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hwrnmnbsolWe had a really beautiful series of days last week, and I found myself at loose ends with not much that I needed to be doing. I had a good time getting caught up on my movies, I finished up some half-completed carpentry jobs around the house, and I also renewed my driver’s license. After all that I still found myself with a spare afternoon, however, and I really wanted to get outside and enjoy the fresh air and cool weather. So, I headed down to the convention center and bought a ticket for the Intergalactic Chili Cook-off.
It’s really just amazing how cooking chili has unified the thousands of sentient species that we have encountered ever since we went extra-solar. For all the diversity of intelligent life in the universe, there seems to be one thing we can all get behind, and that’s cooking up a big old pot of meat (or meat-analog) and spices (or spice-analog). I’ve also always been impressed with the variety and quality of chili recipes I’ve seen by non-Terrestrials; if you don’t believe me, all you have to do is go down to Borders Books and leaf through a copy of KLAATU BARADA NOM-NOM, or CHILI FOR DUMMIES by Sangfro Ubbus, the Dummy Ambassador. At any rate, I shelled out my twelve bucks and went wandering the pavilions, stalls, chuck-wagons and flying saucers of the cook-off.
I started at the Dhagavi tent. I confess I was a little leery about setting foot in there; the Dhagavi are notorious homophages, and it’s likely that they continue to buzz Earth from time to time trying to pick up easy snacks in out-of-the-way settlements. The Dhagavi chefs were extremely eager for me to come inside and try their chili. In the end I just settled for a piece of their cornbread, which I admit was pretty darned good, and a Bud Light. I will say that their chili smelled extremely delicious.
I then went to the next tent, which was unmarked. It had scads of scantily clad ladies lolling about and inviting me in with come-hither glances. I then realized that 1) the tent was empty of any actual humans, and 2) it backed up to the Dhagavi tent, so I was like OH I GET IT and walked on. I didn’t want to experience the Dhagavi’s offerings from either end of the spoon.
By then I was pretty hungry, so I waited in line to get into the Fruwgar compound. The Fruwgars are excellent chefs so I knew they would be serving the good stuff. However, Fruwgars are a protean, amoeboid race, and the surface of their homeworld is a very hot organic soup. Consequently, the most convenient way for them to prepare chill was from inside the pot, swimming around the ingredients to stir them, sampling tastes by absorbtion, and occasionally rearing their bodies up to scoop in more diced onion or steamed chilis from the counter. This made for a very interesting chili-tasting experience since I was constantly poking around inside my bowl with my spoon to ensure that none of the hosts were in harm’s way. I also couldn’t help but think that the chili’s taste must have been affected in some way by the Fruwgars’ exudations, and that in turn made me think of the Dhagavi, so my appetite wasn’t what it could have been.
I was somewhat intrigued by the Zzzardusis entry. You’ll recall that the Zzzardusis are beings of crystalline energy and lattices of light, and there is no true physical component to their existence. As a result their connection to the tactile universe is purely theoretical, and they do not so much serve chili as present concepts in chili service. This is a very nice idea, but as it’s an entirely intellectual exercise, there is never any actual consumption of chili going on. I found the whole noetic chili sampling thing to be somewhat off-putting, and I said as much to the Zzzardusis hostess. She got increasingly agitated at what she perceived to be my racist outlook towards the virtually-challenged, so I just left. It’s too bad really, because their recipes sounded really good.
The Gonfludan Pavilion was heavily armed and patrolled, which was a little bit alarming, even in Texas. I was welcomed inside their compound by a nervous Gonfludan hivemaster, who explained that I should eat quickly because an Isquiditur attack was imminent. I gather that the issue has something to do with beans; the Gonfludans are of the opinion that beans are an excellent and necessary part of chili, whereas the purist machine beings of Isquiditur hold that any dish that contains beans is not chili by definition. Apparently a holy war of sorts has started in their quadrant of the galaxy over this very issue, and despite the cease-fire accords signed for the duration of the cook-off, tensions were very high on both sides. The Gonfludan chili was delicious, with very delicate bluish beans that pulsed slightly. As I left I thought I could hear Isquiditur battle cries coming from the kitchen area; I decided not to stay for dessert.
The Norskori are travelers through time and dimensions. They claim to have invented chili before humans did, which nearly everybody considers at worst an outright lie, and at best something artificially generated by a random Norskori going back fifty thousand years and introducing chili to the indigenes. Norskori chili bowls are toroidal in shape, and they don’t so much cube their meat as tesseract it. Eating their chili is an interesting sensation; after you take a mouthful and you feel around with your tongue, you have the unnerving feeling that your mouth is larger on the inside than out. The Norskori were highly confident that they would win the tasting competition; their certitude was again something that generated concern about the integrity of the cook-off. That having been said, their chili was perfect in just about every respect, so who could really say.
The Ub don’t really care what their chili tastes like; they only want it to be as hot as possible. The Ub have invented nanites that they pour into their cookpots; the nanites swim around, find capsaicin molecules, and replicate them. Eventually a bowl of Ub chili ceases to resemble a comestible and begins to approach a means of euthanasia. My Ub host asked me to try some; I told him I would only taste their chili if it had been out of the pot for less than thirty seconds. He agreed, and I ate a bowl. Eh. It was too hot anyway.
The T-T-Gdont are mental projectionists, beaming their thoughts and feelings into the heads of others. They therefore didn’t so much cook some chili as dream it up. I tasted it. It was delicious, rich and creamy, with a hard spicy undercurrent and a slow burn. When I put down my spoon and complimented my hosts, I saw that my bowl was empty and clean, and probably had never been full. That was a big bummer, because my stomach was full of air for the rest of the evening, and that really cramped my chili-hunting style.
Of course there were plenty of human chili cookers too. One of them was Elvis who has been off-planet for a number of years now. He hasn’t aged much thanks to relativistic travel, and he was happy to chat as he served me up a bowl. He used a lot of peanut butter and it was almost ridiculously syrupy and sweet. I tried hard to be polite about it, though, since he seemed pretty bummed that almost everybody here has forgotten about him, and he was also getting chili stains all over his jumpsuit, and you know how hard those can be to get out. In the end I told him I enjoyed the food and the chat. “Why, thank you,” Elvis told me earnestly. “Thank you very much.”
Gurwami the Cloud-Thing wasn’t cooking, but it was certainly hovering overhead, its enormous billowing gauzy body putting the entire convention center in its shadow, and its spike-studded battle tentacles were draping down to grope for bowls of chili in every tent and station. “MUST HAVE DELICIOUS CHILI!” Gurwami trumpeted, knocking over tables and chairs and even patrons in its desperate quest to consume endless foodstuffs. It was really making an ass of itself by the end of the cook-off, and I have it on good authority that Gurwami will be banned from future events. It totally sucks; I can’t believe we elected that thing to the US Senate.
I totally cannot remember the Dremmbic pavilion. I don’t know what those guys did to me for the forty minutes I lost while I was inside there. I have some hints, though. I definitely ate some chili because I had stains all around my lips. I also obtained a triangular tattoo on my inner thigh, lost all of my pocket change, and according to my smartphone crossed several time zones. I asked some people wandering around if they had had the Dremmbic chili. They replied that they had, but couldn’t remember it either. I have decided I’m just not going to vote for them. I know that some chili chefs will do anything to keep their secrets of food preparation, but making your patrons forget the experience seems somehow a little extreme.
I was totally thrown out of the Zambura station. I complimented the hostess on the colorful strings of dried chilies they had hanging all around the place. It turns out those were actually her egg sacs. Whoops! I mean, it was an honest mistake and all.
When it came time to do the voting for best chili, I started to fill out my ballot and a Norskori warrior appeared. He informed me that the Norskori had followed all the possible probabilistic pathways of how I was going to vote, and they had disintegrated all the versions of me that were voting for other races. It was therefore, he told me, only a formality that I should fill out the ballot in their favor. Faced with such overpowering logic, I had no choice but to cast my vote for their chili, and they did in fact wind up winning. Seriously, I thought their chili was the tastiest anyway.
I had a great time at the cook-out and I’ll be back again next year. I’ll definitely bring a spoon that fits my mouth, however, and I need to have more cash on me. The confluence of chili and aliens means there were a bunch of classic Roswell tee-shirts that I missed out on.
You guys should come with me next time. Seriously, you should come. You must come. YOU MUST COME WITH ME TO THE DREMMBIC PAVILION. THERE WE SHALL….
Uh oh.
It’s really just amazing how cooking chili has unified the thousands of sentient species that we have encountered ever since we went extra-solar. For all the diversity of intelligent life in the universe, there seems to be one thing we can all get behind, and that’s cooking up a big old pot of meat (or meat-analog) and spices (or spice-analog). I’ve also always been impressed with the variety and quality of chili recipes I’ve seen by non-Terrestrials; if you don’t believe me, all you have to do is go down to Borders Books and leaf through a copy of KLAATU BARADA NOM-NOM, or CHILI FOR DUMMIES by Sangfro Ubbus, the Dummy Ambassador. At any rate, I shelled out my twelve bucks and went wandering the pavilions, stalls, chuck-wagons and flying saucers of the cook-off.
I started at the Dhagavi tent. I confess I was a little leery about setting foot in there; the Dhagavi are notorious homophages, and it’s likely that they continue to buzz Earth from time to time trying to pick up easy snacks in out-of-the-way settlements. The Dhagavi chefs were extremely eager for me to come inside and try their chili. In the end I just settled for a piece of their cornbread, which I admit was pretty darned good, and a Bud Light. I will say that their chili smelled extremely delicious.
I then went to the next tent, which was unmarked. It had scads of scantily clad ladies lolling about and inviting me in with come-hither glances. I then realized that 1) the tent was empty of any actual humans, and 2) it backed up to the Dhagavi tent, so I was like OH I GET IT and walked on. I didn’t want to experience the Dhagavi’s offerings from either end of the spoon.
By then I was pretty hungry, so I waited in line to get into the Fruwgar compound. The Fruwgars are excellent chefs so I knew they would be serving the good stuff. However, Fruwgars are a protean, amoeboid race, and the surface of their homeworld is a very hot organic soup. Consequently, the most convenient way for them to prepare chill was from inside the pot, swimming around the ingredients to stir them, sampling tastes by absorbtion, and occasionally rearing their bodies up to scoop in more diced onion or steamed chilis from the counter. This made for a very interesting chili-tasting experience since I was constantly poking around inside my bowl with my spoon to ensure that none of the hosts were in harm’s way. I also couldn’t help but think that the chili’s taste must have been affected in some way by the Fruwgars’ exudations, and that in turn made me think of the Dhagavi, so my appetite wasn’t what it could have been.
I was somewhat intrigued by the Zzzardusis entry. You’ll recall that the Zzzardusis are beings of crystalline energy and lattices of light, and there is no true physical component to their existence. As a result their connection to the tactile universe is purely theoretical, and they do not so much serve chili as present concepts in chili service. This is a very nice idea, but as it’s an entirely intellectual exercise, there is never any actual consumption of chili going on. I found the whole noetic chili sampling thing to be somewhat off-putting, and I said as much to the Zzzardusis hostess. She got increasingly agitated at what she perceived to be my racist outlook towards the virtually-challenged, so I just left. It’s too bad really, because their recipes sounded really good.
The Gonfludan Pavilion was heavily armed and patrolled, which was a little bit alarming, even in Texas. I was welcomed inside their compound by a nervous Gonfludan hivemaster, who explained that I should eat quickly because an Isquiditur attack was imminent. I gather that the issue has something to do with beans; the Gonfludans are of the opinion that beans are an excellent and necessary part of chili, whereas the purist machine beings of Isquiditur hold that any dish that contains beans is not chili by definition. Apparently a holy war of sorts has started in their quadrant of the galaxy over this very issue, and despite the cease-fire accords signed for the duration of the cook-off, tensions were very high on both sides. The Gonfludan chili was delicious, with very delicate bluish beans that pulsed slightly. As I left I thought I could hear Isquiditur battle cries coming from the kitchen area; I decided not to stay for dessert.
The Norskori are travelers through time and dimensions. They claim to have invented chili before humans did, which nearly everybody considers at worst an outright lie, and at best something artificially generated by a random Norskori going back fifty thousand years and introducing chili to the indigenes. Norskori chili bowls are toroidal in shape, and they don’t so much cube their meat as tesseract it. Eating their chili is an interesting sensation; after you take a mouthful and you feel around with your tongue, you have the unnerving feeling that your mouth is larger on the inside than out. The Norskori were highly confident that they would win the tasting competition; their certitude was again something that generated concern about the integrity of the cook-off. That having been said, their chili was perfect in just about every respect, so who could really say.
The Ub don’t really care what their chili tastes like; they only want it to be as hot as possible. The Ub have invented nanites that they pour into their cookpots; the nanites swim around, find capsaicin molecules, and replicate them. Eventually a bowl of Ub chili ceases to resemble a comestible and begins to approach a means of euthanasia. My Ub host asked me to try some; I told him I would only taste their chili if it had been out of the pot for less than thirty seconds. He agreed, and I ate a bowl. Eh. It was too hot anyway.
The T-T-Gdont are mental projectionists, beaming their thoughts and feelings into the heads of others. They therefore didn’t so much cook some chili as dream it up. I tasted it. It was delicious, rich and creamy, with a hard spicy undercurrent and a slow burn. When I put down my spoon and complimented my hosts, I saw that my bowl was empty and clean, and probably had never been full. That was a big bummer, because my stomach was full of air for the rest of the evening, and that really cramped my chili-hunting style.
Of course there were plenty of human chili cookers too. One of them was Elvis who has been off-planet for a number of years now. He hasn’t aged much thanks to relativistic travel, and he was happy to chat as he served me up a bowl. He used a lot of peanut butter and it was almost ridiculously syrupy and sweet. I tried hard to be polite about it, though, since he seemed pretty bummed that almost everybody here has forgotten about him, and he was also getting chili stains all over his jumpsuit, and you know how hard those can be to get out. In the end I told him I enjoyed the food and the chat. “Why, thank you,” Elvis told me earnestly. “Thank you very much.”
Gurwami the Cloud-Thing wasn’t cooking, but it was certainly hovering overhead, its enormous billowing gauzy body putting the entire convention center in its shadow, and its spike-studded battle tentacles were draping down to grope for bowls of chili in every tent and station. “MUST HAVE DELICIOUS CHILI!” Gurwami trumpeted, knocking over tables and chairs and even patrons in its desperate quest to consume endless foodstuffs. It was really making an ass of itself by the end of the cook-off, and I have it on good authority that Gurwami will be banned from future events. It totally sucks; I can’t believe we elected that thing to the US Senate.
I totally cannot remember the Dremmbic pavilion. I don’t know what those guys did to me for the forty minutes I lost while I was inside there. I have some hints, though. I definitely ate some chili because I had stains all around my lips. I also obtained a triangular tattoo on my inner thigh, lost all of my pocket change, and according to my smartphone crossed several time zones. I asked some people wandering around if they had had the Dremmbic chili. They replied that they had, but couldn’t remember it either. I have decided I’m just not going to vote for them. I know that some chili chefs will do anything to keep their secrets of food preparation, but making your patrons forget the experience seems somehow a little extreme.
I was totally thrown out of the Zambura station. I complimented the hostess on the colorful strings of dried chilies they had hanging all around the place. It turns out those were actually her egg sacs. Whoops! I mean, it was an honest mistake and all.
When it came time to do the voting for best chili, I started to fill out my ballot and a Norskori warrior appeared. He informed me that the Norskori had followed all the possible probabilistic pathways of how I was going to vote, and they had disintegrated all the versions of me that were voting for other races. It was therefore, he told me, only a formality that I should fill out the ballot in their favor. Faced with such overpowering logic, I had no choice but to cast my vote for their chili, and they did in fact wind up winning. Seriously, I thought their chili was the tastiest anyway.
I had a great time at the cook-out and I’ll be back again next year. I’ll definitely bring a spoon that fits my mouth, however, and I need to have more cash on me. The confluence of chili and aliens means there were a bunch of classic Roswell tee-shirts that I missed out on.
You guys should come with me next time. Seriously, you should come. You must come. YOU MUST COME WITH ME TO THE DREMMBIC PAVILION. THERE WE SHALL….
Uh oh.
