People mail me things sometimes

A couple of weeks ago in a comment, Helen brought up something called "grass jelly tea" and offered to send me some because it was so horrible. I had never heard of grass jelly tea, so I looked it up and found some information about a strange gelatinous substance made from a type of plant. It looked positively vile (imagine black licorice Jell-O, except worse), so I couldn't wait for Helen's package to arrive. I imagined a jiggling glop that would slide repulsively down my throat leaving a vomit-like aftertaste. (She said it tasted like vomit.) But, today her package arrived and it contained (among other things) a simple box of tea that looked not that different from what I would find in a dollar store, save for the Chinese on the box. Hmmm... Clearly not gelatinous.

The lable on the box reads "Chrysanthemum & Puerh Tea" and doesn't say anything about "grass jelly". I looked at the other things in the box (more about them in time), but there wasn't anything gelatinous. The first sentence of Helen's included letter read, "Here is some delicious Chrysanthemum tea, also known as grass jelly tea." Ah-ha! So the regular looking tea is the grass-jelly tea, but what the hell was that gelatinous crap I saw online?

The teabag smelled a little different than typical tea, but that's nothing unusual. I was intrigued by the fact that this was supposedly Pu'erh tea. I've got some Pu'erh tea I got straight from China off Ebay which are little hard pucks of weirdness that brew up to smell vaguely like manure, but taste not quite like manure. Actually, it's not that bad tasting, but I'm not crazy about it. Is this stuff Helen sent me going to be the same, I wondered, except not pressed into a puck? Wouldn't it be funny if I actually liked it? [Pictured below is the Pu'erh I got off Ebay.]

I brewed up a cup and what I ended up with was something that smelled objectionable (but not like manure) and tasted strange and vaguely unpleasant in ways that I can't even describe other that to say it's peppery. Of course peppery isn't bad, I like pepper, but this stuff is nasty in mysterious ways that I'm not able to articulate. I will add that it doesn't taste like vomit. The idea of trying another cup makes want to vomit though, but I'm going to have to try another cup. The first one was sweetened, but the second cup won't be. I can't imagine it will make a difference.

OK, I've made a second cup and it still stinks. How can describe the smell? Dirty wet dog? No. Anyway, it's a musty, vile reek that I find difficult to deal with since I'm supposed to be drinking this substance. The taste? Oddly, it's far more palitable unsweetened. I didn't say it was good, mind you, but it's not quite as repugnant. It's sort of bland, actually. And down the drain it went.

I'm going to save the other two things Helen sent for posts in the next few days because I don't want to blow it all at once.

Funny but harmful

The image below is a screen capture from Ebay.

It's about time someone catered to the market that demands jokes be both funny and harmful.

And I guess the beating you'll get after tricking someone into drinking this crap will also be funny but harmful.

Finally, my long wait is over

Handerpants are underpants for your hands. Yes. Underpants. For your hands.

Juvenile, yes, but amusing

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been drinking tea quite a bit lately. I've also been checking out various online sellers of fancy tea. Yesterday I followed an add link to some tea outfit in Taiwan and I began to look around. I know I'm not twelve years old, but the picture below amused me.

 

Ding Dong Fields. Yes. It's lucky the people who work there speak Chinese or they would be giggling and snickering like schoolgirls all day.

Jiz!!!

Back in the mid-80's my sister and I started watching a stupid cartoon called Jem about an all girl rock group called Jem and the Holograms. We were supposedly watching to make fun of it, but I think we were also a little caught up in the plot, such as it was. (This is the kind of thing people did in olden times before they had the internet.) In 1986 my sister went off to college. My first Sunday morning alone, I changed the channel to Jem like we always did. I sat there watching it for maybe five whole minutes before I asked myself, "Why am I watching this crap?" Needless to say, I didn't watch Jem ever again.

Anyway, a few days ago (via somebody's damn Twitter account) I was introduced to Jiz, a crudely redubbed version of Jem. Be warned that the audio is totally not safe for work.



The sequel isn't as funny as the original, but it's worth watching.

Why am I Always the Last to Know?

This is an old blog. A very old blog. An ancient blog. A blog so old that it was originally done on a manual typewriter connected to a long string and a can. Blogs I used to read have come and gone, mostly gone. And I don't even bother to read that many blogs these days. So it was easy for me to miss a post the recently reactivated Sherri put up about the commenting system we ancient bloggers use because our blogs are so old that Blogger didn't even have a built-in commenting system way back in the olden days when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

What am I talking about? Haloscan, the commenting system I've used for over seven years is ceasing to exist on February 13th. Which means all the comments this blog has accumulated for over seven years will be gone. I can back them up, in fact, I've already done so, but they won't be accessible any longer unless I subscribe to this new service called Echo or some shit. So I can either pay money for this new unproven thing or just dump it and go with Blogger's built-in system. I think I'm just going to cut my losses and stick with Blogger.

Something Pointless About Tea

I've been drinking tea quite a bit lately. I tend to prefer Earl Grey varieties (Stash is my favorite), but I've been drinking other types as well.

One of the most easily purchased tea brands in my area is Bigelow. Their most popular variety is something called "Constant Comment". I got three bags of this in a Bigelow variety pack I bought yesterday. I tried this tea for the first time this morning; I even looked forward to it. But, after a few sips I imagined the "Constant Comment" this tea elicited just had to be, "This is awful!" Imagine, if you will, a tea that combines mediocre black tea with orange rind and several sticks of Dentyne. And when you burp you can still taste it an hour or more later. But yet it's Bigelow's most popular kind of tea.

Why am I telling you all of this? Mainly because I look forward to my cup of tea at the nine o'clock break at work and I ruined it with this vile substance. Well, it wasn't completely ruined since I did get to go home not long after because it was snowing and sleeting so hard.

And I'm annoyed because for the second weekend in a row I won't be able to go buy any good tea because it's snowing. I wish they sold better teas in stores near my home, but they don't. I love Stash Earl Grey, but I'm not getting killed driving all the way across town in a vortex of frozen doom just to get it.

I don't like Bigelow's Earl Grey either. So there.