Fraize Dotcom

Man, stop paying attention to you comments, and suddenly you get spammed by unbelievably awful linkspam! My apologies to everyone who may have thought that I’d suddenly embraced a new and disturbing lifestyle.

I promise to be more vigilant in the future. If it keeps up, I’ll see what I can do to block the miscreant who’s been sending me links every day. If I can’t do that, well, I may have to turn off anonymous comments.

UPDATE – I’ve turned off anonymous comments. You’ll have to log in if you want to comment. Sorry, but I’m just not at all interested in promoting child pornography or poker sites.

To join up, click the “Join” link on the upper right of the page, or just click here.

I’m at least a partially successful TG’er! Two products that were my idea to carry or were my design are actually selling!!

The Wee Ninja, by Shawnimals, has nearly sold out of our first run, forcing me to place an emergency order for as many as they have to give me. Hot damn!

The ROFLCOPTER tshirt design was the top tshirt seller for this last newsletter. Sweet! I feel good that I’m pulling my weight.

Friday night was the celebration for ThinkGeek’s 7th anniversary, and a goodbye to our lauded graphic artist who’s moving on to greener pastures. 35 people, including me and Heather, were jammed into my sister’s house drinking beer and being cool. Good times. Sniff. Good times.

Today, Saturday, I went to my friend Rolf’s house to help him move his massive Sony TV downstairs into his living room. It required coordination, and our old mutual friend Kevin. It was good catching up with old Kev who I haven’t seen in ahuminahuminayears. After Rolf’s, I went to Tyson’s Corner to the Apple store to see if they can have a look at my beloved Powerbook. The USB port on the left no longer works. Maybe it’s a quick fix. I dunno.

So, here I sit, soaking up the free Apple WiFi (Joyous!). Good times.

Ladies and gentlemen: my first ever completely original tshirt for ThinkGeek.

Please buy several.

I woke up this morning with an awful crick in my neck. It happens from time to time. I worked from home yesterday, and not in a terribly ergonomic position, so I’m sure it’s from that. Anyway, several advil and generic ibuprofin later, and I’m still hurting. I stopped by a CVS on the way home today and picked up one of those chemical heating pads – the kind that stick to your skin.

I put the pad on my neck and felt it heat up. It loosened up my neck and shoulders and I felt better. The heat got quite strong, actually. It was then that I remembered something. I had noticed that the label said, in big bold letters, “CAPSICUM,” which is a derivitive of capsaicin talked about in my previous posting. I researched capsaicin a little bit when I made the last post, and found that the chemical itself stimulates the nerves in skin the same way heat does. It gives the feeling of a burn with no actual burn. Not even a chemical one.

That got me thinking of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The scene with Paul and the box and the gom jabbar. The box worked on nerve stimulation, simulating burning. It was up to the person who’s hand was in the box to use his human brain to bypass his instincts, realize the pain wasn’t real, and to let it move past him. If he was able to do that, it proved he was human, and not an animal.

As the heat of the pad got more and more intense, I wondered how much I could take, if I knew the pain wasn’t really indicitive of damage. It began to feel like sitting under a hair dryer for too long (a feeling I remember from my bleaching days). It hurt, but I could take it. It was interesting how I was able to compartmentalize the pain from the reality of it.

Fascinating, the human brain.

UPDATE: Um, oops. That whole thing about a capsicum not burning? Try explaining this weird sunburn like redness on my neck not an hour after removing the pad? Stupid Wikipedia.

There is a very nice chinese food delivery place near the ThinkGeek World Domination Headquarters called New China. Their lunch specials are huge and cheap, and very not bad. Our tshirt merchant, JennK, brought in some General Tso’s chicken from there that made the office smell heavenly. Nearly everyone, except my sister who inexplicably dislikes chinese food, came running from their hobbit holes to find out what smelled so nice. Mark in customer service and I ponied up the dough for two $5.00 orders of General Tso’s.

Oh, it was wonderful – exactly what I wanted. Probably a pound of chicken pieces, fried nicely and smothered in a sweet chili sauce, nestled next to a honkin’ big pile of fried rice. Teh yhum. That was, of course, until dinner time.

Some folks may be familiar with a vurp – some not. For the uninitiated, a vurp is a burp that brings up slightly more than air. Often, this is no problem; one quick swallow and all is right and good in the world again. Imagine, however, if you combine a vurp with a swallow-down-the-wrong-pipe episode. Imagine, further, that you invoke red hot chinese chiles into the mix. You now have a recipe for what is most definitely the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life: red-hot-semi-digested chiles in my lungs.

I gasped and immediately downed a liter of water. Every breath of air caused searing hot pain to shoot into my chest, making me believe I was having a heart attack. I thumped my chest and coughed, tears streaming down my face. Heather looked on with great concern, rubbing my back and repeatedly asking if I was okay.

I know how chiles work. Capsaicin, the primary active ingredient in chiles, is a pernicious molecule that when it comes in contact with human flesh causes a burning sensation. Being non-polar, it doesn’t dissolve in water, so gulping water really does nothing. The two most effective treatments for the burn is high-fat products that squeeze between capsaicin and your flesh, or ethanol which dissolves it and can be found in liquour. Considering I had to, effectively, inhale milk or vodka, or just sit and take it until it disappated on my own, I opted for the sitting and taking.

It was a highly unpleasant 30 minutes. Eventually, the pain did subside, but for a while there, I felt like I was going to die. Badness.