Saturday 26 December 2015

An unknown, psychedelic tea

Okay, so a new tea I am trying today is a new, special tea. With claims of altering one's perception of reality. I called bullshit, and then tried it, you know, scholastically. This is my story:


Initial observations: 
Oh man, this smells real bad. I am not going to enjoy this.


First sips:
Bleh! This better be worth it. Adding honey (sorry) 


Zooooming in:
Okay, this part is going to be the longest of the article. That's the most important bit anyways. That's why this is being written; for tea-science. Slimy, yet satisfying.


Grouping...I guess?:
Grouping things is storage by association. The grouping of ideas in our mind is how we remember things. It is a memory tool known as chunking, so we can order and sort information more efficiently. Ideas on a community or global scale are just the macrocosm and scaling up of how humans group ideas. I love the idea of grouping due to it's accessibility and ability to simplify things. Tea is grouped into things such as 'tisanes', 'green teas', 'herbal teas', etc, but what's really interesting, is when different people group different things together. A funny example is the lack of an international definition of what 'white tea' is. No standard, means no universal personal expectation that can be set by the consumer in terms of confidence that 'you get what you ask for'. That ain't right. Fix your shit, tea companies.


Apparently here, I talked about: Consumerism and the first world:
Speaking of other things; I wonder how many consumers are risky consumers, and buy things first and experiment, rather than wait for reviews from people that do that. What percentage? Are you a risk-taking consumer?

I had this thought; you know if society or your culture can get to the point of eating without getting their hands dirty, isn't that the ultimate luxury; being completely lost in one's own indulgence? I love not having to wash my hands after a meal! Even so, I love tacos more. Eating a taco without making a mess, I consider these people, a 'boss'. So much mad respect for those clean-fingered geniuses.

I think the bin with the foot pedal is the most convenient luxury one can afford in this day and age: a foot pedal, which opens the bin without your hands getting dirty, and all you have to do is drop something. If you had to do more than drop it in, it would be way more intricate stuff your brain has to compute about it's most important tool: the precision and utility of the pentadactyl limb.


Lasane
Ooh, I love lazange. Now will be a good time to finally learn to spell 'lasange' off by heart, because I've never really written it down much in my life. I sure say it lots though! I'm gonna go eat some now. I am going to come back to this topic.

What exactly is the difference between the defrost and normal setting on a microwave? Is it power percentage?

Okay back to lasagne. Oh my god, I finally typed it right; I haven't gone back and fixed the old mistakes, because I wanted to see how my testing it out has changed over time, and I thought it would be funny to watch the mental mistakes I made trying to sort out the spelling by testing multiple variations of the general word backbone. God I love cheese. You can never really put good cheese on too little. Good cheese will stand on it's own. I will come back to lasagne later.


On crying:
You know crying is one thing I have almost never seen any of my male friends do. I'm not counting tears from say, being knocked in the nose, but tears from an emotional wellspring. Is that strange? Is it still 'unmanly' for a dude to cry in front of someone? By definition there has to be two, well technically three groups of women on the planet: 1) Women who like men/women who cry, to help form an emotional bond, and use their relationship tractor beam because someone is importing emotional burdens at their dock. 2) Women who think it's 'unmanly' of their potential partner to cry. 3) Women who don't care about whether or not a person they want to be with cries or not. Sorry ladies, I'm coming at this from a male perspective, but the same goes for the men. 
You know, this all said, I try to never cry in front of anyone. I say it's 'okay to cry', but if you just followed my actions, people would think I never cry.


On critics and linguistics:
The internet allows critics to be criticized, through comments. Please, don't share this blog. I don't want readers for fear of them 
evolving into critics, who criticise my criticisms. Man, 'Z' should be removed from the alphabet, it's just a weird 'S'. 'S' can do 'Z's job better.


Back to lasagne:
I think lasagne is my favourite food of all time. It just gives so much with every bite! I kind of forgot for years how much I love it. Only today, have I remembered. And it is glorious. I completely understand Garfield now. Everything just makes sense with every bite of a cheese and meet filled layer.


If it has been thought of, it is probably on an internet page somewhere: 
Is owning more than one dog actually worth wasting your time writing an article on the internet and spewing your nonsense just to hear your own voice (he said ironically). Okay maybe that was a bit harsh, I don't mean it, but I refuse to backspace it; it's part of the process kids. Get used to it. 'Nonsense' is a great word, I should use it more, it is a splendid portmanteau; it is logical, simple and direct; a perfect marriage. I'm just saying, owning two dogs ain't that hard, just get two that work together. You're shopping for a partner-in-crime for your dog too. Look at me now even more ironically, sharing my expertise on owning two dogs on a blog post. Cyclic reporting is a myth!


Final thoughts:
Tonight has been a rad thing: the flow has been heavy, the light has been incrementally present, and my star has stayed North and true. I'm on the up and up. Sleep with wishes dearest friends. 


I have been watching this video:




I hope this post has brought you to your own cosmic horizons like it did for me.


Conclusions:
In conclusion, no, this was not a 'special' tea. I'm smelling the bag, and wait?! What? Curses! It's just oregano! What a rip mate. I got screwed.

Sunday 20 December 2015

Dr Stuart's Liver Detox

Today I'm going to talk about heroes. Heroes are important, I think. They have been instrumental in my self-construction of the person I am today. I suppose a lot of things have, such as the industrialisation and exploitative commercialisation of the dairy industry, the cancellation of Firefly, and my Mac's ability to scroll through inactive windows.

Heroes aren't players that score a game-winner before the buzzer, or who dive in front of someone to take the bullet. Heroes are the defenders who prevent goals consistently by locking out a potentially scoring player from getting involved. Heroes are the educators who teach people about smoke alarms and to stop drop and roll. People involved with prevention and mitigation are the most important, the 'heroes' just get all the glory when it was a team effort from the start. Heroes are often not the people you expect. Who would have thought a lowly astromech droid such as R2-D2 would become arguably the most important figure in a galaxy far, far away?



Let's take a moment to appreciate what support bars do for us. [1]

This brings me to todays tea: Dr Stuart's Liver Detox. This was given to me by a chum(p) known as Sam. She described it as 'gross', or something. I don't remember exactly what she said. The important thing, is that she gave it to me for free. The point is, heroes can sometimes be critics, who tell you what not to do. Roger Ebert is someone I consider a hero, he always knew whether or not a film would be wasting my life. We only get a short time in this life, why waste it on things that aren't worth your time? Especially if you have the luxury of choice; not many do, you'd be crazy to waste your opportunity. I'm not saying I'm a hero for reviewing tea, but I'm not saying I'm not one either.



Something tells me I'm going to want to detox this as soon as I taste it.


What the hell is that smell?:
Oh shit, I'm going to go open my door and make sure I have ventilation in this room. Oh god. The same rules apply here as they do when cleaning with bleach and ammonia together. It smells like burning tires, and what I imagine Bubblegloop Swamp to smell like. Ingredients: Dandelion root, centaury herb and milk thistle. Oh god. What have I done?



I picked a lot of thistles in my 500 hours of Skyrim. Worth iiiiiiit.


Tentative first taste:
I really don't want to try this. Interesting fact: While waiting for the tea to cool, I was googling the milk thistle, like the ones I used to pick in Skyrim. The Milk thistle actually cause death to ruminants (cows, sheep, your mum) via oxygen deprivation due to levels of potassium nitrate metabolites binding to haemoglobin, blocking oxygen binding and the red blood cells' ability to transport oxygen. 

Okay Ben, just do it. You can do it. Brb. Okay fine. I can do this.



Oh fuck. This is the worst thing I've ever drank. I have tears in my eyes. My face is screwed up, oh my god. All my saliva is tainted! I don't care about my liver anymore; I want tequila to wash this down. Here is a video I have made of my initial reaction. 






Somebody kill me please:
Do not drink this. Curse you Sam. A plague on your house. You are the opposite of a hero. Nothing could have prepared me for this.


No:



Horses:
[1] http://www.pmrr.org/Structures/BasculeBridge/photo09.jpg