When peppers attack!

It is a scientific fact that the more spicy food you eat, the more you WANT to eat! (Sorry feminists, but it is the same for poontang!) It feeds upon itself over and over and well…over again! You feel it going down and, unfortunately, you feel it again when it visits via Montezuma!
I have long been a fan of “the heat”! It started with my humble beginnings and the black pepper craze of ’79! I found that fresh cracked pepper was the wicked god and I could get the rush from that easier than “poppers” or the Mountain Dogs (Mountain Dew and Mad Dog 20/20) that my friends were experimenting with! Not quite the buzz, but far less troublesome than the others and with less hang-over!

I soon learned that there was a point of diminishing returns when it came to black pepper and I had to tweak my fix! But how? I had never had any of the veggie peppers that I had seen in so many of my Mother’s cookbooks and I had little knowledge of these precious heaters. How would I get through the learning curve and still keep my taste buds in tact? (Fuck that, how would I get my fix, damn it?! I was, after all, a “heat-junkie”..!)

I literally stumbled upon Tabasco® sauce and it changed my fucking life!!! The sweet foretaste and the heated after-bite were absolute heaven to my ‘buds! How could I have been missing out on this sweet nectar for so long? Were my parents goat herders? Did they not want me to be happy? Was there really no Santa Claus??

I soon learned that there was a whole world of heat out there that had been kept from me! (Those bastards!) I was astounded and hurt as I couldn’t understand how my parents, who claimed to love me so very much, coulve kept this door closed to me for so long!? There was “heat” out there and you guys don’t care enough about me to share that knowledge with me? Was I adopted?

No, I was not adopted! I was, however, brought up in a family with ‘heat-aversion & taste empathy’ (h.a.t.e. if you will). How could this have happened to me? I was a good kid. I got good grades, I hung out with the “in” crowd! I held doors open for old ladies, I said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and I even lifted the seat before I peed! (I even washed my hands after doing so! I mean, come on!)

Then, came the single most life changing moment of my life…pledging! Not money, if that’s what you are thinking, but pledging a fraternity! Alpha Chi Rho to be exact! There were times of embarrassment, there where times when things worked to my advantage, but NOTHING made or had more of an impact than the hot sauce I had to eat over my fish-steaks! AHHHHHHHHHH! What a simple bit of greatness wrapped up in a little tiny bottle! The name was Texas Pete® and though it was not much hotter than Tabasco®, it was hotter and I was on my way to newer and better hot sauces!

I eventually found my way to jalapeno sauces. Great tastes including some by Rio Grande and even Dave’s! Then came the single most life changing moment in my hot sauce-life…habaneros! Holy ass shrapnel! I cant even begin to tell you how friggin much I LOVE the hottest of the hot peppers! What the fuck was I thinking? How is it that I missed this “heat” for this friggin long?
Dave’s Temporary Insanity Sauce®, Dave’s Total Insanity Sauce®, Dave ULTIMATE Insanity Sauce®! Holly shiit muslim Batman! What the fuck had I been thinking? I had missed out on the holy friggin grail of heat because I didn’t know where to look? How the hell does THAT happen?

You try giving away a free toy!?

Well, here I go with my Scrooge rant for this holiday season!

Many of you are probably familiar with the sterile, or maybe traditional is better, charitable organizations for getting toys and such to needy children in your area. As is typical this time of year, I get hit up from all angles to help out or make a child’s holiday brighter; and I am truly not knocking the organizations that assist with this each year. What I am complaining about is the impersonal and unfeeling WAY in which we seem to have allowed the gift of giving to have changed.

I have two children, though my son is too young to get this quite yet, but my daughter is seven and she has been privy to seeing her parents and those around her give to charities, shelters, etc. But what I was hoping to be able to do this year was to get a toy and actually allow her to give it, in the real sense, in person to a needy or less fortunate child. The anonymous nature in which we “give” these days builds no real moral fiber in our children. You buy a gift, you put it in a pile, and someone else distributes them. Thanks and Happy Holidays! WTF!?

I have been trying to find a way through local hospitals, shelters, and such to arrange to do this very thing this year and have, so far, been shut out! I mean, I get that we live in a ridiculously litigious society and everyone, including the beneficiary organizations want to cover their asses, or be P.C. or whatever, but come on! All I want to do is show my daughter just how much joy the act of real giving actually has on not only the receiver but the giver as well. Well, so far, no good. But I’ve not given up yet!

Between parent and person!

Please just be quiet and go upstairs and go to sleep. I understand that your tummy isn’t feeling good, but the heat is set the same way it was last night and the night before that. Yes, I believe that your tummy is hurting and I wish I could do something that made you feel better right away. I would trade places with you in a second if I could, to make your pain go away…no really I would!

These are the nightly rituals or a parent. Not you? Well, I guess I am just “one of those parents” then, huh? I am probably the most patient, caring, and loving parent you will ever meet and I don’t say that as a pat on my back, I say that because I genuinely and sincerely feel that each of us was cut out to be something and for me, that is being a parent! I’m not infallible, I’m not unrealistic, and I’m not even cocky! What I am is a man who lives and breathes as my children live and breathe!!

Do you get what I just said? Do you feel those words resonate through your very being? If not, either I didn’t word it as well as I thought I did, or you haven’t had the fortune to be a parent! (There could be any number of other reasons, come on I aint a shrink!)

Parents can be good, bad, competent, incompetent, ignorant, malicious, and any other word we, as a society use, to describe any other facet of that very society. The line, however, is drawn with this man in that I will not tolerate nor will I let a moment go by without getting down on the floor or the ground or into the car seat or the stroller or swing on the swing or the glider or crawl under the cover (not just a little but all the way down to the foot of the bed!)! I AM that guy! I AM that person! I AM that father!

Being THAT father is my life’s calling! My children not only know this and feel this, they actually GET this! They, as well as other children in my surround, come to me and almost instantly they seem to relate to me. I know you may call it childishness or some other symptom of a less than adult persona, but look at it through my eyes and in this manner. I sum it up in one thought, word, symptom…”If.” Not “If” only. Or “If” I had only…or any other resonance of that same phrase, sentiment, or emotion.

The world opens up to each of us in respect to our own sense of self and ability. Thankfully, mine found me right where I was; enjoying myself, smiling, and loving and living with my children!

I love you Ty and Kayla!