Dan Liebke’s Astonishing Tales

People (1) say ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’ But what if you’re not in a kitchen? What if you’re in, say, a submarine? Should you still get out, bearing in mind that you will almost certainly drown by doing so? And why would a submarine be that hot anyway? Perhaps its air cooling system has broken down. If so, would you not be better advised to attempt to fix it (or get somebody else to fix it, if you are not appropriately qualified to do so), rather than immediately submit yourself to a watery demise? I think that this saying needs to be more clearly expressed and not just assume, a priori, that you are in a kitchen, or any other cooking area for that matter. Other places get hot too, you know. I think people (2) should say: ‘If you are in a kitchen that is hot and you have a way of leaving the kitchen and the area outside the kitchen is more comfortable in any sense than the current kitchen-type area then you may be better served by pondering the benefits to be gained from departing the kitchen vicinity.’ I hope that’s cleared everything up for everybody.

(1) - Not all people, obviously. I certainly didn’t intend to imply that this is the only thing that people anywhere say. I think that would be a very ineffective method of communication and a poor basis for a language as we would almost be totally reliant on inflections to convey meaning. Written communication would also be seriously curtailed. So please don’t read too much into my simple claim. By ‘people’ I mean ’some people on certain rare occasions’

(2) - As above