Consumerism costs your heart and soul.

"Research shows that intrinsic values not only promote personal, social, and ecological well-being, but can also act to immunize people against materialism. It's that see-saw again. As intrinsic values go up, materialistic values tend to go down. So part of the trick is to build a life that expresses your intrinsic values. That might involve spending more time with people you care about, finding meaningful work, even if it pays less, or taking part in volunteer opportunities for causes you care about."

You heard the man. Love what you do and you'll have a better life. Remember that, everyone, ever, as you go from high-school, to college, to the real world.

If you watch the video and really pay attention, you'll see characteristics described that you see in people you know, and you can learn a lot about them when you connect the dots.

I Earned My Mexican Card Today

As a precursor to this story, I have to say that it's a 100% better read if you have The Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert playing somewhere in the background.

As an after-note to that precursor, it's my personal belief that your whole life will be 100% better if you have The Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert playing in the background.

It all started when a careless Hispanic man left a small glass bottle of habenero hot sauce on a table. A busser picked it up and handed it to me.

"Que quiere este? Lo encontre en le mesa."

Since I had no idea what she said, but half guessed it was something along the lines of "here, take

this sauce," I shrugged and took it to the back. My co-worker Junior, who is about 90% deaf, was

standing at the table in what I consider the "break area" (because we don't have an actual break

room). I jokingly motioned for him to drink some. He laughed and said "No, you crazy" in his

soft-spoken Spanglish dialect.

"Whatever man. I'm totally going to find a use for this though." Later that night, as I got off work, I

went back into the kitchen. "Hey Nico, I wanna make a pizza with this."

Nico, one of the main chefs, examined the bottle. "Habanero XXX Hot Sauce. You want a pizza

with this? You're gonna die."

I shrugged. "Probably, but I'm hungry, so I might as well kill two birds with one stone."

Five minutes later, an ominous red miasma permeated the whole kitchen. The pizza moaned and

growled as it lurched out of the oven. The person who cut it suffered third degree burns all the

way up their arm, as well as in their nose, mouth, and eyes. As it was being transported, it

melted right through the metal pan, and had to be brought to me in via wheel-barrow. The whole

building was evacuated for their own safety, and we had to disengage the sprinkler system for

fear of it activating.

Okay, not really, but seriously, it was hot.

I set it down on my table just as my boss, a small Mexican man named Alex, was coming over. "I

bet you're gonna cry."

"I'm not going to cry Alex."

"Good, I don't want to see you cry." He pulled out his Iphone. "But when you do, I'm gonna take

a picture."

I was laughing to hard to eat my pizza. When I finally calmed myself, I took a bite. I can still feel

the raw spot on the top of my mouth from the burn. I kept my composure. All I could say was

"wow."

"Is it hot?"

"Yeah. But it's good. You should try some."

"What's on it?

"Onion, pineapple, pepperoni."

He brought a piece up to his nose and smelled it, then looked me dead in the eye and said "smells

like... crying."

"Yes, it's made from pure extract of crying. Just try some."

"Oh, this not hot at all." He said. I winced. "Nico, come try this. Is good."

Nico came over and put a piece on a plate. "Is it hot?"

"Yeah, it's really freaking hot."

"Mm. Okay. I'll try it." He ventured into the back of the store. About thirty seconds later he

came back out, looked at me, laughed, and shook his head.

"Was it hot?"

"I only took one bite. It's too hot. I couldn't even swallow it."

Junior came out of the back with a look of horror on his face. "You want some man?" He looked at

the pizza, then at Nico breathing heavily and fanning his face with his hand, shook his head, and

briskly walked away. I ate another piece. "Hey Alex, I didn't cry. Does that mean I'm a Mexican

now?"

"Yeah, you can be Mexican now. Here your Mexican card." He pretended to hand me an

invisible card.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I earned my Mexican card. Just so you have

some point of reference, the jalapeno (approx. 5000 SHU, or Scoville Heat Units) is about 1/20th

as hot as a habenero. The habenero (in between 100,000-350,000 SHU) is approximately

1/12th the heat of the worlds hottest known pepper, called the "Trinidad Scorpion Butch T"

pepper, which clocks in at 1,463,700 SHU. This pepper is so hot that you have to wear gloves to

hold it, and if it gets anywhere near your eye it will temporarily blind you. You have to wear a

body suit or a chemical mask just to cook it.

Or for another point of reference, this pepper is hotter than most law-enforcement grade pepper

sprays, which range from 500,000 to 2,000,000 SHU. If I were to extract the pure chemical

that causes the burning sensation from a pepper, called "capsaicin," it would be 16,000,000 SHU.

Ingesting pure capsaicin would cause you to convulse for a few seconds, and then drop dead.

Arrest Me, I Speak in Maths! (bonus points for getting this song reference)

I have to be at work at 11. This means maximum number of hours of sleep would be 8 1/2, leaving me thirty minutes to physically and mentally prepare myself for work.

Probability that I can't find my other work shirt and will need to wash laundry: 100%.

Approximate time to compile, wash, and dry dirty laundry: 2 hours.

Therefore MST (Maximum Sleeping Time) is reduced to 6.5 hours.

Chances of me waking up too late to wash laundry: 70%, reduced by 5% per alarm I set on my phone.

Time wasted picking random times as my alarms so they will be perfectly spaced out between 0 - 100% consciousness (with each alarm increasing consciousness by 10%): 2 minutes per alarm, with an increase of 1 minute for every alarm after the 3rd.

For every one minute of consciousness tonight I waste approximately 2.5 minutes on Facebook/Memebase/Failblog/MLIA/videogames (aka F-e-b-li-ga).

If I set ten alarms at 8:00, 8:10, 8:15, 8:20, 8:30, 8:32, 8:35, 8:38, 8:39, and 8:40, following the previous formula, then I get (2+2+2+3+4+5+6+7+8) = 39 approximate minutes wasted on my phone trying to calculate perfect alarm times (aka browsing my "recent contacts" over and over to see if I want to text any of them). Then we calculate the FEBLIGA time (39 x 2.5) = 97.5 minutes, or 1.625 (97.5/60 minutes) hours of time doing FEBLIGA.

For the ten alarms I set, leaving me with 100% consciousness at exactly 8:40, I have done this: (10 x 5%) = 50%, leaving me a 50% reduction in the probability of me waking up too late to do laundry, or 20% chance of doing so.

What this means is despite having achieved 100% consciousness, there's still a 20% chance I'll somehow manage to screw up doing laundry. However, this can be countered by setting four additional alarms to remind myself to wash my shirt and other unmentionables (the four alarms are 4 x 5% = the remaining 20%).

(9+10+11+12) = 44 minutes, resulting in a 110 minute, or 1.83 (110/60) hour increase of FEBLIGA. This results in approximately 3.5 hours of FEBLIGA tonight.

Those 3.5 hours of FEBLIGA put my approximate sleep time at 5:40, leaving my MST at 3 hours.

Ability to do math at 2 in the morning: unhindered.

Probability of me blogging instead of going to sleep: 100%

Amount of screwed am I tomorrow at work: a lot of screwed.