The other night, I had some friends over and I was telling them about this bizarre game that my brother and I saw at an arcade in England. It was a giant chair with two metal handles called the "Chair of Terror". Warnings abounded that the Chair of Terror should not be used by the pregnant, elderly, or those given to epilepsy. The instructions said simply, "Grasp handles with both hands. The game ends when you let go." I presumed that this was some sort of torture device that shocked people, and couldn't imagine anyone playing this sort of game on purpose.

    When we walked back again, a fellow was sitting in the chair, holding the handles. Sweat collected on his brow as he grit his teeth. We watched in fascination, as did a girl who must have been his girlfriend. Why else would someone do this but in a sad attempt to impress someone else? What a bizarre game to exist! To think, people do things which will only cause them pain for purposes of entertainment.

    After laughing about it with my friends, we proceeded to eat dinner, which was a hot-sauce fest. We tried four kinds of hot sauce, five if you include the Taco Bell Fire sauce that I had kicking around. Let me say that the Taco Bell sauce was mild and cool, practically ranch dressing in comparison to the other sauces. A green sauce called Gator Squeezins was mild but delightful and similar to green Tabasco. Ass in Space was an unimpressive cayenne of medium heat. Possible Side Effects, the kindly-gifted sauce mentioned elsewhere in this journal, remained really hot, proving that I still don't learn from experience. And the fourth sauce had the heat, the deadly heat, of Possible Side Effects, but with the bonus of an oil base, which means that instead of a flaming inferno of pain in your mouth that eventually goes away, you get a flaming inferno of pain that is impervious to most efforts to dispel it for some time.

    It was all tasty, though.

    Anyway, the juxtaposition of my anecdote and the meal reminded me of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin shows Hobbes and anthill and says something like, "Look at these bugs, they're so stupid, all they do is run around from one place to the next for no reason." Then he says, "C'mon out back, there's something else I want to show you!", and he and Hobbes are running to the backyard as Hobbes has a thoughtful expression on his face.

    Okay, that's a sub-par explanation. But you ought to read Calvin and Hobbes if you haven't, because it was a fine comic strip.