply the result of following any eating plan that covers all the nutritional bases, like Atkins does.

7. “It was psychologically easier to follow than harsher low-fat regimes, but worked the same way as any diet – by reducing calorie intake.”

   While I must agree this diet is much, much easier to follow than the “eat less” plan I’ve always followed in the past to drop a few pounds, I have to disagree on the “reducing the calorie intake” bit. I’m averaging 2400-2900 calories per day at six feet tall, thirty years old, and 230 lbs (woot, go me! 10 lbs lost in two weeks!). The results are all out of proportion to the calorie intake.

   And people who say “it’s all water” are just lying. I know people who have lost over 100 lbs in a year in the OWL phase (Ongoing Weight Loss — much less strict than Induction) of Atkins. That’s a heck of a lot of water.

   There’s a well-documented "metabolic advantage" to a low-carb regimen. The body shifts from primarily carbohydrate-burning mode into fat-burning mode. The switch is automatic, and seems to be rooted in our hunter/gatherer evolutionary heritage. There would be lean times, where the only food one had was that mammoth carcass sitting out in the snow. And the tribe would eat it for weeks. Ketosis/lipolysis begins in the liver, where it converts fats and proteins into glucose for use by the body. Blood sugar remains amazingly constant when one is in this mode, which tends to prevent hunger, reduce cravings, and generally keep one’s spirits up. This, too, seems to be an evolutionary advantage for our species.

   What’s the “metabolic advantage”, calorie-wise, to low-carb eating habits? The chemical reactions required to sustain ketosis/lipolysis occur at far less than 100% efficiency. The most common statistic bandied about is “58%”. So the reality is, eating exactly the same amount of calories as one normally would to maintain weight, but doing so on a low-carb regimen, results in weight loss due to his inefficiency. The ketones that are “left over” after the chemical reactions are all done show up in one’s urine. This is a perfectly safe reaction, far different than “ketoacidosis”, the diabetic condition that also results in ketones, but in the presence of wildly out-of-control blood sugar being dumped into the urine in the body’s desperate attempt to overcome high-carbohydrate ingestion without insulin production.

   Anyway, here’s the fact: you can eat the exact same number of calories you were eating in high-carb, on a low-carb plan, and lose weight doing so. Of course, calorie reduction accelerates the process. And if you’re significantly overweight, you’ll reach a point where you need to crank back the calories in order to continue losing. But that point is far more calories per day than the same individual could sustain in a high-carb diet without gaining weight.

   A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Until you are talking about the human body when it switches from carb-burning mode to ketosis/lipolysis. And then the rules change. A lot.

8. “Dr Ogden said with any diet, about 60% of people succeed in losing weight at the start. But over the next three to 10 years, 95% to 99% of dieters regained the weight they lost.

   She said: “Some gain even more weight than they had in the first place.””

   Sad but true. The advantage of the Atkins way of eating is that it is much easier to maintain than a lifelong “eat less” regimen. I don’t have any statistics on retention rates, but the amazing thing about people who remain low-carb for life (and I intend to be one of them — no diabetes for me, thanks, I’d be stupid to eat like I’ve been eating with my massive family history of diabetes) is that they can continue to eat satisfying, filling, wholesome foods, as long as their carbohydrates are only consumed in moderation while avoiding all refined carbohydrates. From the people I know who have stuck to it for years, it’s the easiest way of eating to maintain known to man.

End of my rant. I just hate it when people automatically assume that because I’m doing Atkins that I’m gorging on red meat and avoiding all fruits and vegetables. I’m eating far more veggies on my Atkins regimen than I ever did on my standard American diet. Eventually, I’ll get into more fruits, but that’s several weeks away at least. It’s simply a healthier way of eating, for me, and for many other people who have pretty bad reactions to refined carbs.

Of course, there are people blessed with different metabolisms that thrive on high-carb diets. And I wish them well. But I think I’ve definitely found a way of eating, in avoiding the refined carbs that are the plague of the 20th and 21st centuries, that suits my body chemistry and have already helped me keep much more even energy levels and avoid unpleasant side-effects of a refined carbohydrate diet.

All in all, this piece sounds like a PCRM (Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine) publicity piece. PCRM is a front for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a militantly anti-meat group. More information available about PCRM available here.

My mother has often told me a story from my childhood about myself that I will relate here, although I have no first-hand memory of it.

My mother was attempting to potty-train me. In those days, around 1975, although disposable diapers were catching on, they were still expensive compared to using old-fashioned cloth diapers. I was raised to the cloth, I guess 😉

Those of you who know me well know that I am very literal-minded. Although I have grand dreams and aspirations, I’m very grounded in the real world; I tend to take things very literally. It often impacts my comedic timing, because I won’t realize someone’s telling a joke. I’ll take the barb personally and try to carefully consider what the person was saying, completely missing the sarcasm.

Anyway, the way my mother worked on training me was to show me where the poo-poo goes. (I apologize for the plethora of poop stories here in the last week, my brain is focussed a lot on excretion lately I guess.) To give me a sensible understanding of where I’m supposed to do my duty, rather than in my pants, she would take me by the hand and lead me to the bathroom. There, she would patiently remove the soiled undergarments, dump the contents into the toilet, say “ooh, yucky,” and flush the contents down. If I recall correctly, she would then rinse the worst of the mess off the diaper there in the toilet so there was less to wash off later.

I watched her do this several times, and she finally became very excited when the light bulb seemed to turn on, and I got it!

I approached my mother, took her by the hand, and led her carefully to the bathroom. There I raised the toilet lid, pulled down my pants, took off my soiled diaper, dumped the contents in the toilet, said “ooh, yucky!” then flushed it down.

The moral of the story? Actions speak much louder than words… or intentions 🙂

Sadly, I only kept one journal entry for the entire four days or so I was in St. George and Las Vegas. Darnit. Oh well, we have a few pictures I’ll upload later. And I apologize for the second half of this blog sounding like a Worldmark advertisement! Anyway, here’s the entry…

---

Barnson St. George Vacation, Day 2

The sounds of a waterfall and the squeals of delighted children waft up to my ears on the second floor balcony of the “Worldmark the Club” St. George resort.  Some more hardy souls, all children, brave the sixty-eight degree weather to snorkel in the pool beneath the small waterfall.  As I peer down now, though, most are, instead, hanging out in the hot tub.

My children are playing on the playset in the sand near the pool, obliviously sliding down the slide, swinging, and traversing the horizontal bars, without a care in the world.  They seem grateful to be outside playing in a small “park” after several weeks of cold weather in our native Tooele.

It’s amazing to me what a difference in the weather a few thousand feet of elevation and five and a half hours of driving can bring.  Utah’s Dixie is really, really different from the area around Salt Lake we just left.  In the Salt Lake/Provo area, we had left in the midst of a driving rain/sleet combination, with the precipitation falling so fast and thick that we were often relegated to driving forty miles per hour in the midst of a sixty-five zone.  Traffic was heavy, accidents were littering the sides of the freeway, and it was rather stressful.  About ten miles south of Provo on I-15, though, traffic finally cleared out, the rain lifted, and the rest of our trip was rather uneventful, except for a few bathroom breaks and a gas stop.

We scheduled this trip, ostensibly, to attend the wedding of Christy’s first cousin, Heidi.  Heidi’s getting married in Vegas to some guy who’s name neither one of us can recall at the moment.  Apparently, the two knew each other in high school.  They had crushes on one another in high school, and never pursued anything… apparently, he’s been married and now divorced after several children.  They ended up on the same airplane together, began comparing stories, and decided to begin seeing more of one another.  They did a long-distance dating thing, with him in Las Vegas and her in Orem.  And now they’re getting hitched.  Pretty cool for them, and a great excuse for us to get out and chill out!

The St. George Worldmark resort is pretty nice.  If you aren’t a Worldmark owner, and have a chance to sit through a Trendwest Resorts presentation, here’s what I suggest:

1. Be sure you have about $8,000 to spare.  That’s the going rate for a minimum entry into “the club”.  For those yearly vacations, I consider this number totally worth it.  We haven’t been to a Worldmark resort yet that we did not like.  If you can’t afford that amount of money in cash (you can bet your butt we didn’t have that kind of dough laying around), then you can normally get financing for under $200 a month.  Trendwest, Worldmark’s promotional contractor, will finance you, but they charge relatively high interest rates.  Better to walk in knowing exactly how much money you have to invest.  That $8,000 will buy you roughly the equivalent of a week of vacation at a nice resort somewhere in the western U.S.
2. Ensure you can afford about $400 per year in maintenance fees.
3. Hawaii, Australia, and RCI exchanges are relatively expensive places (in points you purchased) to attend.  Even with a modest amount of points, though, you can make it there on a minimum investment.  You just need to save all of last year’s points, use this year’s points, and borrow against next year’s points 🙂  Not too big a deal.
4. Here’s our favorite part: make sure you have some Worldmark resorts close enough to drive to easily.  They have a feature called “Bonus Time”.  Basically, if the resort has rooms free, if you schedule with two weeks notice or less, you can go to the resort without spending your yearly points, and just pay a fee based on the season and “color” of the resort you’re going to.  The Las Vegas resorts, for instance, are red year-round.  Bear Lake, in Utah, is very cheap in the spring and fall because, well, you can’t ski there in either season, and you can’t swim very easily there in either season.  It’s very nice for a cozy getaway for two or for a family.
5. Your membership is an asset.  You can sell it, give it away, or let friends use it.
6. Once you’re a member, expect every-other-month calls from a Trendwest representative trying to get you to buy more points, sign up for some new promotional deal, or whatnot.  That’s a small annoyance, but it doesn’t take us much to say “no”.  I make sure and  differentiate the marketing company, Trendwest, from the wonderful resort company, Worldmark the Club.  The Club rocks; the marketing company is, well, a marketing company 🙂

We really love it.  Our traditional arrangement these days is a 2-bedroom condo.  They are quite nice.  They always have a kitchen with good cooking amenities (for us, pretty equivalent to our home, but fewer dishes), and a pull-down “Murphy Bed” built into the wall of the common room.  This room we’re in now has huge walk-in closets for both bedrooms.  We’ve never been in a Worldmark room that wasn’t really well-designed and comfortable.  They spend a lot of time on the decor of their resorts, and it shows.  This is no hotel room.  We really feel like we have a temporary home here.  And often, we find ourselves wishing we could stay a lot longer!

Heh, the only tough question is, “is it worth the $8000 debt and $400/year we spend?”  In my opinion, absolutely.  We’ve paid some interest, but built great memories.  And knowing that we have a yearly budget for vacations that amounts to several thousand dollars, and points we need to spend or else they will expire, gives us an incentive to make time every year to go on vacation together as a family.

These are precious memories that are worth any price, in my opinion.

So, I’ve been on Atkins a couple weeks, and now I’m starting to experiment here and there with some “fake foods”. My latest research involves Maltitol. I thought I’d share some of the results of that research…

Maltitol is a sugar alcohol that is not completely absorbed by the small intestine. The result is that, despite its very sugar-like taste and bulk, it doesn’t generally spike insulin levels, and many of the carbs go down the crapper unabsorbed by your body. But it turns out, to most of the bacteria in your low intestine, a carbohydrate is food. Period. Even if it’s a sugar alcohol. This results in interesting effects that are generally tactfully referred to as “the laxative effect”. Thought I’d share:

Maltitol makes me fart. I had thought that I lost that capability after seriously starting to low carb and it was sad because I had a pretty good reputation as a stinky ripper! I had an identity crisis in the works.
Now, I can joyfully report that I’m back in action thanks to the **tol sugar alcohols. Of course, the aroma is not nearly as devastating as it once was but at least the “sounds” are there so I can at least offend one sense. I guess you can’t have everything.

–“Tony D.”, usenet, asdl-c

For a few, the laxative effect is pronounced, and even a small amount will trigger unpleasant symptoms.

—lowcarb.ca tip

>Funny story, I found some jelly belly jelly beans at an airport store
>one night waiting for a connecting flight. On the front it said made
>with Splenda. One serving is 35 beans. So, I counted out my beans and
>ate em. About an hour later, on the plane, I thought I was going to die!

Same here. Those things wiped me out — cramps, diarrhea, the works. If you read the fine print on the package (VERY fine, I might add), they suggest that if you’ve never had them before that you should eat *half* of one serving.

I don’t handle sugar alcohols well, and those things were by far the most terrifyingly explosive mistake I’ve made so far. Yikes! Never again.

–“Dawn”, Usenet asdl-c

I had bought a shitload of Russel Stovers Pecan Delights (the SF Maltitol kind)…..they were in a big pile on the kitchen table — right there where I could see them everytime I walked by. So, Friday, Sat night, and Sunday were “Attack of the Maltitol Consuming Monster” on RS Pecan Delights (not Sat daytime ’cause I had a date then so I had to get myself under control long enough for that) . It was quite the explosive & smelly weekend too:(

–“Roger Zoul”, Usenet, asdl-c

The moral of the story? Be very, very careful when playing with fake food. It may blow up on you, and not in your face.

That said, I bought a box of Russel Stover mint chocolates tonight — the low-carb kind (that seem really similar to the “sugar free” kind, except they cost twice as much). I guess being unemployed is as good a time as any to experiment with potential gastrointestinal disasters…

I’m gone for the weekend. I’ll be back on Monday. In the meantime, Justin, Jon, Sam, whomever — you guys toss some funny stuff up here, would you?

Unfortunately, this means that I also won’t be approving any anonymous comments, and I fear for the state of my inbox. But hey, it’s nice to get away for a while, and I’ll be taking my laptop to record some of the experiences!

In case you are interested, we’re heading to St. George, Utah. It’s about an hour northwest of Las Vegas. We’ll be hitting Vegas for one day over the weekend, but since neither of us really likes to gamble, our money will be staying safely in our wallets. A wedding will take place Saturday afternoon in Vegas, which is the ostensible reason for us going. And we plan to spend a good part of the evening watching the free shows along the Strip. If I recall correctly, even in November, Vegas stays comfortably in the sixties and low seventies, so here’s hoping it’s windbreaker weather rather than heavy coats!

Over at slashdot.org, they have a pretty nifty feature. As a subscriber, for free, you can keep a “journal”, or “blog”, of sorts. It doesn’t have nearly the nifty features I get here with Drupal, such as photos, private messages, recipes, etc… but nevertheless, since they are hosted on such beefy servers, over such a massive connection, with hundreds of thousands of daily readers, it’s a compelling proposition to maintain one’s weblog there.

This morning, for the first time in several months, one of the people I’ve flagged as a “friend”, Ironica, posted a new journal entry. And it’s compelling.

Ironica offers a potential way to begin returning more accountability to the health care industry. Not doctors, specifically, but requirements for the common good of mankind that certain drugs (AIDS drugs, for instance), after the company has recouped their investment, begin mandatorily lowering prices. I’m not a fan of government intervention, but there are certain industries where it is ethically acceptable, and possibly even necessary, that regulation intervene in the interest of protecting consumers from otherwise rampant fraud and extortionary pricing.

What do you think about Ironica’s idea?

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The following story is definitely “toilet humor”. You’ve been warned; if you are of delicate sensibilities, you may not like it. If you enjoy funny, weird stories, this may be right up your alley.

Mom, that means you! I think it’s pretty cute and funny, but you always made bad faces at the dinner table if we told these kinds of stories…

---

It had been a very, very long movie for five-year-old Zachariah Matthew Barnson; nearly three hours is pretty much his limit. As we stumbled out of the theater last winter where we’d just seen “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, Zach looked up at me with pitiful eyes and said “Dad, I really have to go to the bathroom!”

We pushed our way through the crowded lobby, watching male after male surge through the men’s room door. They all sported the famous look of concentration and disinterest on their faces that says “I’m going into a room where about a half-dozen strangers will be holding their private parts and urinating while staring at the wall. And I need to stand next to them and do the same.” Women are lucky. You always have stalls. Men are forced to stand three inches from enormously fat, smelly men on either side and pretend they don’t feel uncomfortable pulling out, erm, sensitive parts in full view. I mean, there are some concealing measures you can take, but they are at war with the “how long should I dig in my pants to give the impression I’m well-endowed?” reflex. If you try to be modest, you just know the guy next to you assumes he has a bigger one than you.

Women, I don’t intend to gross you out with that description. But, I mean, I need you to understand the kind of hostile environment men are in when they enter a full restroom. You’ve got this kind of discomfort, palpable in the room. Society thinks it is OK to have urinals without walls. And there are twenty men lounging around the middle of the room, eyeing one another and each one wondering “can I take that urinal that just freed up without ticking someone off?”. It’s rough!

Anyway, we pushed in with the rest of them. Wall-to-wall men. I mean, packed in so close, you sure hope one of the guys in a stand-up stall isn’t your friend, because if he waves at you he is sure to spray a neighbor.

So, Zach and I stood around for a few minutes, me trying to look like I don’t have to go myself while steadfastly avoiding looking other men in the room in the eye, him clutching his backside desperately in that kind of lip-curl, eyes-crossed, knees-knocking uncomfortable squirm which causes every adult in the room who isn’t his parent to try to get a little distance before the explosion.

We waited for a few minutes. Zach and I entertained one another with knock-knock jokes while we waited. It helped; he stopped the Potty Dance long enough to laugh before remembering how bad he had to go. And then…

Poof

The men’s room cleared out. I mean, it seemed like one minute, the place was filled to the point I’d have guessed a fire martial would have forced people out due to exceeding the room’s capacity — you know, the little note posted on the wall — and then, like BOOM, Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nobody else in the room. It was quiet, except for the steady “drip, drip, drip” of water trickling from the sink faucet someone failed to close completely.

“Well, Zach, looks like you can take your pick!” I told him, gesturing to the stalls. “I’ll just use one of the stand-up ones over here.”

Easier said than done.

I viewed the scene before me in dismay. Abused urinals stood rigidly against the wall, silent sentinels suffering in subjugation at the indignity of human excrement. One sported soap, quietly, slimily dripping from the handle. Who had washed their hands before using a urinal, I wondered. Urinals commonly feature a little "pee on me" plastic grille with a bar of deodorant in the middle. One seemed to have been pushed up the right-hand inside of the urinal as far as the curvature would allow it. Someone stuck their hand in there to move it? It appeared that several of the former users of the utilities had friends walk in and waved, for the evidence of shameful aiming abilities abounded. Finding a suitable urinal, I finally began to take care of business, without worry of timing on the pants-digging, nor care for perception of the nonexistent people on each shoulder.

BRRRRAAAPPPP!!! The singularly most resonant, full-featured, diarrheal gas-passing I had ever heard echoed through the empty, tiled men’s room.

Holy crap! I thought to myself. “Zach, was that you?” This was a singular explosion, worthy of a forty-year-old with irritable bowel syndrome.

From behind Zach’s stall door, I heard a quiet, tiny giggle. Imagine a shy five-year-old covering his mouth trying to stifle a laugh, and you’ll get the picture. He sounded so cute!

“Heh, that was a really good one, dude!” I shouted over my shoulder toward the stall door as I zipped up. “I bet you can’t do it again!”

FLOOSHFWUBWUBWUBWUB! An even more magnificent turd-toss followed the first. It sounded as if the small human in the stall had passed his own body weight on the second try.

“That was AMAZING, little guy! I give that one a nine out of ten,” I laughed as I sauntered nearer the stalls. “Come on, I bet you can beat your last one. That was totally impressive, dude.”

Another tiny giggle echoed from the chamber. He was probably doubled over in pain from this experience, and doubled over laughing at my comments. I warmed up to the game, noting how funny he thought the whole thing was.

FLUBNUBNUBWAPWAPWAP–SPLORSH! Obviously, he had hit his stride. “Aww, little dude, that was nothing. Eight and a half, tops!”

Zach’s tiny voice inside the stall said, “No, that was a nine.”

Several more gas-passings happened. I couldn’t believe the carrying capacity of his tiny little body. He must have been in dire need during the movie, and not willing to miss a minute of the movie to take care of business. We began ranking each fart, shouting “Seven!”, and then “Twelve!”, but the diarrheal noises gradually tapered off.

I briefly thought to myself, “What a special bonding moment between father and son. This is something we’ll remember forever.”

I was right.

I heard a toilet flush.

I heard a click from the stall next to Zach’s.

I watched a very large, forty+ year-old man step out, wink, and proclaim “Show’s over!” as he strode to the exit.

Yep, that’s a moment I’ll remember forever, all right!

The Matrix is a pretty cool movie. Now witness the coolest thing ever as you watch a favorite scene in ASCII!. That’s right, you too can enjoy ASCII animation. It helps to have your browser font size set very small, or have a high-resolution (1280×1024 or higher screen). Watch it. Love it. Live for the ASCII characters…

Important note: this is pretty big. It takes a while to load, even on fast connections.

Last night, in the latest edition of the grand tradition, four stalwart friends assembled at Denny’s in Murray, Utah (just a few minutes south of Salt Lake City) for a night of fun.

“I don’t know,” I mouthed around a jawful of green beans and half-masticated chicken, “we did the Hoo-Doggy last time, and it just seems dated, you know?” I adjusted my backside a bit on the not-too-soft, very narrow, short green booth bench next to an outside window under the dim lighting in the greasy-spoon.

“Yeah, I know, but what would we yell instead,” questioned intrepid Desert Star Heckling Society leader Ryan Rawlins as he chewed around a forkful of steak, “Oompa-Loompa or something?” His prodigiously wide frame seemed incongruous on the small bench opposite mine.

“Naw, that lacks panache,” I replied, as our two mortified wives glared at us, then began their own conversation. “Maybe Oh My Heck?”

“What about Good Golly?” Ryan suggested, the gleam in his eye indicating he thought he’d found just the thing.

“Oh, yeah, that sounds great!” I shouted enthusiastically, spraying a mouthful of cottage cheese across the table which drew a raised eyebrow from Ryan’s wife, Lynette. “and maybe we can shout ‘Bad Golly’ when the bad guy comes out!”

And thus began our third foray into the world of our newly-formed Desert Star Heckling Society. We began innocently enough one night, with a simple “Hoo-Doggie!” shouted at inappropriate times. The Desert Star players responded enthusiastically to this prodding, with zany one-liners and zingers coming with each inflammatory statement.

Tonight followed that excellent pattern.

“Good Golly!” we shouted in unison after arriving at the theater and the play, “Jekyll & Hyde”, began.

“Exactly!” shouted the actor onstage in response to this bit of audience participation.

Ryan began to get creative as the puns got worse from onstage. “Yes,” proclaimed the ugly Mr. Hyde, played with flair and ham by Jack Drayton, “you can’t hyde from me!”

“That’s just bad!” shouted Ryan next to me. The audience giggled around us.

“What, you think I write this crap?” responded Hyde with a glare and a grin from the stage. This time, the audience guffawed.

A few minutes later, Ryan interjected another one-liner at an appropriate moment when the audience should have been laughing, but wasn’t. “This,” Scott Holman as Dr. Jekyll retorted from behind the desk on stage, gesturing in Ryan’s direction, “this is what happens when cousins marry.” The audience roared!

---

The art of good heckling has been refined as a tradition for thousands of years of human history. Unfortunately, it is all too often lowbrow and of ill-humor. Lines like “you suck” or “go home”, while perhaps appropriate at a sporting event, are entirely inappopriate at a a comedy theater. So, in that vein, allow me to share a few tips for good heckling at the Desert Star!

1. Be creative. Use original lines, and be sure to try to have good comedic timing. If a few lines fall flat, that’s OK, but if all of your lines fall flat all night, you’re definitely doing something wrong. If you draw laughs from your surrounding patrons, you are doing it right. If you instead draw frowns and angry stares, perhaps you’d better think up some original lines ahead of time and try them out on friends to see if they are funny. Or just hang up your heckling shoes and realize that you’re forever consigned to the role of laughing plebian, rather than witty repartee-master-of-the-heckle, eh?
2. Remember, you are a foil for the actors and actresses. Your goal is to get them to respond to you — draw their fire, and get them to use those lovely insults they have prepared in your direction. The audience should be laughing at what the actor or actress says — not what you say.
3. Be prepared to be insulted. Your breeding, your clothing, your hairstyle… If you don’t have a thick skin, you’re not going to survive the heckler’s life!
4. Do not try to heckle on your first trip, or perhaps even your third. Know the actors before attempting to engage in sparkling repartee with them.
5. Heckling is best used to involve an otherwise uninvolved audience. If the people around you aren’t responding to the puns, point them out, laugh as loudly as you can, and try to get them to respond.
6. In the vein of “know your actors”, here are some of the principal players at the Desert Star Playhouse as of late 2003 who are fun for hecklers to play with. The playhouse really seems to value an active audience, and readily involves them (willingly or unwillingly) in their antics. I figure heckling is fair play — particularly if you are on the front row 🙂
   

   Jack Drayton is an easy mark. He readily responds to audience heckling, usually to hilarious effect. He has an excellent sense of timing, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of funny, self-deprecating retorts for virtually any audience participation. If you must choose one Desert Star player to pick on, and you have a frail ego, he’s the guy. Unlike some other players, he nearly always responds to provocation, which makes him really fun to barb.

   Scott Holman is another easy mark, but only for the thicker-skinned potential hecklers. Scott, like Jack, readily responds to hecklers, but his responses (like the one above), tend to be far more oriented toward personal insults to audience members. Don’t get me wrong, they are still hilariously funny, but delicate egos need not apply.

   Kerstin Davis is also a regular DS performer, and an excellent choice for the budding heckler. She will often ignore the heckling if your timing is off, though, so it’s probably best to cut your teeth on Scott or Jack before trying out Kerstin.

If done properly, heckling can be an excellent way to make a night at the Desert Star even better. But fair warning, competition is fierce in this arena, and some nights you may only find room for one or two barbs. Never fear… if you attend enough, you will find a night when the audience is dead, and your heckling talents can really bring the best out in the performers to warm the audience up and get them rolling!

So, I’m in Day Two of my low-carbohydrate diet. Trying to make sure that I get multivitamins, and have a good mix of veggies to keep me healthy. I’m really trying to avoid the diabetes that seems to traditionally afflict my family, and from the diabetic community, this seems to be a really sure-fire winner. It involves lifelong diet changes, though, which may be hard, but as for the weight-loss and diabetes-avoidance aspects, I only have two words to say: Cool stuff!

One thing I’ve really missed, though, is potatoes. One poster on the alt.support.diet.low-carb newsgroup suggested using daikon for hash browns rather than potates. One also suggested that Turnips work really well, but you have to soak them in water plus a little cream for about 20 minutes before cooking them.

Going to have to try it! Apparently the Daikon is only 1 to 2 grams of carbs per serving, while turnips are around 3 to 4 carbs per serving. Time to get creative…