Diary 3: Sweetened or SHOT?

As I whipped through the glass door of Java City, I almost crashed into a guy with no legs. He looked up patiently at me from his wheelchair with no small hint of grace. I apologized and walked to the counter where I was stunned by a raven-haired Siren.

I recovered enough to order and slowly walked to get a table. As I watched her, and it was difficult not to, I realized how deadly self-conscious she was of her own appearance. I wondered if she was ever able to move freely beyond that category of her natural beauty?

I got my double extra large dark French roast, shook it off, hit the coffee caddy for some blue packets and milk and settled down with my diary to write this.

I want to rant today about "branding" and maybe one brand in particular as a glaring example. But before I do, I think it relevant to talk about the handicapped, which in some small to large way, is all of us.

Think of most everyone you know. Aren't most of them a mixed bag that includes some great things but then some glaring handicap? Maybe they've got most of their life together, but isn't another part through the floorboards?

A millionaire businesswoman who is fighting breast cancer; a family man with a drinking problem; a brilliant artist who is too shy to try and sell her work; a popular comedian who cannot make a relationship work and lives alone.

Don't believe the airs most put on. In fact, the more certain people appear "perfect" the more likely they are covering up some huge handicap that scares the shit out of them.

*******

One of my specific handicaps is that I am hypoglycemic, which basically means my pancreas has an itchy trigger finger. This is not my major handicap, but it less painful to point to than other obvious flaws.

Hypoglycemia is kind of the opposite of diabetes. Basically, any time a mild dose of sugar is introduced into my system my pancreas over-reacts and pumps out slugs of insulin into my body like Rambo on a rampage. The insulin hits my already deranged brain blowing my blood sugar level to tiny bits. The results are headaches, depression, psychosis and, worst of all, sluggish prose.

How do I deal with this handicap? Simple. I don't eat sweets, or lots of carbs, and I dump these little light blue packets into my cup o'joe. It's called "NutraSweet" and is branded as a true substitute for sugar with no aftertaste (like that other pink crap that will grow you a third eye even though you are not an Eastern mystic).

That was at first, now it is being touted like some miracle substance which, in Star Trek terms, is able to "bypasses pancreatic anomalies with no residual effects." NutraSweet is great in pudding, popsicles and ice cream.

Long live Nutrasweet!

I think.

*******

I am still shaking this morning a bit.

Not because I had a cherry cheese danish this morning (I didn't), but because of yesterday.

Outside my H street apartment, a young guy walked up to me and asked if could give him directions to 20th and G streets. Considering that we were at 18th and H streets, I naturally questioned his ability to apply simple numbers and letters.

It was only then that I divined the true reason for his inquiry: he wanted my wallet.

This revelation came to me in the form of a small snub-nosed revolver which the young junkie had pressed firmly at my mid-section, threatening to ventilate, of all things, my pancreas! And let's face it, it is just this sort of medical information (about a person's pancreas) which street scum are not normally privy to.

All I could think of was the gun, my trigger-happy pancreas, and the fact I had not had forty buck in my wallet for over a month. As I stared into his dilated eyes I made my decision: "There is no fucking way I'm giving you my wallet," I said directly.

He may not have been the smartest guy, and he was definitely high, but somewhere in his vermanic brainpan my assailant recognized in my eyes a look that clearly said, "You can shoot me, but I will throttle you before I go down."

"Here is how we are going to work this" I said, "I'm going to turn around and walk back into my apartment, and you are going to turn around and walk away."

With that, the little toady took a step back, and I took this to mean he understood my terms, so I too turned and returned to my apartment, feeling some ambivalence as my young assailant ran off into the night.

Sometimes having a faulty pancreas is the next best thing to having balls.

*******

But what the fuck is NutraSweet? Where does it come from? What is it made of, and what do they mean when they say it is "all natural"?

The name implies that it is nutritious and will sweeten. I looked all over the heavily branded box for the mandated nutritional information and was met with nothing but zeros. No calories, no fat, no sodium, no proteins. If not for the trace elements of carbs and sugars, it would be had to prove that NutraSweet wasn't just the Emperor's new sweetener.

What it does have in it is "phenylketonuric." (I know that makes me feel a lot better.) The specific "phenylketonuric" that NutraSweet sports is "phenylalanine" which, for obvious reasons, will herein be referred to simply as Funny-LaLa-Nine.

So I turned to my research department, the Inktomi worldwide web search engine, to do a search for relevant articles on NutraSweet and Funny-Lala-Nine, and doggone it if NutraSweet doesn't have their own web page (http/www.nutrasweet.com) which has a page title "What is NutraSweet made of?"

Here is their answer to the question.

"NutraSweetTM brand sweetener is made up of common food components that, when combined, deliver a clean sweet taste. In fact, these are the same components found in much greater amounts in many foods we eat everyday, like meat, fruit or dairy products."

I'm not kidding.

But these "food components" are never identified except that they occur in some unknown way in at least half of what we buy at the grocery store. That narrows it down, huh?.

If, with my blender, I hit on the right combination, say a ham hock, a banana and some feta cheese, can I get a clean sweet taste?

Okay, the ham hock is probably the wrong food component because it's too salty. I guess I am still stuck on branding a pig as a pigoramus.

What about', er, well, what kind of meat would be sweet? I could only think of sweet-breads. That's gotta be the secret!!

But what is sweetbreads?

Here's where it gets eerie: (and again, I'm not kidding about this). I dropped my Oxford's dictionary after I read the following,

"Sweet*bread (sweet-bred) n. an animal's thymus gland or pancreas used as food."

Well you know what they say, "you are what you eat."