New Record for Pain

Well, in case you missed the news a few months back (like I did), the record for the hottest chili pepper has been broken!

The previous record was held by a pepper called the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion–-(didn’t he wrestle Hulk Hogan in the 80s?)– which contains 2 million Scoville heat units. This pepper makes your face hot enough to roast s’mores over it.

But the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion is no longer the hottest pepper! The heat record is now held by the Carolina Reaper. The Reaper pepper blazes in at 2.2 million heat units! The military in India uses peppers like this to make weapons that “immobilize” you; although I have a feeling it would make the victims very mobile indeed.

Now, I mean no disrespect to folks who like to break chili-pepper records; I think it’s great. I myself have never broke a record of any kind. I did once attempt to break the world’s record for the most marshmallows packed in your mouth while saying “Chubby Bunny.” The record was 16, and on my 15th marshmallow my allergies kicked in, I sneezed, and I knocked over a kid on a bicycle across the street.

Records are hard to break, and the guy who made the Carolina Reaper broke the record by 200,000 heat units! That’s huge! But it begs the question: did we really need a hotter chili pepper?

Did someone say, “Wow, I bit into this Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and I was in a coma for nearly two weeks. I wish someone could top that!”

“I want a chili pepper that will reconstruct my DNA at the cellular level while I lie on the ground screaming like I’m being dipped in a live volcano! You got something like that?”

“I’ve been kissing my blowtorch, but it’s just not enough!”

“I want a chili pepper that’s going to kill me, bring me back to life, wax my nose hairs, steal my identity, call me names, and then kill me again! Why? Because that’s good eating!”

If a chili pepper can be used by the military as a weapon, I don’t think it belongs in the cheese-dip.

Isn’t pain God’s way of saying, “Don’t?”