My Country, 'Tis Of Tea

Apologies For Starting With A Bad Pun
But if that comes as a surprise to you, then this must be your first visit.  As I am sure you already know, Conrad is going "Dry For July", today being the 7th day of his epic of endurance, battling against the dark desires of dipsomania, the seductive beading of condensation on a beer bottle and a horrified fascination with Red-flavoured Crisco.
     Actually that's a lie from start to stop: Conrad has found it entirely uneventful going sober for a month, no trouble at all in fact or else he wouldn't be doing the fourth month in staggered succession.
     "Yes yes yes," I hear you condemn.  "All very interesting, a metaphorical hair-shirt for your hide, which has nothing at all to do with tea.  Do get on with it, Coronation Street is on soon."
     I'm getting there, thank you very much.  And you need to develop better taste in television.
     The "tea" part comes because if I'm not necking eleven pints of Special Brew and Tennant's Extra daily, I'm drinking tea.  Also lemonade, which is a lot easier to get than the exotic teas I enjoy.  Enough tangent, back to tea!
     Being a bit of a tea snob I only drink loose-leaf tea, the stuff that comes loose in packets, and my preferences are Darjeeling or - a recent discovery - Jasmine tea.
     Art?

     This is Margaret Rose Jasmine Tea, and it's quality stuff; you can tell just tipping it from hermetically-sealed packet into the jar.  It also smells wonderful, so it's a shame you can't add scent to a blog post.  It's also pricey, about £2 per ounce, so your humble scribe is going to savour every pot he makes.
     Enough wibble!  On with the wobble!

What Madness Is This!
Southwestern Trains appear to offer a worse service than First Bus - not a line I thought I'd ever write, nor you read.  I base this assessment on a recent story in the Metro, about the innumerable delays and cancellations experienced by passengers.  Train management say this is Terrible!  and Unacceptable! and plan to tackle the problem by cutting 350 trains.
  Someone, it seems, has been taking lessons in ergonomics and public relations from First Bus.  What next?
     Reduce Third World Debt - blow it up!
     Lose unwanted weight the guillotine way!
     Solve the petrol price crisis - walk!

A Bit Of X-Cess
Ha!  Wait until you see the rest of this post, then you'll be overcome with awe at how clever I am*.  Art?

Behold the bird

     This, obviously - obviously! - is a Rebel Alliance X-Wing fighter, one of which has just gone at auction for $180,000.  It was actually put together from bits from other fighters, since the whole ones had all been blown apart.
     Conrad, typically, had to wonder about those guns.  There are four of them.  Do they fire in a pattern that converges at a far distant point?  I mean, a cannon-armed modern day jet fighter will have it's cannon angled to converge at a point a couple of hundred yards ahead.  I sought enlightenment from Tom, whose eyes lit up with an unholy glow the instant I mentioned "Star Wars".
     "When those wings -"
     "THEY'RE NOT WINGS!" he exploded, in such a manner that I think he's had this conversation before.  "They're S-foils," he continued, more calmly.
     Pausing only to ensure no sharp objects were within reach, I carried on.
     'There's four laser cannon, particle beam weapons, Bethe blasters or whatever on the S-foils.  Do all four fire to converge at a target at, say, one hundred miles distance?  Or do they do it in pairs?  Or completely individually?"
     Tom, by now in his comfort zone, replied that each Laser Cannon could be targetted individually, and he emphasised "Laser Cannon" just sufficiently that your humble scribe knew there'd be trouble if he referred to them as anything else in future.

I'm really not sure what to say here

A Hushy Kind Of Plushy
"Spirited Away" and "Howl's Moving Castle" are the 2 best animated films ever made**.  And now we have plushies from "Spirited Away" in the shape of No Face.  Art?

Resist their cuteness - resist, I say!

     An interesting choice.  No Face starts off as a mute (practically) rather pathetic ghostly figure, who transforms into a foul-mouthed ghastly bloated monster.  Who, after purging vast amounts of foul matter in the vomit session to end them all, ends up as the far nicer mute (practically) pathetic ghostly figure.
     So.  A plushy version?  Conrad approves.

Wow, at count already.  And we had so much more to discuss!  Well, if by "discuss" I mean "you sit there and listen to me rant and tant, ta very much".  Maybe tomorrow!


*  Possibly not.  I tend to exaggerate.
** THIS IS NOT DEBATABLE!