title: $.post returns object when aiming for simple php
body: <p>I guess I'm just having difficulty with $.post... I've used it successfully in the past, but I have to be forgetting something important. All I want is a "hello world", but I'm getting a complicated object. I am befuddled.</p>
  
  <p><strong>var_test.php</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
      PRINT "hi";
  ?&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>index.html</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!doctype html&gt;
  &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /&gt;
  &lt;script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.4/jquery.min.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
  &lt;html&gt;&lt;head&gt;
      var thing = $.post( "var_test.php");
      console.log(thing);
  &lt;/head&gt;&lt;body&gt;&lt;/body&gt;&lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>console output</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>Object { readyState: 1, getResponseHeader: .ajax/v.getResponseHeader(), getAllResponseHeaders: .ajax/v.getAllResponseHeaders(), setRequestHeader: .ajax/v.setRequestHeader(), overrideMimeType: .ajax/v.overrideMimeType(), statusCode: .ajax/v.statusCode(), abort: .ajax/v.abort(), state: .Deferred/d.state(), always: .Deferred/d.always(), then: .Deferred/d.then(), 8 more… }
  </code></pre>