This is “Woof of the Week”, the newsletter about the things that make me say “Woof” the longest each week!
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Welcome to Woof of the Week!
How’s everyone’s summer been? Personally I’ve been wasting away in this heat (and not writing Woof of the Week!)
And could you blame me?1 With record-breaking heat across the globe, it’s simply too hot to do anything on a computer anywhere that’s not air conditioned - aka my apartment! (I have a wall unit, but what I wouldn’t do for some central air!)
That and, my 2012 Macbook Pro Retina has been starting to show its years lately. Between its increasingly stiff hinges and near inability to start up without being plugged into a charger - these issues pale in comparison to the fact that the heat exacerbates its processing power, or rather lack of. Even typing this, the words are lagging behind, and I often have to double back to fix typos I made 30 second ago.
Am I making excuses? Yes. But also sometimes you can’t just write a Woof of the Week without having, well a Woof… that you can legally talk about without fear of getting judged, sued, or what it means to have a published digital record of.
Maybe I shouldn’t be pursuing writing. Anyways - onto this week’s Woof!
Around the World in 80* Woofs
*more like, a handful of bullet points
Here’s some stories from the week that made me say Woof:
A worm that is at least 46,000 years old was brought back to life last week. This is admittedly pretty cool - one of the quotes in the CNN article reads “One can halt life and then start it from the beginning. This a major finding.”
But haven’t any of these scientists seen The Thing??? Something that old should stay dead! Much less be revived. To make matters worse, one of the researchers transported 100 of these worms by putting them in her pocket. If we have 100 The Things running around, we are in for a shocking 2023.Twitter’s rebrand to X by Elon Musk is truly something else. In writing this I googled “Twitter and X” and found stories that I hadn’t even fully heard of. He stole the “@X” handle from its original user. Apple’s App Store’s rules require all apps to have two characters so X is still called Twitter despite a changed logo (this has apparently since be changed, since “X” is now downloadable on my iPhone). And last but not least, the erecting of the “X” logo on Twitter/X’s office building was done without the proper permits and ultimately removed on Monday after complaints about its brightness. Elon Musk has long been a “do first, ask forgiveness later” type of person, with his Star Base operations a frequent violator (its most recent offense: testing a “flame deflector” without proper permits). So I have no doubt that he’ll keep up these types of actions and run “X” in a very specific direction that will cater to a very specific audience.
And in true Woof fashion - a Japanese man who spent $20,000 on a border collie costume finally took to the streets. That’s why we have two dog pictures this week. That second picture is a man a a dog. While not the norm, I saw a Tweet (or X?) that said “God forbid a man have a hobby” and honestly? Glad someone’s happy out there in this big wide world!
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If You Can’t Take the Heat…
Note: The following story contains descriptions of bodily functions.
During the last few months, I considered myself part of spice royalty. After successfully completing a Hot Ones Challenge at work with little to no effect on my body, the world was my oyster. I challenged myself - from Thai, to Indonesian, to Indian, I went for it. “Spicy!” I’d say confidently when asked about what heat level I wanted. And despite every dubious waiters’ looks, I’d come out triumphant. If I wasn’t a spice king, I was at least a spice prince.
Well it turns out a spice coup was in the making, as any illusion I had of my ability to handle spicy foods came crumbling down last Saturday. As I clung onto the toilet in a single stall public restroom, my shirt flung onto the sink and pants halfway down my legs, completely disregarding any sense of hygiene because of the intense pain in my stomach and the sweat coating my body, I thought:
Yup that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up that way.
On Saturday, after a screening of Barbie, my friends and I went to Guisados for dinner, a taco joint that, while trendy, has felt commodified with its multiple locations around Los Angeles. Right before I ordered, one of my friends had asked if I had tried the Chiles Toreados, their super spicy taco. I hadn’t - in my many times being there I had never noticed it because of its placement on the vegetarian menu.
On Guisados’ website, the description of the taco reads:
Habanero, serrano, jalapeno, and thai chiles blistered together over high heat. Served on top black beans. Adjustments kindly declined. This taco is extremely spicy. $3.45
Reading this now, it DOES sound extremely spicy. Pepper types aside, the phrase “blistered together” is enough to make certain parts of my body tighten up.
It’s safe to say that I did not read that before I ordered. And when the taco arrived at my table, I thought nothing of its contents and took a bite immediately. In mere seconds, the heat of the peppers snapped around my lips like firecrackers, and after I politely attempted to drink my water, I soon guzzled it down with abandon. Shortly after, a small mountain of crumpled napkins formed in front me as I profusely wiped sweat off my forehead - and it didn’t help that it was HOT in LA.
Soon the heat subsided - it couldn’t possibly get worse could it? I laughed it off, joking that I hadn’t had anything that spicy since the first time I attempted the Hot Ones Challenge, the memory of which I tried to shake. But with every successive bite it did get worse. My friend gave me some of his horchata, which he swore was the secret to beating the spice. It was a very nice gesture but I was past the point of tips and tricks… and my sneaky, inconsistent lactose intolerance didn’t help.
And that’s when the stomach pain hit. If you’ve never had spicy food do this to you, the only way I can describe it is that it’s as if your stomach is suddenly ensnared in a net, the fibers of which are coated in a billion tiny spikes digging into your body. I gripped my stomach, attempting to pull the imaginary net away, but once those imaginary spikes are dug in, it’s very much physically over. I was transported to 2018, aka the first time I attempted the Hot Ones Challenge.
After retching on my front lawn with my fellow Hot Ones sufferers, I ran to my bathroom and stripped completely naked. The pain in my stomach was unbearable, and frankly, I was near delusional due to the pain and summer heat (it was another HOT day when we did this) It truly was an out of body experience as I saw myself, naked and fully bowled over on my toilet trying desperately to get the hot sauce out of my body. I have a vivid memory of licking the beads of sweat off my upper lip and not tasting salt but pure spice…
And I did the same on Saturday. After nothing would exit my body at either end, I pulled over the (thankfully freshly changed) garbage can and leaned over it. I could hear beads of sweat drip off my face and hit the trash bag. I licked the sweat, and I could taste spice again. Would this be another out of body experience?
It couldn’t be - because I had a birthday party to go to! Yup this whole time I was fighting the pain in my stomach and dripping sweat, I kept thinking that I had places to be afterwards, and would it be ok if I showed up totally spiced out?
What ended up bringing me down from this was a text that people I hadn’t seen in a few months had shown up at Guisados by coincidence. I let the sweat seep out of my body, wiped myself down with a LOT of paper towels, got dressed and left the bathroom. I was greeted by one of those people with a hug and also “Man, you are really sweaty huh?”
And so usually at this point in a story that starts the way it did, I would wrap this all up, tell you I learned my lesson, to always read the ingredient or whatever, and that everything was a-ok. But I’m here say conventional storytelling wisdom be damned - because it… got worse!
Instead of going home like I said I would, I decided to rally and go to the party. Without getting too into the birthday details, a shot of Maker’s Mark whiskey was had and it sent me over. I excused myself from several conversations that night, running to the bathroom and attempting to get things out of my system, but nothing would leave. I was cursed to bear the weight of the battle of spicy peppers and Maker’s Mark.
After listening to a discussion of what Christopher Nolan movies were best (my vote might be for Oppenheimer) I sobered up. I was feeling good, clear headed, and whatever problems my body was having, it’d sort itself out at home. I said good-bye to my friends, stepped out of the front yard, and walked to my car.
It must have been about 30 seconds before I coughed and felt everything come up. I frantically looked around - and saw an old man standing on his front porch. I couldn’t throw up in front of this old man.
Instead, I ran to my car. I flung open my trunk and pulled out a canvas bag, emptied out its contents, sat in my front seat, opened my mouth and well… finally something or lots of somethings left my body, and landed into the bag. To add insult to injury, the force of this content leaving my body was enough to give me a bloody nose.
As normally happens, I immediately felt better after this, with all of the spicy peppers and whisky having finally left my body. I sat in my car and contemplated where I was in life. 28 going on 29 (old, I know) throwing up in cars because of an inability to gauge proper spice tolerance and drinking whiskey at inopportune times. I rolled down my window to air out my car, sat there for another 30 minutes, and then started the car to drive home.
And the whole way back I thought -
“Man, I finally have a Woof for the newsletter.”
Quote of the Week
This week’s quote is from this year: :
My hands will always look like they haven’t smoked a cigarette.
Normally I don’t name the speaker unless they give me permission but I’ll make an exception here. This was said by my friend Brian in the context of his show Bad Play which will be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August!
If you’re attending Fringe fest, they’ll be performing for a large chunk of the month, so check out ticket information here. Wishing Brian and the rest of the group all the best on their run!!
That’s all folks!
Thanks for reading this week’s edition of Woof of the Week! Leave a comment because I’d love to hear your thoughts! Some questions I have for you -
What’s the spiciest thing you’ve eaten?
Have you thrown up in a car in your 20’s?
I’m really sorry if this one was too gross for you and if there are any potential employers reading or if you’re my current employer I ask you - haven’t you had one of these nights at some point?
See you on the next one!
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