white man's burden

What is up with South Bend--blandest in the land--Indiana? It's no secret me likey the spicy food. I once had a contest with a friend to see who could eat the spiciest jumbalaya. Actually that's not exactly true--he spilled most of a container of cayenne pepper into his bowl and was about to throw it out when his wife said, "just give it to e. he'll eat anything." i did; though i (barely) lived to regret it. I know the actual definition of Holy S&%# means now. Stop laughing. There are three Indian, three Thai, and probably a dozen Chinese restaurants in SB. There are also a couple of descent sushi places. You'd think that we have a large, culturally-rich town to support all this ethnic food. Or maybe you wouldn't. (For comparison, we also have 5 Applebees) The point however is the same: white people have trouble getting people of asian ethnicities to give us spicy food. I go into a place in a strip mall (go figure) called "O. G." It's a chinese place like No 1 on OSU's campus. Not too fancy. Not too good either. I ask for Wor Su Gai hot. I get it red. Not hot, just with added redness. Do they put food coloring in it to make me feel better about myself? Do they think this is some sort of machismo? I went to a Vietnamese restaurant called Viet Nam Restaurant. I get something spicy. It has the little pepper symbol next to the item (the menu has 171 items on it, there has to be some way of telling what's what). I order it. The server asks the typical, "milea, medim, hot?" I say hot. She squints her eyes. She knew I was going to say that. It's good. But it's not hot. I'm not asking to remove the grout in my bathtub here--I just want to feel like I'm not at Applebees in the middle of a northern Indiana cornfield. Is that so wrong? So we got carryout from a Cambodian and Thai restaurant downtown. It's called "Cambodian-Thai Restaurant." I think "Angkor Wat" would have been better, but no one asked me. I got the red curry. It was hot. It made my eyes water. I thought: "hmmm. the Cambodians must not have many customers order hot." Imagine realistically spicy food in South Bend, Indiana. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. I was very happy. But my esophagus was not. I won't even relate what happened to me today. It wasn't fun. It inspired me to write this post about freaking hot Thai curry and the dangers of being white when eating it. It made me think of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." Damn.