Tea

Tea…a hot drink made by infusing the dried, crushed leaves of the tea plant in boiling water. In my opinion, tea has always had an air of sophistication. In a good deal of spy films that I have seen, and I have seen a few, the devilishly good-looking, yet mentally unhinged villain can be found at some point in the film, sitting in his leather armchair while he makes for himself a steaming cup of orange pekoe. And in the warmth of that cup, he waits for the hero to find his way through the well booby-trapped labyrinth. Every time I watch the steam dance up to the smug look on yet another villain’s face, something in me says “well…he’s not that insane, he drinks tea…and in a cup small enough to host Strawberry Shortcake.” The smaller the tea cup the less psychotic this man becomes in my mind. Not even a quarter way through the movie, this madman has already killed several people, smothered helpless puppies, and most likely eaten grapes unpaid for at the supermarket. Yet even after the dust has cleared from the stampede of his corruption, I still find some sense of sanity left in him. Just the very fact that this man has more than likely drooled all over himself as a result of laughing too evilly, should give me a big enough hint that he is too far gone. Whether there is still hope for the criminal mind that drinks tea is beyond me.

The issue of whether tea changes only the mere constitution of a man or whether it indeed transforms the very soul of him is not what I had planned on discussing. The real issue here is that of my taste buds. They have recently brought to my attention the alarming absence of taste that tea has not brought with it, on its occasional visits to my mouth. A lack of taste in food or drink that is deceivingly made to look tasty is a slap in the face, and thus deserves a slap in return.

I have tried many varieties of teas in my day: herbal tea, black tea, chamomile tea, fruity tea, and yes even the oh so overrated Sleepytime tea…what is that all about? I say a waste of a good tea bag! I would have an easier time falling asleep in a 24 hour Wal-Mart in the heart of Hong Kong. My case today is against fruity teas. Fruity teas have never had an overwhelming amount of taste, like a fruit juice would. Yet too often, I have seen tea companies use names that advertise their product that would put Kool-Aid to shame. Lemon Zinger, Mint Magic, Mandarin Orange Spice, Tropic of Raspberry; do any of these ring a bell? I’m surprised I haven’t heard Strawberry Seizure, Honeydew Heart Attack, or Blow Your Head Off Blueberry. I have never had any one of those experiences when drinking tea…except for that time at that wedding, when I gulped my hot tea thinking it was iced tea…that’ll turn some heads. Tell me tea lovers, where has the taste gone? Why does it no longer grace us with its delicious presence? I bet zucchini, low fat yogurt, and Melba Toast are all wondering the same thing. And why shouldn’t they, food is meant to have taste! I say, don’t let taste go to waste, put some in a paste and…let tasteless foods feel shamefaced? My apologies that was horrible, I obviously need to work on that.

Until a cup of tea can make me feel like becoming a fruitarian, in spite of the obvious fact that eating only fruit would have gravely explosive consequences, I cannot pledge my allegiance to these tea companies, and their futile attempts to make the world a more sophisticated and tasteless place. DON’T WASTE TASTE! DON’T WASTE TASTE! ALL TOGETHER NOW!

Raising a fist in protest - Brad

Tin Tin and the Case of Chief Collig's Missing...

The history of my reading textbooks in college has not been a happy or bright one. Nay…the history of me reading any books, anywhere, has not been a happy or bright one. As a young boy, my attention span lasted as long as the life of a deviled egg at a church potluck. Growing up I didn’t read many books, and the ones I did “read,” were 90% pictures. My thoughts on reading at that time were, “Why constrain a severely hyperactive child in one place, doing the same thing for far too long?” I could be outside in the warm sun, pretending I’m Frank or Joe solving the case of Chief Collig’s missing hemorrhoid cream. I must be completely honest with you…I have never in my life read a Hardy Boys book. The Adventures of Tin Tin was more my caliber, although I always enjoyed the Hardy Boys book covers. They always looked like they would be fun to read, and stupidly, that was enough for me. That right there goes to prove that my childhood was a wasteland of “wow–I–should–haves.” I did eventually learn to read, and actually enjoyed it. But the textbooks…oh…the textbooks.

Somewhere deep inside me I do long to read and comprehend, but unfortunately the rest of my being protests to the studious side of me. I sit down, read a paragraph or two, then BAM, I’m Spider-man swinging valiantly through the Big Apple, racing to save Mary Jane from the clutches of the sinister and iniquitous Green Goblin (Amazing Spider-man #137, for all those anal enough to check), then I’m back to my reading. Not two minutes later, I’m Aragorn, unsheathing my broadsword in front of a thousand hellish, bloodthirsty Orcs, and out of nowhere comes an awe-inspiring symphony with music so powerful it moves me to feel like I could cut through that wall of Orcs like a hot knife through low fat butter…then I’m back to reading again. This can carry on for several hours, and is quite an enjoyable activity.

If not daydreaming, reading in bed is the second stupidest idea one could ever have when competing with a due date. The idea acts like a Trojan horse—it seems like such a great concept when it first comes to you, like drinking two liters of milk before a trampoline party, but the consequences, as all will soon find out, are devastating—you wake up a month later, it’s graduation, and you’re still on page five… not to mention that page five is permanently stuck to your face due to the severe drooling problem you have.

I am happy to announce that textbook and I broke up back in April. Yeah… I had enough of the guilt trips, the speeches, the money I spent on her, and how she always brought up stuff from the last chapter in our arguments…not cool! She always had that look on her face like, “Why don’t you hold me anymore? You never highlight! You just read between the lines.” And I’m like, “Well every time we start having a good time, you bring up the pros and cons of predestination. Needless to say, it didn’t end well; I knew it was a dead-end relationship as soon as I read the prologue. Well I must go, I see a cute non-fiction walking my way—wish me luck!

Sincerely – Brad

Cereal

I never really got an abundance of exciting cereal when I was younger. When we bought cereal, most of the titles had the word “cardboard” in them. I would’ve been fine with that, but the companies often tried desperately to come up with names to make their product sound cool. I’m sorry, but you cannot cloak tasteless cereal by a mere “cool” name. Titles like “Bland Flakes”, and “Corn Extravaganza” enter my mind. They never came with a toy either; at most there was a recipe on the inside of the box that you could cut out and with it, make other disgusting healthy foods. Gross cereal in the morning is bad enough; I do not need to discover these little morsels in my corn beef hash for supper.

I find now that I’m older, and away at college, my parents have been venturing out into the wonderful world of sugared cereal and buy brands with actual taste. When I come home for breaks I open the cupboard to discover a gold mine of brand name cereals…and they’re all saying the same thing in unison… “eat me!” So I listen; after all, how often does your cereal talk to you? No, Rice Krispies do not count! As I eat, I can’t help but say the slogans out loud as I cram my face with the delicious sugared wheat and corn of all shapes and sizes. I feel foolish uttering such catch phrases as, “Gotta have my Pops”, or “They’re grreeat!” Although, I do feel a new sense of freedom to say these fun little sentences as a result of me actually eating what they’re promoting. I couldn’t do that before with the other cereals; what was I supposed to say? “They’re…. brown,” or “Gotta have those things that look like dead Band-Aids floating in my soy milk.” It doesn’t have the same ring to it does it? So friends, if you ever see me many years from now, old, insane, out of my nursing home, wearing no clothes, eating a bowl of delicious cereal and mumbling old commercials to myself; don’t try to understand, just get me another bowl of Corn Pops.

Sincerely apologetic that I just gave you that mental picture,

Brad

Skinny

WARNING ZUCCHINI LOVERS: If you have a special place in your heart for zucchini, please forgive me; my intent is not to offend, just to share my thoughts about this…vegetable. It also isn’t my intent to give you the impression that I, Brad, am a picky eater, I am not, and never plan to be. I am just here to state the facts. This is my warning, read on and have an open mind to what I have to say. Thank you.

Zucchini, or as my fast talking next-door neighbor likes to call it “skinny,” is an odd vegetable. The zucchini is a type of squash that closely resembles a cucumber, and belongs to the family “Cucurbitaceae.” And no, I cannot pronounce that word without spitting all over my screen. Zucchini would be my favorite vegetable, except there’s just one tiny little detail that I just cannot overlook …THEY DON’T TASTE LIKE ANYTHING! Why do people plant them? I do not understand this type of logic. “Let’s plant something so we can eat it, but wait, here’s the zinger…it won’t taste like anything.” It’s one of those things where people will get all excited about growing zucchini, but then when they’re right for eating, people will give these sixty pound monsters, away to everyone like they’re the Black Plague. Every once in a while in the fall, I’ll see Jehovah’s Witnesses walking in pairs down the street with armfuls of zucchini and a befuddled look on their faces. It doesn’t stop there. I’ll be invited to someone’s house and find zucchini everywhere; in the magazine rack in the bathroom, in the pet’s food dish, in the stuffed animal display in the kid’s bedroom, and very rarely, but it happens, sitting on top of the grand piano in a seductive fashion, right in between the candelabras.

If people fail in pawning off their plethora of zucchini on unsuspecting family members and neighbors, they’ll hide it in different kinds of food. You’ll never hear anyone complaining about food with zucchini in it tasting bad…BECAUSE THEY CAN’T TASTE THE ZUCCHINI! If zucchini has a special gift, it is cloaking itself into foods that don’t actually need help in tasting good. Growing up, I would find zucchini in all sorts of food, like cakes, muffins, burgers, fudge, perogies, and even in the punch at family gatherings. I’ve had zucchini casserole, where I didn’t even taste the zucchini…and it was the main ingredient. What’s the point of it even being there? Hiding zucchini in food is like having one of the band members of Slipknot playing the recorder…you’re never going to hear it, but it’s there…and it doesn’t fit.

The only use I can find for zucchini is if someone made a Kleenex box out of one… or if it looked like a gun. Men have the talent of making anything into a gun, and yes I, Brad, have wielded a zucchini like a sawed-off shotgun. And yes, I saved the day from, savage, wild-eyed, invisible aliens; actually they were only here for jars of pickled carrots from the farmers market, but I didn’t know that at the time…don’t look at me like that!

Sincerely, Yet Still Utterly Confused About Zucchini - Brad

My Alarm Clock, Hastings

There are people in this world, walking around, this very minute, who believe that alarm clocks are of next to no importance. These are the people that will shamefully use their alarm clock just to get them up in the morning; they’ll go to work and then forget all about them. Some won’t even stop there; they’ll go to work, and when it’s that time of the day when all office workers, all over North America, stand around the water cooler and gossip, they will humorously bring up the structural contour of their alarm clock and cheapen it to a plastic box and some wires. I cannot fathom the nerve of someone using their alarm clock just to move up a rung on the latter of office popularity. These people can choke on their Dixie cups for all I care. Why their Dixie cups would be that far in their mouths is beyond me. What I don’t understand is, do these people not realize that while they go about their day; their alarm clock is faithfully showing the time with that soft steady glow; green, red, and yes even blue? You might even be a complete moron and set the time wrong…does the alarm clock argue? No, it just sits there, knowing that you’re an idiot, but respecting you enough not to say anything.

I’ve had many alarm clocks in my life, ones that are plain and ones that are not so plain. I’ve come to realize that, I Brad, am a plain alarm clock type of guy. Does it make sense to put 25 buttons on an alarm clock, which has the sole purpose of simply…waking you up? I cannot think of anything more fun then groggily trying to reset one of these alarm clocks in the middle of the night. I end up changing the radio station, opening the garage door, and launching nuclear warheads from the Pentagon. Alarm clocks should not have that many options! I don’t even want an alarm clock that wakes me up to the tune of Frere-Jacques; some people thrive on these types of annoying gadgets, like those mugs that play happy birthday every time you lift it to take a drink… “oh please, I have to listen to it just once more, I didn’t hear it that last 347 times!” I don’t understand this. When it all comes down to it, all I want is an alarm clock that will wake me up on time, with a simple, strong, crisp beep; is that too much to ask?

But I warn you, I have ventured into the dark wastelands of over-simplicity. I, at one time, at a very young age, had a wind-up alarm clock. It sported the gigantic brass bells, and the even more gigantic hammer intimidatingly hanging overtop. Lets just say, that one only slept in my room one night. As the deafening clang of the bells pierced the four walls of my room, a seven-year-old boy wet the four corners of his bed. Never before have I ever been so rudely awakened in my life; it even beat my mom’s early “Good Morning To You” song…and that time I woke in the tub.

Maybe you’ve read this far, and your saying “Brad, will you ever find an alarm clock that is a perfect match for your personality?” Well thank you Hank; that is a great question. It’s funny you ask that, because I have recently found the alarm clock of my dreams. It is very rare that someone will ever find an alarm clock that they are completely and hopelessly in love with. I discovered it right when I was at the peak of my annoyance with these new fancy fandangled alarm clocks. I thought that there was no such thing as a perfect alarm clock, but I was proved wrong. There it was, at a garage sale, sitting on top of a velvet painting of Pierre Trudeau, needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway; it was love at first sight. It was, and still is, a General Electric, Electronic Digital FM/AM Clock Radio, model number 7-4634B and it is “kickin" it in the 80’s” as they say. I have recently named it “Hastings” due to the fake wood paneling on the top, which automatically ups the value, and gives it a hint of sophistication. The reason I find so much joy in Hastings, is that he is a simple alarm clock. My last alarm clock “Paininthebutt” would try to gradually wake me up in the morning with a soft beep that would grow into a sound that resembled a rat getting his legs waxed in a wood chipper. I’ll spare you the gory details; although I will say that while walking down the street, showering, or eating different varieties of yogurt, I would hear soft beeps in my head that would give me the sudden urge to get out of a bed and turn off an alarm clock somewhere… anywhere!

Sincerely - Brad

Why Monopoly and I Have a Love/Hate Relationship

I met Monopoly at a very young age; so young in fact, that everyone in my family beat me…at the game of course. Although, come to think of it, I did win once. But everyone always wins the first time they play a board game. It makes you feel good about yourself…little do you know, in the next round, you’ll be dashed to pieces against the rocks of embarrassment. Instead of being a healthy human being, and learning how to be a good loser, I resorted to the digital world of Monopoly…all 256 colors of it. Here I could lose in the comfort of my own room. It’s not proper etiquette to yell at human players, not even to mumble under your breath. But with a computer, you can yell and gob all over its screen, and it’ll never be offended.

After a while, I started to name my computer opponent names that I hated. The purpose of this was to get myself more passionately involved in the game; but that only made things worse, especially when I lost…all the time. Losing left me to wallow in my defeat as the computer played Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes”…in mono; there’s nothing more humiliating then getting your face rubbed in the dirt by Stars and Stripes in mono. I began to hate that stupid top hat. I also had a conspiracy that the dice would purposely land me on my opponents hotel-covered Boardwalk five times in a row just for kicks.

Now maybe you're saying to yourself right about now… “Brad, why play this game if it makes you go ballistic? Well, I will tell you. U2, in the chorus of their song “With Or Without You” pretty much sums up the relationship that Monopoly and I have. I cannot describe the magical hum of the hard disk spinning, the entrancing glow of the 640 x 480 screen, the mad tapping of my finger on the track pad, as my opponent and I race for Oriental Avenue. It’s like I’m at an all you can eat meat buffet and my mom isn’t there to lecture me about vegetables. I simply cannot help myself!

Do not think me some sort of freak, diphthong, or someone who is overly obsessive. We all have our things…things that we are ashamed of, things that we want to change. Some pick their nose, others have a Ricky Martin CD under their mattress they just cannot let go of, and still others, watch all the available bonus footage on recently purchased DVDs, even when going into the next room and watching the paint dry would be more enthralling. Me…I play Monopoly on my computer…and pick my nose. This is my gift…this is my curse.

Sincerely - Brad

It Begins

Well this is my first blog ever! I have to be honest with you, I thought blogs were for hippies and drug addicts. But yesterday as I was sitting in front of a steaming bowl of tapioca, I was like..."hey I'm eccentric, I should make a blog!" So here I am, typing on ol' Simon Birch. I also find that I feel a lot better when I type things out...and look at what I wrote two months later and see how much of a dope I really was at the time, then hope that nobody outside my family ever sees my entries. So that's why I thought a blog would be an amazingly easy way to utterly embarrass myself! Well...here it goes!