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.

Boring things about a dead guy

J.D. Salinger died a day or two ago. If this was 20 years ago I'd be bummed out about his death, but these days I don't really care.

The only reason for this post to show off this ancient copy of Catcher in the Rye I got a thrift store several years ago. (I think I paid 25¢.) It's unusual in that it actually has an illustration of Holden Caufield on the cover. Or at least it's unusual to me. The only other copies I've ever seen are the stupid burgundy one everyone and their grandma has.



And here's the back.



This post was so great in my head, but it just died on the screen. Maybe I should go back to not posting since I do that so well.

I'm on the internets

I guess it's time for a new blog post. Sadly, I have nothing at all to write about. What have I been doing lately? Working at my crummy job mostly, but when I'm at home I've been camped out in the living room under a blanket. My office is cold enough to store meat, so I don't spend much time in there anymore. I'm waiting for the spring thaw. The laptop keeps my junk from freezing and breaking off.

Also, here's a video of a really fat cat. Listen the nice THUD it makes when it falls over.

New Year, New Bleh

Finally all the holiday crap is over and things can get back to normal. The problem is normal sucks. But at least Grady is gone.



The filthy beast was jettisoned from my life a week ago, but I still bear the physical and mental scars. Horrible! Next Christmas I hope he's discovered the wonderful world of laziness, a skill I thought cats were born with. I dread the thought of another holiday of that furry terror going behind the TV, charging the doors at full speed, climbing the walls, attacking people, trying to eat my cookies, etc.

Note: this is an eight month old cat, but he's already ten pounds and huge. Next year he'll be twice that. I dread Christmas.

Oh, god, Grady's here

That's Grady, the awful, awful new cat my sister got over the summer. He's only eight months old and he's already bigger than the adult cat he replaced. By next Christmas this thing's gonna weigh 20 pounds or more.

Next Year's Christmas Card Photo

I went out this morning with my ancient DSLR to take a few festive shots. The example below is pretty representative of what I ended up with.



Yep, nothing says Christmas like a desolate rail yard.

Christmas in Crackville

I've been accused of making up the snow that fell on Crackville a few days ago. People just can't take someone's word anymore, nope, they gotta have photographic proof (as if that proved anything). So, without further ado, I present you a spooky nightime shot out the backdoor that I took not fifteen minutes ago.



As you can see, the snow isn't that deep anymore because the last two days have been sunny and in the low forties.

Whiteout in Crackville

Yesterday Crackville got covered in a blanket of snow. But, sadly, this isn't the kind of snow that you can make sweet, delicious crack out of, so the denizens of Crackville are just stuck with a bunch of useless fluffy frozen water covering everything. We don't dream of a white Christmas here in Crackville, we just dream of crack. Actually, we don't dream so much as hallucinate what with all of the crack we've been smoking.

I'd go take a picture of the snow, but that would require me to get out from under a layer of blankets. So you see my dilemma. Besides, I sold my camera to buy crack.

Now how did this happen?

In the past I've written about my love of weird foreign toothpaste that I find in dollar stores. (I'm too lazy to look up the posts to link here, but trust me, I've written about it before.) Every tube's an adventure. Well, kinda. Anyway, a few days ago I finished up my tube of Mexican Colgate and went to get another tube of whatever I had in that drawer where I keep random junk like weird foreign toothpaste that I find in dollar stores. Guess what? There wasn't any toothpaste at all in that drawer. I even dug around in there to make sure that I wasn't missing anything. Nope. No toothpaste. (On the other hand, there were various over the counter medications, a roll of elastic bandage, old letters from my sister, a View Master, an unmarked VHS tape filled with porn, a couple of watch boxes, etc.) So, basically I had no toothpaste at all except a couple of sample tubes I got at the dentist. I hate sample tubes. I ended up picking up some tube at Walmart yesterday. Yeah, regular toothpaste. I'm as disappointed in me as you are.

Geese vs. Cheetos

Saturday at Sam's Club I bought a big bag of Cheetos and ate them until I felt like I wanted to barf. What to do with the rest? I certainly wasn't going to eat them. In fact, I don't think I'll be eating Cheetos ever again. Anyway, this morning I decided to take them down to the river and fed them to the geese. Here's the video:

Another tiresome anniversary

Earlier today I remembered this blog has an anniversary this month. I started it November 10, 2002, which, in blog terms, was like 50 years ago. So, the old blog is seven years old. How, you may ask, does one manage to keep a blog for seven years? Easy, just write a post every month or two so that people can tell it hasn't been completely abandoned. Also, it helps not to have a life.

And for absolutely no reason, I present to you, my loyal blog-readers, How is babby formed.

Ten things on a Thursday

Apparently, I've been chosen for some kinda meme thing. I never liked these meme thingies, too much like work. Anyway, I'm required, if I understand the premise, to list ten things I do on a Thursday, despite the fact that it's not even close to Thursday.

1. Good gravy. Everything I do on Thursday is pretty much what I do on the other days of the week, especially the weekdays. I lead a dull and depressing life that doesn't hold up to analysis.

That was one wasn't it? No? Damn.

1. Wallow in abject misery.

Now I know that's one.

2. Wish it were Friday. Specifically I wish that it's Friday after 3:30PM, which means I can wash the machine shop filth off of me and begin vegetating in front of the computer in a much more intensive way than I had been doing over the previous workdays.

Why can't it be Friday right now instead of crappy, useless Tuesday. Nothing good ever happens on Tuesday.

I'm losing track of the meme. Thursday. Things I do on Thursday.

O.K.

4. Shit. I haven't written a three yet.

3. Most people would list something about watching some TV show that comes on Thursdays, but I don't even turn the damn TV on on Thursday. If my life depended on it I don't think I could tell you anything that came on Thursday with the exception of Top Gear, which I don't watch on Thursdays; I watch it on Mondays.

I still haven't written a three yet.

3. Put on socks.

4. Cut myself at work. I cut myself pretty much every day at work, so this counts.

5. Check behind the bathroom door for snakes. I didn't write about this on my blog, but I found a small snake behind my bathroom door in September and then I found a second one in the same place exactly a month later. They were non-poisonous and about as deadly as earthworms, but now I'm traumatized for life.

God, I have five more to go. This is never going to end.

6. Digest the food I've consumed.

Lame, I know, but I'm desperate man.

7. Go through a few celebrity blogs in hopes that some actress or singer I think is hot wore a see-through dress. Sad, I know, but it keeps me off the streets.

8. I take a shower. Not that I only shower on Thursdays, no that would be nasty. I shower most days because my job's filthy.

God, this is so boring. It would've been far more interesting if I really did only shower once a week. My labored justification for such a nasty habit would've at least been amusing. Well, maybe.

9. Practice my old professional ballet dancer routines.

No, that's a bald-faced lie.

9. Roll over, look at the clock, and hope that it's at least an hour or more before I have to get up and face another day of tedium.

10. Get out of bed and groan at the thought of another boring, filthy day at work.

There, I did it. That's ten. Deal with it.

I think I'm supposed to pick ten other folk and foist this abomination upon them, but I don't even read regular folks' blogs that much anymore. I think this one has maybe three or four regular readers and I don't even read their blogs most of the time because I'm too busy doing something boring. So, I'll make you a deal. If you want to write a blog entry, but can't think of anything to write about, then do this ten things on a Thursday thing. Or don't do it. I don't really care.

"He's on ice skates! We don't have a chance!"

Believe it or not, I actually have things to post about, but I'm having trouble trying to whip myself into writing mode. These days I'm in full on moping mode. That's moping and not mopping. I've never been in mopping mode, but if I was, rest assured, I'd write about it.

Anyway, Friday there was an article on CNN's webpage that caught my eye. The opening sentence was perhaps one of the most bizarre, horrifying, but yet hysterically funny things I've read in a while:

A bear on ice skates attacked two people during rehearsals at a circus in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, killing one of them, Kyrgyz officials said Friday.

Yeah! A bear on ice skates was attacking people. I don't want to make light of someone's tragic death, but if I ever get killed by an ice skating bear, I hope headstone reads, "Killed by a fucking bear on ice skates. Top that!"

It's a post about nothing

I've done nothing at all since I last wrote a post; I don't really have anything to write about. Seriously. Nothing. But, as I've been summoned from my pit of squalor to once again save the world, I'll see what I can do.

What have I done recently? (Besides wanking.) I watched some movies, something I haven't done in a long time. OK, I'll write a few short reviews of the movies I've seen over the past week. (The emphasis is on short.) Roger Ebert has nothing to worry about.

The 40 Year Old Virgin: I think I'm the last person on earth who hadn't seen this. I liked it. It wasn't ass-slappingly hysterical like most people seem to think, but it's a decent movie. You won't be seeing this review quoted on the DVD box any time soon.

I Am Legend: I don't think I've watched a Will Smith movie before. He makes big block-buster shoot'em up stuff and I usually avoid those kinds of movies because I'm a Liberal Elitist Snob. Anyway, this movie is a remake of Last Man on Earth, a swell mid 60's Vincent Price flick that you can watch free online since it's in the public domain. Did I like the modern remake? Yes. I didn't love it, but I liked it well enough I suppose. My only real complaint besides the CGI stuff (which I always hate because it looks fake) was that Will Smith's character was too nice. I don't want to spoil it for those planning on comparing the Will Smith version to the Vincent Price version, so I won't explain what the hell I mean other than to say that Vincent Price wasn't very nice all.

Mean Girls: There was a sale at Wal-Mart on DVDs and I bought this and the next two movies down the page. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I was really hoping it would be funnier, but it was a little light-weight, almost like an edgy Disney Channel movie. Also, it was depressing seeing Lindsey Lohan not looking like a emaciated coke zombie. They should probably show her this movie at the intervention.

Prom Night: Dreck. I didn't really like 80's slasher movies in the 80's, so I don't know why I thought I would like this. It was a lifeless ripoff of the much, much better Halloween. On the upside, it does have a young Jamie Lee Curtis, but on the downside, she keeps all her clothes on.

The Descent: I'd never heard of this one, but for some reason it looked interesting. I'm glad I got it because it may have been the best of the lot. I don't typically like modern horror and science fiction movies. I'd rather see a plastic spaceship hanging by a string than see a meticulously detailed CGI spaceship. But this movie doesn't have spaceships in it, so I don't know what the hell I'm going on about. It's about a group of macho women who go exploring some deep cave and find it inhabited by these fucking nasty mutant naked humanoids who eat them. Also, it's British. You know the British always make good stuff.

Black Sabbath: No, not the band. This is the movie the band probably got their name from. It's currently being shown on Hulu, so have a look. It's not great, but if you like bosomy Italian women in cat's eye makeup, you'll probably like it. Also, it's got Boris Karloff. You know Boris Karloff always makes good stuff.

Since I mentioned Black Sabbath, here's a clip of them circa 1970 playing "War Pigs":



And, since I mentioned cat's eye makeup, here's a clip showing how to apply cat's eye makeup: