Friday, June 11, 2004

XXX

Poor letter X -- It really has a lot of problems.



Sure, the letter W suffers somewhat from it's name: Double-U, or in Canadian, Doobluh-Vay, but at least it gets decent representation in the dictionary.



But letter X? Hardly any words start with X, and those that do don't even sound like X -- they sound like Z. What's a letter to do?



Not much, it seems. X is relegated to marking the spot, representing mathematic values, substituting for a signature in Old Westerns and providing warnings about naughty films.



It's not a glamorous life.



X also serves double duty as a short-cut. There are Hot-X-Buns instead of "Hot Cross Buns" and the usual slew of Xmas-related things, which led to the first Anti-X slogan: "Don't take the Christ out of Christmas."



X is the representation of the unknown. It is the quintessential QUOI? which in French means Vive la croissant, and in English translates roughly to huh? A perfect example of the unknown X is Generation X. In this case, X can only represent that which it is not, which is a cool name like "Baby Boomers." Fox gave us the unknown of The X-Files and CBS told us to expect the unexpected with the X-Factor. Although each show was very different, both were full of nasty creatures you'd hope to never see again.



But in honor of The Friday Chef I come to praise X, not bury it. So, for Food Friday, I bring you



X is for Sauce!



I like sauce. It doesn't have quite the same ring as I like cake, but since I don't like cake, it works quite well for me. In honor of sauce, I bring you two eXtreme sites: Extreme Food and Mo Hotta, Mo Betta.



Both sites have lots of different sauces, from hot sauces to BBQ sauces. As much as I like sauces, I like their names even more. Each site has their own "heat" scale to give you some advanced warning as to how many of your innards you will burn out with each bite. Extreme Foods features four settings (Mild -- Hot -- Crazy Hot -- !!!!!!), while Mo Hotta has ten settings. I am particularly fond of the last five: Sizzling -- Blazing -- Scorching -- Nuclear -- Grim Reaper.



I wonder how it would taste on a croissant?

eXtreme Quoi!

3 comments:

Gary said...

Tuna, this post is an Xcellent Xample of how Xciting the letter X can be!

Gary said...

Oh, and BTW, most of Canada also says "double-u".....

lifeonhold said...

Ode to the X

You do so much with so little!