Twinkie, Twinkie Little Star

Dec 01, 2008 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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Audrey, where you get that sugar?
Darling there is nothing sweeter
You make me scream, you make me bawl
You make me feel like ten foot tall
Sugar bum, sugar bum-bum

When Lord Kitchener asked in wonderment about the source of the sugar which Audrey possessed in such sheer abundance, he might have done better to shift his focus from her rear end to the heavens above.
However, to physically investigate its origin, he would have needed to be more than ten feet tall.  In fact, he would have required a spaceship.  According to the British Broadcasting Service (BBC) in an article headlined “Milky Way’s Sweetness Throughout”, “A simple sugar that is an ingredient of life has been found for the first time in a relatively hospitable part of the galaxy.”
One wonders how hospitable that part of the galaxy is – would the abundance of sugar make the region all sweetness and light?  Would that be light-headed or light years?  A nurse at a hospital emergency department received a call from an unidentified woman.  “I believe I ate too much sugar and I’m really feeling the effects,” the person said.
“Are you light-headed?” the nurse asked.  “No, no,” the woman replied, “I am actually a brunette.”
One can imagine the plight of the weary traveller who has made the voyage of 26,000 light years to the centre of a large cloud of gas and dust in an area called Sagittarius B2 near the centre of the Galaxy, arriving tired and in need of R&R.  A light year is about ten trillion kilometres, so the actual distance is approximately 260 trillion kilometres or about 80 parsecs (a parsec is 3.26 light years), and anyone making a trip like that would need serious sustenance, maybe even glucose drips.
Fortunately, that is what the cloud has in abundance.  The BBC explained, “Glycolaldehyde is an eight-atom molecule composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. It can combine with other molecules to form the more complex sugars, ribose and glucose. Ribose is a building block of nucleic acids, such as RNA and DNA, which carry the genetic code of living organisms. Glucose is the sugar found in fruits.
“Glycolaldehyde contains exactly the same atoms, though in a different molecular structure, as methyl formate and acetic acid, both of which have been detected previously in interstellar clouds. And glycolaldehyde is a simpler molecular cousin to the sugar you stir into your coffee, the scientists say.”
There is no question about the significance of this discovery to scientists, but what about industrialists?  Would Tate and Lyle set up a sugar factory in space?  Would Coca Cola shift its operations from Georgia to Galaxy Central?
I know that Nestle’s, Dairy Dairy and Kerrygold have not announced any plans, so far, to move to the Milky Way, figuring that it will be around even when the cows either come home or run dry, but what about the candy men and people like Kitch, for whom sweetness is the very essence of life?
The people they have to watch out for are the Twinkie makers and users.  Why Twinkie?  This is the story, as detailed by several sources, about what happened in San Francisco 30 years ago.
On November 27, 1978, a city employee named Dan White, a former policeman, went on a rampage and killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in City Hall.
During the trial, Martin Blinder, a prominent psychiatrist, testified that White had been depressed at the time of the crime.  Blinder referred to several factors that demonstrated White’s mental condition.  White had quit his job, he avoided his wife, and began to lose interest in his appearance.  He was normally clean-cut but had become slovenly.
Worse, White had previously been a fitness fanatic and health food advocate, but had become a junk food addict, consuming large and continuous quantities of a particular brand of sugar-laden cookie (Twinkies) and Coca Cola.
Blinder presented studies which claimed that elements of diet could worsen existing mood swings.  Another psychiatrist, George Solomon, testified that White had “exploded” and was “sort of on automatic pilot” at the time of the killings.
The defence never challenged the fact that White had killed Moscone and Milk, but used the psychiatric testimony for a successful plea of diminished capacity.  The jury decided that the murder of the two men was not premeditated and convicted White of voluntary manslaughter.
The verdict was perceived by many people, including the San Francisco Gay community, as being too lenient and led to what is known as the “White Night Riots”.
In legal circles, the White case is the basis of what is now known as a “Twinkie Defence,” or one in which the defendants claim that some unusual biological component is totally or partly responsible for their actions.
In another case, the widow of James Oliver Huberty, the perpetrator of the San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre in which 22 people died (including Huberty) and 19 were injured, claimed the monosodium glutamate (MSG) from McDonald’s hamburgers mixed with toxic chemicals in Huberty’s body were responsible for Huberty’s behaviour.
Fortunately, while there is green cheese in the firmament, nobody has yet found ground beef, unless the cow that jumped over the moon had male company and they are both in cheeseburger heaven under the golden arches of fruitfulness and fertility, with a little MSG to add savour to their celestial comfort.
Or is there more to this than meets the eye, even one peering through the 39-foot radio telescope in Arizona that first found the sugar-lined cloud?  We have to wonder what drove me to write this article on Thursday, November 27, 2008, the anniversary of the San Francisco murders.
Can I use a Twinkie’s defence and blame it on the glass of sweetened sorrel that my wife gave me, or is there some alien and sinister force at work planning to enslave us through an addiction to sugar?  Was Audrey the prototype of a new and potent weapon that will be used against us?  The truth is out there.
*Tony Deyal was last seen saying, “I want to believe that Kitchener’s screaming and bawling were induced by the alien Audrey, and that her primary attribute was extra-terrestrial as well as extra-territorial.  Trust no one.”

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