Even at your sickest and most unfunniest you're funnier than some of us poseurs out here.

Can't really help on the what-kind-of-tea-to-have front, but I CAN tell you that you're an idiot for working if your boss offers you an out. Come on, man. Go home and watch the Price is Right.

Order Darjeeling.

Also, you really really need to learn about tea, just so you can appreciate the pure absurdity of tea grades, where (for real), "Fancy Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe" is the grade given to a good tea.

Honey.

No, I'm not addressing you; I'm suggesting something that helps. Personally, I like Earl Grey a lot (it's my fav), but I rarely drink tea without adding a little bit of honey (seems to help it a little). Then again, I rarely drink tea any more since I swore off caffine several years ago. But when I DO drink tea... About a teaspoon of honey helps out immensely.

There's also this "constant comments orange tea" or something like that... (ugh, can't remember the exact name) I seem to remember enjoying.

You know... if you ever decide to try tea again or something.

I'm *so* glad I'm not the only one. I wanted to be all cool and "Earl Gray, Hot!" too and man I think that stuff is disgusting. The only thing I like is chai, and that's because it's all milky and sweet (which probably isn't the best idea when you have a cold).

actually, you should have some valeria tea, the plant that makes valium, it knocks you on your ass.

I just wanted to say that "boiled despair" is the best phrase I've ever heard. Also, I agree with you.

Skot, why for make you so with the tea hatred? Cozy up with a mugga herb tea with honey and lemon, and in no time at all, you'll once again be coughing without feeling like vomiting. I recommend chamomile, but be sure to get it from a tea shop that can guarantee that no child labor was involved in the harvesting.

"It tastes like boiled despair." That is fucking GENIUS.

Jeez, Skot. Tea of all varieties SUCKS and it's about time you figured that out. 24th century magictea may be fine for galaxy-cruising communists but today's tea LICKS ASS.

I recommend Orange Juice, the Official Drink of Liberty.

yet another boring tea recommendation: chamomile with honey and lemon. really helps the pipes when you're sick. orange juice is good too, if you can handle the burning fires of hell that the acid will impose on your already shredded throat.

"boiled despair" is the best thing i have heard in ages. maybe you should drink nyquil and write some more!

I was raised drinking tea probably eight times a day. No wonder I'm such a twitchy wreck now. Always the same: Typhoo Tea, which is a really good English brand that we got from horribly abusing the natives in India or something. When I had a sore throat or a cold or, you know, typhoid or something, the cure was always MORE TYPHOO!

And the key to it was that it had to be insanely hot when you drank it. Of course, this tea had to be consumed with milk, as is only right and intended by God, but when ill, the milk addition was limited and you had to pour that scalding brew down your windpipe.

Turns out third degree burns in your esophagus really take your mind off the croup. When I get sick, I still drink scalding hot Typhoo. Or sometimes I get achieve sentience and opt for peppermint tea.

Also, try whisky with lemon and a little butter melted in it. It may not be the most efficacious of medicinal compounds, but after three you won't care.

I'd just like to say that I apologize for the length of that comment.

Also, try whisky with lemon and a little butter melted in it.

This sounds great. The wife will make me hot toddys when I'm ailing, which is always just fine too.

Where can I order my Izzle Pfaff mug, in white porcelain with plain black letters saying "Boiled Despair"? Money not an issue.

Steaming hot pickle juice is also great when you have a cold. Of course, I drink it every day, and I never get sick. I buy a gallon of pickles every Monday at WalMart, for less than three bucks. The empty jars are great for brewing herbal sun tea!

Second the Typhoo, or similar brit tea. Second the whiskey. Second the mug saying "Boiled Despair" -- brilliante. Second the suggestion of going home.

Just want to say that, if this boiled pickle juice person is serious, he/she needs to get some help A.S.A.fuckingP.
Boiled pickle juice? Why not just down a tall glass of hot piss?

I firmly believe that for pure, scathing horror you can't beat chrysanthemum tea. Seriously, go to a Chinese restaurant and order it the next time you're unbeatably chipper. It'll have you whimpering in flower-despising nausea in no time.

It's boiled flowers. Sorry, but chrysanthemums don't even _smell_ particularly delightful. Now boil them and drink the hoary offal. Order refills for the kids. What's next, "roasted salmon cock infusion"?

*weeps*

I'm with you Avo.

TEA SUCKS!
TEA SUCKS!
TEA SUCKS!

yes!
the cup. the cup. the cup. the cup.. hammering on the wall and screaming: THE CUP NOW.

"...how awful is the interface to the replicators in the TNG-timeframe Star Trek shows.

Consider the archetypal replicator command: "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." Captain Picard never orders anything else from the replicator, yet either there's no way for him to get the replicator to know that when he wants tea he wants hot Earl Grey; or there is such a way, he can't figure out how to set it up, and he's too proud to ask anyone for help.

What's more, the captain's utterance implies that if he just asked for "Tea. Earl Grey.", either the replicator would give him iced Earl Grey or the ship's computer would ask "At what temperature do you want the Earl Grey?" like a text adventure parser. How come they had time to do a molecular scan of a cup of Earl Grey but not time to put into the 24th-century equivalent of Cyc that Earl Grey is the sort of tea you drink hot?

This is not rocket science; it's the sort of thing that contemporary programmers use as fanciful examples in their EuroPython talks. "Let's take a hypothetical Person, Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc likes Tea, so he sets that as his default Drink, but there are many different kinds of Tea, so he can set a default for Tea as well..." It wouldn't be hard to do the interface either; after you got your elaborately specified tea you could say "Bookmark. Tea." and thereafter it would just be "Tea." Except for the inevitable wacky malfunction, where the attempt to bookmark tea would give you a tea-colored bookmark, you would be fine...."

IME LOOKING FOR A HOT TODDY RECEIPT FOR A COLD

http://www.idrink.com/drinks/Hot_Toddy.htm
for the hot toddy recipe.

To get that, I typed '"hot Toddy" recipe' into Google. 5 seconds.

cf. The Brunching Shuttlecocks' "Kitchen Floor" sequence.