Four Star Hotness!

Ordering (substandard) food here in Seattle entails a new system that I was hitherto unfamiliar with: Waittress: "How spicy you want? One to five stars." Sometimes the scale only goes up to four stars, but it always seems to be in stars, even though stars have absolutely nothing to do with spiciness (why not just one to five?), and if it does, it would have more to do with the quality of the spiciness than the quantity. Anyway. I am used to the east coast method of answering "How spicy?" with "A little."

The whole system is messed up because there is no frame of reference. Even when you get accustomed to the scale of one restaurant, it's all lost at another place. One place's five stars is another's three. And maybe they adjust for the customer. If a white person walks into a Mexican place and asks for five stars, the chef might snicker and make it pretty spicy, but not too spicy. But if a Mexican walks into a Mexican place and asks for five stars, he might get the whole enchilada. (Sorry.) And if a woman walks in, the rating might automatically be halved.

Anyway. If I really wanted to be an asshole, I should answer in Scoville Heat Units. I think I prefer about a thousand. In the mean time, I'm sticking with non-spicy foods.