You should know; you built it.

There are many reasons Minnisha and I aren’t close friends, and her interest in inspirimotivation activation poetry is certainly one of them.

Bhut Jolokia, a pepper from Assam, India, packs over a million Scoville heat units. By contrast, the Red Savina pepper, which previously held the title, is rated at under six-hundred thousand SHUs.

Dr. Paul Bosland, Director of the Chili Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, notes that Bhut Jolokia means “ghost chili.” I think that adds a certain mystique; who wouldn’t want to sample a lethal pepper? I wonder where I can get one?

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your attraction to horses,” I admitted. “They just seem big and horsey.”

“That’s pretty much it,” she agreed.

I know almost nothing about horses; my equine ignorance may be perpetual.

Kiliaen’s snide comment reminded me of Blaise Pascal’s observation, “If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.”

“Everyone’s still debating the work of Carl Karcher, even though he died last January,” Gerrit reported.

“Sorry pal,” I said, “I know almost nothing about your fellow academics.”

“That’s the funny thing about this area of research,” Gerrit explained, “Karcher wasn’t one of us, he was a hamburger guy.”

“A hamburger guy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Gerrit continued, “he owned the Hardee’s chain and founded the Carl’s Jr. string of hamburger joints. He was also a rabid cretin, who spent a million dollars trying to have all homosexuals fired from public schools.”

He went on to explain that he and his colleagues were intrigued and confounded by Karcher’s use of apostrophes. Hardee’s was a conventional usage, but no one knew what to make of Carl’s Jr. Carl’s Junior what? Or was it a conceptual breakthrough, an existential, nihilistic redefinition of a possessive?

Gerrit droned on about academic tedium until I threatened to start serving coffee instead of whisky. That did the trick, and he started recounting sordid details of all the tawdry affairs in his office. The stories were both cautionary and educational; I now know how to get guacamole stains out of felt draperies.