Spice Up Your Life
by Anne Loucks
Over the years, I have worked with many programmers who like to eat excessively spicy food. Nerds in particular seem to possess such a fetish. I think this comes from the fact that tests of physical endurance are not respected by their peers in the least, and the consumption of ridiculously hot food represents a feat of mental willpower.
I myself like spicy food, but not to the extent that some of my friends do. For instance, I knew a guy who learned how to say "very very hot" in Thai, just so waiters would give him the scariest stir fry available.
When given a choice of how spicy my food should be, I might order 3 of 5 stars, but I have sat next to people who order 10 stars when given the same choice. It can be difficult to eat my meal in these circumstances because simply sitting next to them is akin to being pepper sprayed.
I have never actually been pepper sprayed, but my Aikido dojo sometimes does classes at the local police academy where the recruits must take a bit of mace to the eyes as part of their training. It is difficult for us to practice when unhappy, gibbering, yelling folks are led to the locker rooms at the back of the class. We usually wind up calling it off because the stinging gas leaks inside, making us short of breath and generally uncomfortable. Sitting next to someone who has ordered 10 star hot food is, in fact, worse than secondhand pepper spray.
Eating such food is beyond my abilities. Folks who do consume such meals tend to sweat and cry as if the SWAT team were softening them up so they could more easily be handcuffed.
In a strange sort of way, it pleases me that food can be weaponized. Mustard gas, pepper spray, cyanide (made from peach pits). Of course, I don't recommend using mace on your food. A brief application is enough to render meals nearly inedible, at least to me. Still, one of my nerdy cohorts might simply relish the challenge.
