Letter 180 - Let IT be
What’s the final part of today’s Letter going to be? Only time will tell.
Aiiieeee! Just stop already!
“Only time will tell” - it’s the new IT phrase.
[Etymology break]: Where does the IT in IT come from? From the “It girl”, Clara Bow, courtesy of the 1920’s. She was the Angelina Jolie of one hundred years ago. Starred in the movie It and gave legs to the “It girl” concept, someone with that certain something, that “you know it when you see it” appeal.
[End of Etymology break]
Why does “only time will tell” show up so much? It’s closely tied to our apparently insatiable desire to know what’s going to happen beforehand. Want to partially ruin a movie? Watch the trailer! That way you’ll know the good bits ahead of time and devalue the experience of seeing the entire movie with unspoiled eyes!
Take a gander at Formula 1 “journalism”, and you’ll see article after article wondering what might happen to driver A or what the result of an engine upgrade might be for team B. And all of them end with a vacuous leading sentence like “Will he move on?” or “Will it be enough?” followed by “Only time will tell”.
They should hire me to write for them. “Ferrari is going to bring engine upgrades to Hungary that they hope will reduce their speed deficit on the straights.”
AND THAT’S IT! No filler words that add zero value! Seriously, more words don’t make what you’re saying or writing more classy or persuasive. They just waste the precious moments of your readers’ lives that could otherwise be spent yelling at the local youths to “STAY OFF MY LAWN!”
I mean, you could say “I am afraid that at present the situation is such that our ability to achieve the hoped for consonance between our inclinations and your desires is unlikely to be attained.”
Or just say “NO!”
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Oh, and speaking of stupid words and phrases, I’d also get rid of all instances of “Our thoughts and prayers are with you” as well as “Sending good energy your way”. Until you can prove that actually means something concrete, like me seeing the charge level of my phone jump up a few percent, just skip it. Feel the need to say something? Then use “I feel bad for you and hope things work out.” What’s wrong with that? Absolutely accurate and doesn’t invoke nonsensical fantasy powers.
What else do I want to bitch and moan about today? Oh, I know.
John: “I just tidied up the garage.”
Betty: “That’s awesome!”
Noooo. Betty, Betty, Betty. The correct response is “Oh”. Or perhaps “That’s nice”. But awesome? Seriously. The stupid word literally means “worthy of awe”. Are you really in awe of John because he tidied up the garage, Betty? Really?
Here’s a reasonable comment: “That motor is noisy.” Perfectly acceptable. But instead what we’ll get is “That motor’s noise is INSANE!”
No. It’s not insane. Irritating, fine. Loud, fine. Insane? Not fine. Let’s restore the sanity. It’s like we’re living in This is Spinal Tap and all our descriptors are turned up to 11. Just turn them down already.
But I kinda get (only kinda) why “the humans” dial up their descriptors. I think it’s deeply tied into our brain via the magic of “evolution”. Which is a contraction of “Eve Revolution”, referring to the time when Eve totally upended life on this planet by inventing the process of “giving birth to stinky small version of people”. Way to go, Eve!
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Ahhh, Eve. Nobody can have just one:
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For some reason, presumably an important one for survival in our dim past, humans have an inborn compulsion to overdo it. It’s right up there with eat/sleep/sex. Brought home to me just now in a YouTube video by the Throttle House boys, Thomas and James. Part of their latest adventure was going to a Canadian hot wings joint to try their ‘hottest in the world’ wings. And according to Thomas, the 2nd hottest they were served registered 2 million on the Scoville scale and the hottest, Blackenstein, tipped the scales at 10 million.
Okay, now let’s step back for a second, shall we? For those who aren’t aware, Scoville units are a scale of hotness for peppers and the original method of derivation is simple. Old Wilbur Scoville would extract the capsaicin from a pepper (that’s the hot stuff) and dilute in a sugar solution. Then tasters would sample it, decide that they detected heat, and then add water. Test again. Add water again. And when finally they couldn’t detect any heat, they’d look at the proportions of water to capsaicin and that’d be the Scoville score. So a jalapeño, with a Scoville score ranging from 3-8,000 would require an 8000 to 1 dilution to kill the heat.
By the way, that variation, 3-8,000 is typical of peppers. Treat them nice, with lots of water, and you don’t get as much heat. Keeping them dry and thirsty boosts the heat level.
Anyway, people, being insane, didn’t just say “Okay, spicy food is nice and I’ll enjoy it”. They said “What’s the HOTTEST I can make it?!!”
WHY is this a human thing? Like I said, it’s somehow tied into our DNA. It’s not enough to buy a single porcelain cat with a clock in its belly. No, true happiness comes from filling your house with them. Two cars are nice but why not have 300 instead? Likely the same urge that has millionaires saying “But it’s not enough!!”
Back to peppers. The hottest available used to be the Carolina Reaper. 1,400,000 - 2,200,000 Scoville units. Which is a lot. Around 500 times hotter than a jalapeño. But that wasn’t enough so the guy who developed it then developed one (Pepper X) that registers 2,700,000. For reference, BEAR SPRAY, which is tightly regulated because of its danger factor, is between 2 and 3 million Scoville units.
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According to Thomas in the video, the weak-sauce wings were at 3 million Scoville units (already beyond the rare Pepper X pepper) and the final dish of wings rang in at 10 million. Which is impossible to achieve with ANY pepper.
Was the restaurant lying? Not necessarily. Pure capsaicin registers 16 million. So by adding a capsaicin extraction you could boost the heat of the wings up beyond 2 million. The key question of course is … why? Why would you do it? At these levels the heat is absolutely dangerous, bad for your health, injurious to any and all. It’s interesting to listen to James discuss his body’s reaction to a tiny taste. His hands and arms started to tingle. He had to get out of the chair and move around. His heart started to palpitate. Etc.
Oh, and before my heart starts to palpitate, won’t you consider subscribing …?
Wondering how much heat you can stomach is like wondering how hard you can be slapped in the face and then deciding to find out. Only a complete idiot would do that, right? Oh my, wrong. It’s called Slap Fighting and it’s actually a real … something. I can’t bring myself to call it a sport.
It’s just dumb. And somehow highly emblematic of our species.
I guess when you’re compelled to climb mountains, risking almost certain death but avoiding it, you can become famous ‘because it’s there’. Or you could seek fame by driving a car at the speed of sound, just to show ‘em.
Enough is never enough. That should be our species’ motto.
So - time for a question for you. One of my personally highly influential comics in my cartooning journey was Calvin and Hobbes. Transcendentally excellent. However, during my close reading of the various strips, I’d occasionally say “huh”. And this was one of those times:
Now that you’ve read it, I want you to go back and ask yourself what you’re looking at. Because what I see is a chair, containing a Calvin, floating in the air. Clearly seen in the first and 3rd panel. There’s nothing to tie it to a physical reality. No shadow on the floor, intersection of floor and wall in the background to suggest an actual room. Like this:
But … does it matter? For me, if I do as Watterson did for the original version, it always gnaws at me until I put in some details to ground the action. So I’m curious - what are your reactions to it? Important? Not important? You don’t see the point either way? Help me out here. Or, if you can’t do that, then enjoy some Nicky!
NICKYITIS
And as they say … that’s all folks!
