Gravity: It's the Law or Is It?

Spencer Dryden

 

Fellow bloggers, this came out funny, but I was seething when I sat down to write it. I was disgusted with myself for my bad habits and angry with Dr. Oz as well. However, after it sat for a while, I sent it to The Good Men Project. They put a different title on it and wrapped it around some good graphics. I have subsequently joined LA Fitness, hired a personal trainer and downloaded a calorie counting program on my smart phone. Sometimes anger can be motivating.

 

Gravity: It's the Law. Or is it?  

For all the distress over global warming, the melting of the polar ice cap, the hole in the ozone, depleting of the oceans, the mass extinction of species, the pollution of our air and water , let me add one more to the litany of despair—gravitational flux. This phenomenon has not yet caught the fancy of the sky- is- falling media. I may be the only person who has noticed it, so let me bring it to your attention. There has been a slow marked change in the strength of the gradational force on earth.

Gravity is hard to measure directly, but I have found an indirect measuring tool, the common bathroom scale. Over the last two years every time I stand on it, the damn thing registers a higher number. I am not eating anymore than I did two years ago when the scale read 175. Two weeks ago it said 200. How is that remotely possible? Gravitational Flux —the force of gravity is not immutable or constant.

I checked the accuracy of my scale by placing objects of known weight on it. To my horror, the force of gravity had not changed for these objects, leading me to the astonishing deduction that the change in gravitational pull is not universal among all types of mass. This discovery of Gravitational Flux promises to launch me on to the path of the Nobel Prize in Science.

So many great scientific breakthroughs, like Viagra, for instance, are serendipitous. Viagra, in fact, selectively reduces the force of gravity on certain vital organs. The idea that Newtonian principals of gravity are not universal has my head spinning. I'm wondering if any of you have noticed this phenomenon on your own bathroom scales?

I can see myself now in Geneva, waddling down the isle to accept my reward when the slacks of my tuxedo fall down they way they do to poor old fat fools who are featured on America's Funnies Home Videos. I fall flat on my face, humiliated.  My only consolation is winning the $10,000 weekly prize for the most humiliating video— which of course will go viral— and finally bring my fifteen minutes of fame. It's all good and all in the name of drawing attention to a looming crisis.

I didn't recognize the phenomena a few years ago when I went on a strict vegan diet to improve my health. Even under this stringent diet, devoid of my beloved butter, eggs, cheese, and steak, the force of gravity increased. I ate raw spinach by the bale. I should have Popeye arms now. I consumed tofu by the brick load, gobbled blueberries, ate nuts—all the things Dr. Oz promised would lead me down the path to throwing away my blood pressure and cholesterol medications, as well as shedding unwanted pounds. Look at him, he's skinny as a rail. His hair keeps getting darker while my is turning whiter. How could he be wrong? He's a doctor, after all.

The results were stunning. After 18 months my blood lipids dipped about ten  percent, no where close to enough to remove statins. Not too long after, I had emergency surgery for a kidney stone too large to pass. At sixty-three I was too old to be a chronic stone thrower, so the wonderful folks at the Kidney Stone Clinic did a big work up on me to try to determine a cause. In addition to pissing into a bottle for an entire week, I had to keep track of my diet. Turns out all those healthy foods I was consuming are high in oxalates, the stuff of kidney stones. My doctor gave me a handout about oxalate content in foods. Yup, nearly everything I was eating was high in oxalates. I pleaded to the surgeon, "But Dr. Oz told me to eat this stuff." The surgeon smirked. "Then tell Dr. Oz to pass your next kidney stone."

I'm no longer vegan.

But the gravitational phenomenon that became apparent during my veganity has continued unabated. I have been at wits end trying to validate my theory among leading scientists. Like all men of vision, my theory has been utterly dismissed. Ha, they said the same thing to Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and even the dude who discovered Viagra. Look who's talking now?

Time is running out for me. My waist has expanded to 38". I had to buy new clothes. Plotting a simple line graph shows I'll be needing a crane to get me out of bed in the not too distant future.

We must act now my friends in bringing awareness to this frightening phenomenon. It could be the first signal that the long awaited reversal of the earth's magnetic poles is at hand. We need an awareness campaign, ribbons, slogans, media packages, spokespersons, local chapters, days weeks, even months dedicated to this noble cause. Following the awareness building paradigm so prominent in modern fundraising, we will be giving a dime from every dollar raised to sponsor research, with the other ninety cents going to build more awareness.

Please write me and let me know if you too have noticed this phenomena on your own bathroom scale. Together, we can raise our voices in a chorus of alarm. I think our slogan should be The Weight is Over.  To bad Save the Wails is already taken. How about: We Can't Weight Anymore?

Thank you and please pass the doughnuts.