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.

I swear, I'll revolt all over this business.

Look, since the government obviously doesn't have anything better to do with its time than declare that pizza is a vegetable and enforce the same internet censorship used to such countries at Libya (you remember, that one that had all those protests and stuff about how they wanted their internet back) and China (you know, the Communist one), I honestly don't see why we keep them around at all.

Seriously. I hope they had just gotten out of a thirteen hour debate about how they're going to get us out of debt, and on the little coffee break were like, "man, pizza has a lot of veggies and stuff, let's make it a veggie too." Bam, done in five minutes, then back to the big problems. Don't waste America's time like this, Congress. It's not funny anymore. And leave our Internets alone. We're out of jobs, we're out of money, and if you take the internet away, it's the freaking last straw. Revolt, anyone?

Where's Guy Fawkes when you need him.

If you don't already know what's going on, please educate yourself on why America as we know it is about to change forever, if we don't do something. Do you want to end up like Libya?

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

To e-mail your representatives, please visit this site: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

"What PROTECT-IP will do is cripple new start-ups because it also lets companies sue any site they feel isn't doing their filtering well enough. These law-suits could easily bankrupt new search-engines and social media sites. And PROTECT-IP's wording is ambiguous enough that important social media sites could become targets. Lots of trail-blazing websites could look like piracy havens to the wrong judge. Tumblr, Soundcloud, an early Youtube, wherever people express themselves make art, express themselves, broadcast news, or organize protests..."

This whole post is like one big fat rabbit trail.

I think the problem people have with classical music these days is that it takes too long to appreciate. Unlike modern music where you have the verse and the chorus, with relatively same music traveling over the first and second verses and choruses, classical music requires patience, and that you actually listen to how the different instruments blend.

Take any mainstream hip-hop or rap song, for instance. Ever since the sampler was invented in like, what, 1980? People have been able to take like, a 15 second audio clip from anything they wanted, play it over and over, and sing to it. You see this a lot in the more electronic music and hip-hop, but it's slowly becoming popularized by the alternative/indie genres as well.

The point I'm getting at is that when you're listening to music on the radio, you can get an aesthetic feel for the song in the first eight seconds, give or take a few. Classical music can change tempo as much as it wants. It might go from the saddest thing you've heard, to suddenly you're being chased by a serial killer, and then bam, you're lying naked in a forest with flecks of gold falling from the sky.

Not that I've ever experienced that feeling or anything. Have you ever wondered what it'd be like to lie naked in a forest with gold shavings raining down from the heavens? I certainly haven't. But I'm sure that if it wanted to, Classical music could make you feel like that.

The reason human beings are becoming so increasingly impatient with the world around them is because the world around them isn't making us wait for stuff as much as it used to. Text messages, wireless internet, T.V. dinners... everything is being designed to be done in minutes or less. Even our exercise and weight-loss schemes. So much, in fact, that the whole education system is being shot to pieces because of it. All around the world people are trying to find a better alternative to sitting in a classroom for eight hours a day, and then sitting at home for another like, four hours doing the same stuff you did the other eight hours earlier on in the day.

The point is that I think the whole world needs to slow its roll and calm its bits. All this million-mile-an-hour living is bad for your health.

So... yeah. The sampler's a pretty cool toy. If you wanna know about how it created about six different genres, you should check out this video.

If you just so happen to hate music, and also spend your time brooding over ways to ruin children's lives and audit ice-cream truck drivers for a living, then maybe you'd be a little more interested in seeing why the world is ruining education.

Click on those links. Learn something today. Do everyone around you a favor and use your brain.

3 AM Philosophy: Chance.

When you grow up you'll probably be one of two people: the person who says "I should have taken more chances in life." Or the person who's lying in bed with liver disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, deaf in one ear, lost the nerves in one of his hands, missing one toe, and has a smokers cough. Sometimes you gotta remember that chance and risk are synonymous. Just remember that chance and risk mean the same thing, and every time you're taking a chance, you're taking a risk.

Then again, the latter person is also probably saying "lets go again!" like their life as been some sort of roller coaster.

So there you have it. Now, go rethink your entire existence.