It's been a few months since I last posted. I do not apologize.
Here's what's been going on in the Fat Knight's Kingdom since we last spoke:
I've been continuing my spicy food conditioning. (Although my bhut jolokia plant gave me no peppers this year.) The new training goal is Jungle Jim's Weekend of Fire, to which I recently scored a free ticket.
Story time.
I think my conditioning has been going quite well. I'm able to eat habaneros straight up, and my hot sauce collection includes some pretty daunting bottles, all of which I can now handle with ease. So, one Saturday I was stopping at Jungle Jim's to pick up some hot sauce for my brother-in-law before I headed home for a gig. Now, on Saturdays, they set up tasting booths all over the store. I usually pass most of them by, as they're either produce that I've eaten before (seriously, who hasn't had a peach...?), or they're for some stupid frozen item I'd never buy, like "Vegan Gluten-Free Tofu Soy Veggie Waffles - Try them, they taste just like regular mediocre frozen waffles!"
Well, this particular Saturday, they had a gauntlet of hot sauces set up next to the hot sauce aisle. The challenge was simple: If you complete the gauntlet (eat every hot sauce), there's a ticket to Weekend of Fire with your name on it. "Bingo!" said the Fat Knight, "I have prepared for just such a challenge, and am sure to vanquish this foe!" So, I commence tasting the sauces, no problem. Don't get me wrong, some were quite hot, but nothing I couldn't handle. I even maintained a decent level of composure in front of the people watching me go toe to toe with the bottles of doom. When I finished the last one, I spoke with the spicy guru manning the table, and suggested he put out a different scorpion sauce by the same manufacturer of the one he had on the table, as I think it has a tremendously better flavor (Sancto Scorpio, for the curious among you). He pulled a bottle right off the shelf, opened it, and added it to the gauntlet. Satisfied with my victory, I made my way through the checkout, ticket in hand. I made it. The conditioning, surely, has paid off.
About half an hour later, a time bomb went off in my stomach. It was as if someone had put a knife in my side, and then began pumping acid in through the wound. In addition, it felt like my body temperature had risen fifteen degrees, and my brain started spinning with maniacal delusions of death and fear. Not sure what to do, I did the first thing that seemed like it would make me feel better: Drink water. Made it worse. So, naturally the next step was to strip off all my clothes, and lay down in a cold, empty bath tub until the pain subsided. This pleasant image lasted about thirty minutes. I then felt absolutely fine, and went along my merry way.
The dangerous part of this is that I don't know which sauce that caused it, if any. The moral of the story: Don't eat eight super hot sauces on a stomach filled solely with coffee. You'll feel like you're dying.
