Red Devil Juice

Can somebody explain the connection between Satan’s bodily functions and hot sauce names? I have to be honest there are few products that I would willingly put on my food if I found out they have the Devil’s personal endorsement. Yet people seem to line up to cover their ribs and wings and other body parts with these unusually spicy named sauces.

My wife recently brought home a sample of some restaurant’s “Satan’s volcano” sauce. The stuff is eye-watering hot as advertised. I have not compared it to the pack of “Devil’s spit” hot sauce I have in the fridge but I am assuming the SPIT is not as warm as 'Devil's blood' sauce, and no where near as hot as any volcano, especially one claimed by Satan.

Now this hot saucy name phenomena is not limited to any one region of the country like the South or the West. No I have been as far North as Seward, Alaska that proudly displayed their 200 or so different bottles of sauces to try right there on the wharf. Also when the town was not possessed by ALL of the world’s motorcycles in one square mile, I even popped into a restaurant in Sturgis, South Dakota. This place was a pretty normal main street diner except that all flat surfaces have empty bottle of nasty-named hot sauces. Honestly some of these hot sauce names would make the devil blush, but you’d never know it – him being 'well red' and all.

So I’m not really sure how the normally DEMONstrative ’Prince of Darkness’ allowed his juices to get quietly hijacked by these hot sauce manufacturers? You’d think somebody as high profile in today’s society as the devil, he would have legions of evil spawn to protect his brand’s ‘bad name’, and do his evil bidding? Oh I forgot he does – they are called ACLU LAWYERS! Anyway, I have linked The SAUCE STORE web site here if you’re burning for some hot and spicy reading. Remember the ‘devil is in the details’ so beyond the horned one’s namesakes, if you browse a bit you might ADD a new sauce or two to tickle your fancy. Remember of course, they tickle a lot less on the BACKSIDE of that equation!

Redneck Games Reunion

Once again I somehow missed the Summer Redneck Games in E. Dublin, Georgia on Saturday. This is that spoof (sort-of) alternative Olympics started down South when the real five ring Olympics stopped by in Atlanta awhile back. Although the event takes a lot of ribbing in the national media, it actually collects quite a bit of dough for charity, while having a lot of fun.

I’m not so sure what the big deal is though about throwing toilet seats as horseshoes? In Missouri we just throw the whole toilet out in the yard. Actually my nephew used a sledgehammer to break-up an old toilet of mine and we ended up burying the pieces in the backyard. The irony was the toilet rubble was buried to help with WATER control and erosion! Gee I thought that was what diapers were for?

Yeah those Georgian’s down at the Redneck Games have nothing on us Missourians. When we ceremoniously light our BBQ grills here, usually at least one random rodent and a flurry of insects vacate the thing quick. We are not big on Porky pigs feet here, but as I’ve mentioned before just across the ‘Big Muddy’ is a joint that people flock to for Pig snout sandwiches and love ‘em.

So to get in the mood and ready for next year’s Redneck games, I’m thinking of getting one of those mullet haircuts sewn right into a truckers cap. I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find my cut-off jeans made out of the Confederate flag. Though it has been quite a few pounds ago since I wore them, there is nothing quite so nice as resting your sweaty rump on the Confederate flag. Gee I had better be extra careful with those flag pants seams if I bend over though – NOBODY wants to see those Confederates split from the Union again!

Trashy Magazine Overload

If there is one thing I always seem to be drowning in, it is magazines. It really does not matter what the subject is or who in the household originally ordered the things. Once the mags are inside the house they pile up higher than pancakes at a kid’s ‘sport stacking’ convention.

I instinctively know that they are not necessarily valuable, but there is something very pleasing in a stack of random magazines to read. I guess that is why the Kindle E-book reader and Ipad concept don’t really appeal to me. I want to be able to pick up a glossy covered rag and feel the ink come off on my fingers. I want to dog ear pages and fan the leaves to randomly choose an interesting tid-bit or two to read in-between some chore I have to do.

Probably my love for random magazines started when I was very young when houses actually had alleys behind them. I would always find something of interest in the alley trash bins and one house in particular always threw away stacks of National Geographic magazines. I would drag those home to leaf through and study maps, until my parents house was overflowing. Those perfect yellow rectangles with the lush, handsome photographic covers always felt like real treasure then, as they do now.

Most magazines around here originate from some type of reward or ‘bonus program’ for belonging to a certain auto club, being a member of a utility, organization, or charity. My daughter has made it her mission to utilize ‘Coca Cola’ points to buy fitness magazines. That way, In her mind, at least some tangible good can be had from drinking the ‘liquid evil’ of carbonated beverages. My folks contribute to my newsstand stockpile regularly too, with gifts of magazine subscriptions for birthdays, holidays, or special events. Or at least I THOUGHT they were gifts? Maybe it’s really PAYBACK for making them have to forklift out all those crates of trash bin mags when I was just a kid!

Multitasking is Taxing

Hey don’t think I lack sophistication just because I am a lowly knotheaded blogger. No, I can ‘demi my doggy tasse’ with the best of breeds if forced to. You may find it particularly revealing that I am probably the last dinosaur in America who owns his own tuxedo that isn’t a lounge singer or Mafia Maitre D’.

Yes, I am a chameleon by nature and over the years it has served me well – at least most of the time. The truth is, that trying to fit a fat square peg into a myriad of skinny round holes all of the time can be taxing. Obviously people like myself are not specialists at ANYTHING and to even keep up with ordinary life requires a lot of perceived multitasking, and for me - whining.

The reality however is that the whole concept of doing more than one thing at a time WELL, is not very realistic. Yes you can answer the phone, watch TV, blog, do a load of laundry, make dinner, read etc. etc., but whether you know it or not, all that stuff takes you a lot more time while attempting to multitask. Your brain is wired to operate serially so every time you pause from one task to start another, no matter how fast you have trained to try, you actually are suffering inefficiencies in thought. The result is slower completion of tasks, inattention, loss of focus, and not unlike a caveman, a ‘harried’ life.

So avoid the stress and experiment for yourself by cutting down on a few of those juggling balls that you’ve got in the air. Nobody will think you have lost your ‘edge’ just because you cannot sing opera and chew gum at the same time. You can still be a sophisticated high-society ‘deb’ and a closet blogger; you just cannot do it all at the same time. I know, I’ve ruined your long established beliefs and clearly I must be possessed by the devil? So for you 'single-tasker' athiests, I have linked a great article from the Harvard Business Review which lends a little fuel to my fiery thoughts. Gee I never noticed those horny bumps on my head before – maybe that’s why I’m a knothead?

Eggs should be whipped not coddled

We had a guest over today which while that may be a bit out of the ordinary, it is not spectacularly interesting. This girl is a long-time friend of my daughter who I felt I knew pretty well but had never considered adopting before. But that all changed at breakfast because I found out this girl adores hot eggs on toast.

Though I love my hot breakfasts too, nobody in my household cares for anything except cold wet cereal. Both my parents and my wife’s folks enjoy their tasty cakes, sausage, eggs, and hash browns for a regular morning feast. So what happened genetically to my wife and young spawn to 'scramble' their brains and make them turn ‘white’ when they see eggs?

Are these really people that I should be associating with on a daily basis? I honestly don’t know how long people should go without egg on their face, but I for one don’t want to find out. This constant rejection of my breakfast values, honestly makes it harder each day to ‘quiche’ my family in the morning and mean it. I feel like an outsider and my nerves are ‘fried’. Clearly I need an egg-substitute like my daughter’s friend as my adopted ‘albumen-buddy’.

I may have one problem with my daughter’s friend though because she eats her eggs ‘sunny side up’. Except for my nose, I don’t anticipate anything ‘runny’ when I first get up, and I’m rarely ‘sunny’ at dawn. Those kind of eggs have to be gently prepared and handled carefully. When I first crack the coffin, the only thing I want to do is whip something – not ‘walk on eggs’ to make high-brow chow. Maybe I need to re-think adopting my daughter’s egg-eating friend and her fancy tastes. At my age, the only thing I want to coddle, is maybe another pan of eggs!