start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

I was with a friend at a Thai restaurant (the kind where a lot of Thai people, & w/ a "secret" Thai-only menu) and he ordered his food to be "Thai spicy." The server didn't speak English very well and she smiled/grimaced and said, "Oh, no no no.... too spicy!" She called over someone else and there was a lot more "Are you sure? Too spicy!"

Even after all that it was pretty hot, but definitely not "Thai spicy." Maybe if he had pre-paid?

"thai spicy" is just a dumb thing to say, i would have clowned him as well.

I thought it was a common term in Thai cuisine?

oh ok, lol, carry on then

while i'm here, people asking for omissions or substitutions while ordering makes me ia. no wait, maybe it makes me ie. i guess when they make a big to-do about it, i become ia.

and by "people" i guess i just mean "my mom", lol

I thought it was a common term in Thai cuisine?

American hot is a useful term, usually they can nail that one for me.

I don't go out to eat too much, but when I do it's usually for thai or chinese. I can't remember the last time I specified a spice preference when ordering, but I feel like in situations where I've done that, waiters have just asked "how spicy do you want it" and my fellow diners and I would always reply on a numerical scale from 1-10. I do remember an acquaintance telling me that her secret was to order it "native", which just cringe.

Anyway, googling "thai spicy" led me to this article.

http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2013/11/how-i-learned-to-stop-ordering-thai-spicy.html

I learned "Thais spicy" from the Thai chef at the seafood restaurant where I worked and I've heard it around. Maybe it's regional but Googling "ordering thai spicy" shows it's definitely a thing.

That search led me to a blog series on how to get around the spice police.

If (like me) you’ve ever tried to order a spicy dish in a restaurant and been refused (or served a clearly less spicy version), this series of audio features is for you. We’ve already covered Korean, Indonesian, and Hindi / Urdu; this week’s lesson: Thai.

In this installment, Nongnoi, owner of Thai Thai Grocery in Elmhurst, Queens—a native of Ratchaburi Province in central Thailand, shares several phrases that will help ensure your next Thai meal is spiced to the max. In restaurants, you can simply order your food “Thai spicy” (“ped bab cone Thai ka”) and pray you’ll be up to the challenge. But in my experience, “Thai spicy” packs a very mean punch—even for hardened spice lovers.

Oh what do you know the phrase "chili head" makes me ia.

I have ordered thai spicy before in "authentic" places in elmhurst and the like and yeah, it's damn spicy. I like it but it kind of becomes an experience beyond just eating.

This was a Szechuan place and I ordered one of the legit Szechuan dishes and I specified spicy a few times and she even came back to check.

I don't really get IA I guess, more like irrationally disappointed. But this has become the general life's little complaints thread.

Start saying "Thai spicy" everywhere you go. Say nothing else.

lol

There was a wings place (Cluck U.?) in my college town that had a defcon-style scale of hotness for its wings -- something like mild, medium, hot, 4-alarm fire, atomic, h-bomb, etc., and there was supposedly an "off-menu" level of hot called like global thermonuclear meltdown or something where they had "taken it off the menu because of this kid that went to the hospital when he ate it."

yeah, that sounds like Cluck U.

http://www.seamless.com/Finedining/img/VendorMenuPlusTabContentImages/lg_88828_0.jpg?isConsumer=Y

lol "must sign waiver"

My friend who has lived in Thailand and speaks enough Thai to get by will ask he the waiter to make it like how he or she would like the dish prepared which usually works though sometimes he's gotten waitstaff who are like "I don't speak Thai you moron" cause they're from Burma or something.

I never actually encountered anything shockingly hot when I was (briefly) in Thailand but I'm not sure if they just gave us the farang version by default. I did hit up the condiments at a noodle stand and dramatically underestimated how unbelievably, shockingly hot the dried chili powder was though.

911 hot looking ambiguous in retrospect

the temperature at which steel melts?

Why 151? Does it come with a shot of Bacardi?

Fahrenheit 151

Hmmm, and what fatal game did the hijackers play that day?

http://i.imgur.com/gZ88EN9.jpg

lol

U for Usama

Ok, trenchant social commentary about observing someone using a smartphone rather than "connecting" with whoever they were with. This self-righteous, projectiony bullshit needs to end.

Somehow I never previously remember hearing anyone say "there was this couple in the coffee shop and they were each READING BOOKS instead of having a meaningful conversation!" or "I saw this mom in the park and she was TALKING TO ANOTHER MOM rather than hanging on every word and spastic gesture of her toddler!"

End this gritty reboot/remake shit before pop culture self-immolates. Apparently some people have access to actors, cinematographers, editors, motion graphics people, etc. yet rather than come up with an original idea they spend that money mashing together action figures. Double IA for "follow up" stories on how the IP owner is threatening this brilliant artistic vision with a lawsuit. JUST STOP. IF YOU GOT INTO MAKING MOVIES AND YOU ARE MAKING A FAKE POWER RANGERS TRAILER PERHAPS YOU SHOULD RETHINK YOUR CAREER.

I agree. I'm getting tired of the lack of new ideas. Hey let's get actors to reenact episodes of the Arsenio Hall Show and Total Request Live! Let's fill our art gallery with Ghostbusters-themed art!

People whispering on their phones in public. Talking quietly or even at normal conversational volume is so much easier to ignore than all that sibilance and straining deference.

I agree. I'm getting tired of the lack of new ideas. Hey let's get actors to reenact episodes of the Arsenio Hall Show and Total Request Live!

I actually like this idea a lot.

I do seem to remember there being a somewhat pointless-seeming replica of the Ghostbusters car by the Bruce High Quality Foundation in a Whitney Biennial show.

There are no new ideas. Indie movies tell the same kinds of stories over and over, too, just on a smaller canvas and a lower budget.

You don't say...

I know there are no new ideas, but hey if you are doing a hero's story maybe give them a new name and some new clothes even if the story is the exact same thing. Maybe come up with a new title. Surely these hacks can come up with something as stupid as Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers on their own?

omg it is totally Asshole Day out there today.

But my birthday isn't until November!

Anyone or anything that talks about a place they love in that sarcastic "you should never move to X, it's terrible, tell your friends not to come here either" way.

1. Our washer broke, again.

(1a. The problem was that the drain pump froze, leading the first repair guy to suggest keeping a space heater on the washer at all times. LOL. He ordered a new drain pump and a new "control board" while he was at it.)

2. Dude came out to install the parts on Thursday. When he left, the machine worked but it would not stop washing! It just kept cycling through the wash/rinse/spin cycles over and over again. Forever. So I called him and he came back, and "recalibrated" the machine, and when he left he said it was working but the same problem was happening.

3. New dude is back today (when I called again I asked that they send out somebody else). This guy has suggested that the problem is that it's set to rinse twice. Nope, because it doesn't just take a long time. It NEVER STOPS RUNNING THROUGH THE CYCLES FOR HOURS. Then he said, "Well, you know if you hold the button down for three seconds it will unlock." YES that is how I freed my (very clean) clothes from the endless washing cycle, but that is not a solution to this problem!!!

It's like the time in an old apartment our heater stopped working and the landlady sent out a repair guy who looked at it, shrugged, and said he couldn't see anything wrong with it. Other than the obvious "Does not put out heat." But apparently that was not his problem?

I'm ready to move into an elevator building with a laundry room, seriously. This is our second washer in four years, and the third or fourth time we've had to have somebody out to fix the fucking thing.

You seem to be mistaking your anger at the irrational for irrational anger. btw, try to find an old Maytag. Those washers lasted forever and a day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKE3ZLj7_V8

For Carl

We rent so we are at the mercy of our landlord as far as what type of machine he buys and which incompetent bozos he hires to come and service it. We went through similar WTFery with them when our dishwasher broke (I think we're on our third dishwasher, and there was definitely a two week period when we had a big gross hole under the counter for the cat to get stuck in while we waited for them to fix it the third time).

Aimless you are being OTM w/r/t me today. I think I need to hire you as a life coach.

My washing machine started rusting last year. The whole area around the bleach intake was rusty and bits were flaking off and mixing in with our laundry. I found some diy instructions online and learned that and repainted it with appliance epoxy. But it's an appliance that is designed to be filled with water. It shouldn't fucking RUST!

This is all after a weekend of my poor toddler having a barf-n-poop illness so you know, we definitely need to do some laundry around here.

LOL Adam thanks.

Life coach? God forbid! You'd end up with a job as a part time spittoon washer, live in a cardboard box, and have a three-headed pig for a pet or some other abomination. Trust me on this... if you dare!

This is like the "one person can only lie and the other can only tell the truth" riddle...

So it turns out the last repair person had the control board set to "continuous wash." Hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaoh my.

ahahahahahhaasobsobsob
why is that even a thing?