Life would suck without mysteries. There wouldn't be anything worth looking forward to. What's really going on in the Bermuda Triangle? Can you teach an orangutan to be a farmer? Will I lose my job this week? What the fuck is pineapple soda? If the mysteries of the world didn't haunt us daily, would we even want to wake up each day? I wouldn't. And by the way, I got some pineapple soda today. It's weird. Not bad, but not actually good either. Just weird. I tried it first by itself, and was definitely taken aback by the experience. My initial taste was too unexpected to make anything of it, so I carefully had a couple more. I came to the conclusion that pineapple soda tastes like Smarties. Yes, those little candies. It's a very familiar taste to me, because when I regularly played drums at this tiny Pentacostal church my mom went to for a while (until the married keyboard player started stalking her), I would always take one of those big bags of Smarties you get at gas stations, because I'm not exactly a fan of church or its overall message, and I would eat Smarties throughout the service to keep myself awake. Yeah yeah, that makes me seem like an awful human being, but hey...that's exactly what I am. When the pastor, as good a guy as he was, would direct everyone to bow their heads in prayer, you would hear nothing but that obnoxious plastic crinkling as I twisted open a Smarties wrapper to sugar myself out of bored sleep. What can I say, I'm a sinner. I drink, I cuss, I have a weiner, and I often scoff at people who post Bible verses on Facebook (though I still capitalize "Bible", did you see that?). And I occassionally will partake in the usage of a tame, delightful drug such as marijuana, if it happens to be freely available. If I followed the examples of "non-sinners" I have seen in my life, none of that would matter if I kept it all a dirty secret, but alas, I am the worst type of sinner there is because I absolutely revel in letting my true self be shown publicly. I just told you all I will smoke pot if it's handed to me, when I know that my brother's wife reads this blog. But I don't think she cares much about that. Actually, if she is reading, I will now divulge another secret, or in fact, a secret plan: twice now, my mother has somehow come across the topic of pot and has said something like "I guess I should smoke it at some point before I die" and she erupts with laughter after she says this. I am patiently waiting for the THIRD time my mom says this, at which point I plan on coming out and saying "OK MOM, THAT'S IT. I'M MAKING A CALL RIGHT NOW; WE ARE SMOKING TOGETHER." I'm excited about it because smoking pot with my mom will probably be the highlight of my life. Any of you who know my mom will most definitely agree and wish you could be there too.
But none of that is what I want to talk about. I don't even know what I want to talk about. Mysteries? That's how I started, but I don't know if I have any to keep this going. It's just been a while since I posted anything here and I'm feeling a bit rusty. Mystery can be synonymous with adventure. I have had many adventures in the past month, some of which I can't tell you here. I've adventurously solved some mysteries too. What the fuck is pineapple soda? Oh I already told you that one. But I have something to add. Naturally, I added vodka to it. That helps. I generally (not since my short-lived college career) don't mix vodka with what I would call a "thin carbonated drink", except for Sprite in desperate times, or Mountain Dew, because hey, according to Tech N9ne, "vodka and Mountain Dew is the new shit" (that's a shout-out to Missouri, which makes it a shout-out to one of those adventures I can't tell you here). But surprisingly, I didn't hate vodka with pineapple soda. It is by no stretch of the imagination a vodka with pineapple JUICE, that's for sure, but I have no substantial complaints about it.
But cocktails aren't the only experiments I've conducted lately. I have experimented a bit with my favorite hot sauce in the world. See, since I was a child, my dad has been taking us to a little shack of a BBQ joint that originated in Phenix City, Alabama but is currently located in Columbus, Georgia (same fucking dreadful place, really), called Chicken Comer. The sauce is mustard-based, very spicy, and quite easily on my top five Greatest Things Ever list, alongside alcohol, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and who knows what else. If you can excuse the oblivious racism on the website, you can order some for yourself (http://www.chickencomerbbqsauce.com/), which I highly, HIGHLY, recommend. I often purchase some for myself and for the topic we don't discuss here in this blog. But anyway, one experiment I did was with some turkey legs. Oh god, turkey legs. You really don't have to do anything except cook them. But I was feeling adventurous, so I plopped some turkey legs in a slow-cooker filled with Chicken Comer hot sauce and some chicken broth. I chopped some white onion in there and tossed in a jalapeno I had slit right down the middle, and holy shit, after something like 8 to 10 hours on low heat (not true--sometime in the middle I turned it to high for like an hour or two) I had some super tender, delectably spicy turkey legs; I could just pinch the meat right off the bone with no effort at all. Shit was so crunk.
And I had more Chicken Comer sauce left in the bottle. So I had an idea: combine the original flavors pioneered by not one, but TWO, restaurants I hold so dearly in my heart. Shit got interesting here. For a minute I went to college at Gordon, in Barnesville, Georgia. There is a tiny BBQ joint there called Georgia South Barbeque, and it is AWESOME. Well one day a few years ago when I lived in Decatur, Georgia, I was in Publix and noticed Georgia South Barbeque Sauce, yes, for real, bottled at Georgia South Barbeque in Barnesville. You bet your ass I bought some, and continue to do so whenever I see it. So yes, the other day, I decided to drown some wings in both Chicken Comer hot sauce AND Georgia South BBQ sauce, along with some generous dashes of dry spices (always up to you, so I won't even try to remember what they were). I baked the wings (still slightly frozen) for an hour at I think 350 degrees. Let me tell you, these wings gave me a boner. Those two sauces, from two of my favorite places, mixed so well together to make one truly exceptional flavor, it just defies elaboration. I can't explain it; you will have to try this for yourself, because these wings will without a doubt be served at the upcoming Shrewd For Thought chilidog party, which obviously will be featuring more than just chilidogs.
And I don't know, that's all I got for tonight. Did we learn anything? "Maybe... Maybe no... Maybe fuck yourself." Be adventurous, and always enjoy the fact that life may be stuffed with mystery; you should enjoy this, because without mystery, or the unknown, life would just be fucking bland and pointless, right? Right.
