The Diet Joke

Author
Lisa Pedace
Publisher
Big Shot Press

Next Generation Indie Book Award Winner (Diet/Nutrition/Food)

National Indie Excellence Award Finalist (Diet)
Ready to lighten up? This easy-to-follow reprogramming guide can help. Filled with humor and fun, The Diet Joke is a laugh-riot, common-sense approach to better health. Who says losing weight has to be so serious?.

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Bad News for the Coalition

Yesterday’s three by-elections are, as by-elections go, interesting. They point, first of all, to widespread electoral disengagement. Even by traditional by-election standards, turn-outs were low – which confirms the pattern of this parliament. Even in by-elections which were thought to be really significant, like Corby (turn-out 45 per cent), most people don’t turn out. The figure for Rotherham (34 per cent) – which was surrounded by publicity – is telling.
The results for Labour, whatever we think of the turn-out, were good. The possibility of a real upset, like Respect’s victory in West Bradford in April, was always on the cards. Yet the Labour vote rose everywhere, including Rotherham (to my surprise), even though there was a notional swing to UKIP. Given the forced resignation of Rotherham’s former Labour MP and the behaviour of the Rotherham Council towards UKIP-minded foster parents, it could have been much worse. The reverse is true for UKIP. They did quite well in Rotherham, but could have done better. They polled, however, pretty poorly elsewhere. As a protest party with a programme (or non-programme) designed to attract any voters with a grievance they have not been as effective as the Lib Dems were in their heyday. And their electorate, ageing and white, is not an expanding one.
The results for the Lib Dems were terrible. They came eighth in Rotherham, third in Middlesbrough and fourth in Croydon North. They lost their deposits in Rotherham and Croydon. In opposition their crucial role was as a protest party, often based on local resentments; or supported by ex-Labour voters who had given up on their own party. As a result they won seats with a very mixed social profile. They can no longer play that role and it is hard to see at the moment how someone like Simon Hughes can hold his predominantly working-class seat (Bermondsey) at the next election. The Lib Dem vote will probably hold up better in middle-class seats but these results do suggest how difficult it will be for them to devise a viable way to fight the next general election.
The results for the Conservatives were not much better. Indeed, I cannot remember such a bad set of results for them. As we would expect their vote help up moderately well in Croydon but collapsed in Rotherham and Middlesbrough. In Rotherham they finished fifth, behind UKIP, the BNP and Respect as well as Labour. This points to the party’s decay in ex-industrial seats in the North and suggests that they will be lucky to hold onto the gains they made there in the last election.
Overall the three by-elections present a mixed picture of the present mood of the English electorate. Allegiances are clearly fluid, and could float off anywhere. The tendency for people’s attachment to the major parties to weaken has continued and possibly accelerated. But it would wrong to exaggerate the fluidity. The Labour vote, apart from George Galloway’s one off in West Bradford, has not continued to fragment, and much of the new floating vote is comprised of disoriented Lib Dems. Respect clearly can only succeed in very specific circumstances. The same is true of the Greens, who didn’t stand in Rotherham or Middlesbrough and came fifth in Croydon. And much of yesterday’s UKIP vote will presumably float back to wherever it came from at the next general election. Even so, UKIP will damage the Conservatives unless the political environment changes markedly. But if the Tories adopt UKIP’s rhetoric and ‘policies’ they will lose much of their business support, which could be fatal.

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The Gypsy Twist

Max looked carefully at the dead boy, reminding himself that most murder victims looked very young and surprised when their bodies were found, as if life had suddenly rushed up and taken them unawares.” -

Shattered after a gang attack in Central Park, misfit NYPD Officer Max Royster accepts a free-lance assignment to track down a serial killer preying upon wealthy private school students. In the course of his cross-country investigation, Max discovers that not all predators are born alike.

“Hickey, who has policed cities from New York to Los Angeles, is a rare combination of hardcharging patrol cop and shrewd detective. He is also an artist at portraying the dark side of life in every strata of society.” ~ Tom Reppetto (Author, NYPD: A City and Its Police and American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power)

"An exciting, fast-paced cop novel. It screams to be made into a movie. Frank Hickey tells it all from the eyes of experience, because he has lived through this stuff.” ~ Tony Lo Bianco (Director/Writer/Actor [Academy Award-winning The French Connection])

“As a former detective, Frank Hickey knows his bad guys better than they know them­selves. In his new novel, The Gypsy Twist, he spins a tale so vivid, so suspenseful, you'll think you're on the case yourself.” ~ Charles Messina (Writer, My Father, My Don)

“I loved The Gypsy Twist! A compelling story that draws upon years of patrolling a beat and investigating crimes. From gritty Flatbush to Manhattan’s Upper East Side and beyond, this police procedural / murder mystery is as good as any I've ever read.” ~ Eric Martin (NYPD Lieutenant, Former TV News producer)

“Frank Hickey's incredible inside knowledge about law and disorder packs The Gypsy Twist with crackling dialog and atmospheric punch. Juicy characters in a white-knuckle plot result in a police thriller.” ~Michael Eric Stein (Writer, Miami Vice, True Blue, CBS television movie, Higher Ground)

"The Gypsy Twist is one of those books that grabs you, and you can't put down. It reminds me of the days when novels were fun to read. I am looking forward to this author's next endeavor, which is something that I can rarely say these days.  ~ Liam O’Connor (Criminal Attorney, Judge)

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Help, Thanks, Wow

The Three Essential Survival Prayers

Excerpt: Help, Thanks, Wow

I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there's something to be said about keeping prayer simple.
Help. Thanks. Wow.
You may in fact be wondering what I even mean when I use the word "prayer." It's certainly not what TV Christians mean. It's not for display purposes, like plastic sushi or neon. Prayer is private, even when we pray with others. It is communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding. Let's say it is communication from one's heart to God. Or if that is too triggering or ludicrous a concept for you, to the Good, the force that is beyond our comprehension but that in our pain or supplication or relief we don't need to define or have proof of or any established contact with. Let's say it is what the Greeks called the Really Real, what lies within us, beyond the scrim of our values, positions, convictions, and wounds. Or let's say it is a cry from deep within to Life or Love, with capital L's.
Nothing could matter less than what we call this force. I know some ironic believers who call God Howard, as in "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard be thy name." I called God Phil for a long time, after a Mexican bracelet maker promised to write "Phil 4:4–7" on my bracelet, Philippians 4:4–7 being my favorite passage of Scripture, but got only as far as "Phil" before having to dismantle his booth. Phil is a great name for God.
My friend Robyn calls God "the Grandmothers." The Deteriorata, a parody of the Desiderata, counsels us, "Therefore, make peace with your god, / Whatever you conceive him to be— / Hairy thunderer, or cosmic muffin."
Let's not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to. Let's just say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us. We could call this force Not Me, and Not Preachers Onstage with a Choir of 800. Or for convenience we could just say "God."
Some of you were taught to pray at bedtime with your parents, and when I spent the night at your houses, I heard all of you saying these terrifying words: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake ... "
Wait, what? What did you say? I could die in my sleep? I'm only seven years old ...
"I pray the Lord my soul to take."
That so, so did not work for me, especially in the dark in a strange home. Don't be taking my soul. You leave my soul right here, in my fifty-pound body. Help.
Sometimes the first time we pray, we cry out in the deepest desperation, "God help me." This is a great prayer, as we are then at our absolutely most degraded and isolated, which means we are nice and juicy with the consequences of our best thinking and are thus possibly teachable.
Or I might be in one of my dangerously good moods and say casually: "Hey, hi, Person. Me again. The princess. Thank you for my sobriety, my grandson, my flowering pear tree."
Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer, too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
Some of us have cavernous vibrations inside us when we communicate with God. Others are more rational and less messy in our spiritual sense of reality, in our petitions and gratitude and expressions of pain or anger or desolation or praise. Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we're invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.
We can pray for things ("Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz"). We can pray for people ("Please heal Martin's cancer." "Please help me not be such an asshole"). We may pray for things that would destroy us; as Teresa of Avila said, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." We can pray for a shot at having a life in which we are present and awake and paying attention and being kind to ourselves. We can pray, "Hello? Is there anyone there?" We can pray, "Am I too far gone, or can you help me get out of my isolated self obsession?" We can say anything to God. It's all prayer.
From Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott. Copyright 2012 by Anne Lamott. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books.

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