Liquid Christmas

We sat around well into our cups at the Christmas party, an odd assortment of attendees gracing the Irish with company for the Sunday holiday. The atmosphere was rather bohemian, while all of us were in some varying degree or other teachers, each of us had a unique penchant for otherness, whether it was volunteer work, art, math, music, acting, or writing.

I had worked hard to help prepare the food, the dinner, the finger foods, and the drinks that were going out throughout the evening, yet even so I hadn’t managed to get much to eat. This tends to happen when one gets more wrapped up in the service than the act of actually eating. So it was that around nine I decided I really needed to have something to eat to both help prevent alcohol poisoning and to assuage the general hunger.

The Volunteer had very nicely brought some homemade vegetarian chili for everyone. This seemed like the most workable idea. The only problem being, that the Volunteer has absolutely no tolerance for capsacasasium at all. Any pepper at all, black, white, and gods forbid red, will send her into proxims of pain. She just can’t handle the stuff. I spooned some of the chili into a cup and immediately wanted it to taste more like chili. It wasn’t that the chili wasn’t good, it just lacked any kind of spice that I would associate with chili, and being Latino, there is no point in eating a chili that does not actually contain chili. The stuff was more a tomato soup with vegetables.

Fortunately for me I do live with the masochistic spice conissuer, the One, who likes her chili not just hot, but  mind blowing. The One’s favorite proclamation upon eating a dish that is “properly” spiced is “Oh, I can feel the wax in my ears melting.” Knowing about her addition for pepper that only those with the steal stomachs would want to challenge to a dare, last Christmas I bought her a series of pepper sauces. These sauces are not just spicy. These sauces required me to sign a waiver to purchase extracting a promise that I would only ever use them as a food additive. The active ingredients bring the heat rating up to 600 times hotter than Tabasco, or registering in at 600,000 scoville units for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing.

So it seemed the most natural thing in the world to add a touch of one of these chili sauces to the currently under chili-ed chili. I picked the Mega-Death sauce, as it would be hotter than the Sudden Death and sure to make the chili have bit. I put a bit of cheese in as well and about half a teaspoon of Death Sauce. Mixed, heated, melted the cheese and began to consume.

“Sweet gods what have I done.” Was pretty much the only exclamation I could make as my face started to turn red and I swallowed my drink a little more.

“That’s hilarious. You know how hot those sauces are.” Says the Volunteer.

“Yes, but…” I am barely able to choke out words around the atomic explosion that has engulfed my mouth, “I didn’t think it would be this bad.” I manage to gasp out, while adding more cheese and a bit more chili to try to calm this thing down. It’s too late, however, as it’s already gotten out of control.

One of the house guests brought by the Volunteer comes in to join the conversation.

“What are you laughing at?” he asks the Volunteer.

“I just think it’s hysterical.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“I put some chili sauce in the chili to make it spicier,” I respond while pounding the counter and gulping down some tequila.

“Here, have a spoonful,” I say and pass him a bit to try.

Whether he tries it to be polite, out of curiosity, or out of inherent sense of masochism is unclear. He does however eat the spoonful.

“What…the…hell!”

“I know, right?” I ask as I continue to die trying to eat the chili.

“What is that?” I pull out the bottle and show him the heat rating. He reads the description.

“600 time hotter than Tabasco.”

“Yes, the other one has Jersey Fury, but this one is made with Liquid Rage.”

“Liquid Rage. You gave someone with German heritage Liquid Rage. You really should have thought about this. There is no telling what I could now!”

We all start laughing.

“I may  not be 100% German, but I’m pretty sure this was a bad idea. Liquid Rage, don’t you know anything about history?”

This brings the entire house down, as at this point everyone has entered the kitchen to watch us suffer over the chili. I get close to giving up.

“I think it’s trying to burn its way of out my stomach,” says the semi-German house guest.

The Irish are cracking up. The One explains that she has a sauce that’s hotter.

“No thank you.” Is the chorus that rises up.

We pour more alcohol around to try to tamp the fires that are going on in our mouths, and the rest of the party joins in. Eventually I abandon my cupful of Liquid Rage chili as just too much for my poor stomach to take, and toss some tequila over it before heading towards a couch to try to calm the fire in my belly.

Fortunately, even though full of liquid rage, the semi-German made it through the night without doing anyone harm. However several thousand taste buds were killed for our entertainment.

 

Stop SOPA and PIPA

I don't have time to complete blackout my blog, in that

1) That coding took a long time.

and

2) I literally don't have time

However I do think it is important that people be aware of what SOPA and PIPA are and why they are so dangerous.

Here is why.

I'm going to link to other peoples pictures of the SOPA protest on the web.


That's not my content, it's someone elses content.

In a world after SOPA and PIPA post a screenshot of a website would be illegal and I could be sued.
Posting a screencap from a movie could get you in trouble. Forget about uploading a user made video to youtube, or a fan movie that you made based on a popular concept.

It's a nasty piece of legislation and needs to be done away with.

Fight the power.








This is what happens when you make the internet angry.