I did not know any of that. The last time I knowingly talked with a Seventh Day Adventist, it was a guy selling used mattresses out of his garage. He had a giant, two-car garage full of mattresses. And his house was attached to others.

We toured the place when we were out in Boulder a few years back. Not that good of an industrial tour (when I was a kid there seemed to have been more companies that did them than now), mostly an "exit through the tea shop" kind of thing. They covered the hippies hiking in the mountains part of it but did not get into the cult aspect.

Now that I think about it, "Celestial Seasonings" is kind of a weird name.

I've met Residents who went to Loma Linda University for medical school, and the brother of a good friend got cancer treatment there. I hate to sound all woo, but it was a very holistic experience. They did all the regular stuff, but some doctors and staff had a really nice, healthy Thanksgiving holiday dinner outside of the hospital with some of the patients and their families. It was warm and human.

There was a real inevitability to the Kelloggs and Battle Creek turning up in this story, wasn't there? Like it's impossible to have a truly great story of American weirdness without the cornflakes guy brandishing his steam-powered vibrator and eugenist literature.

Encouraging white women to masturbate doesn't sound very useful for a eugenicist.

What makes you think the founding archetype of the American crank would make sense of all things? Cornflakes certainly, sense never.

The weird thing is it took almost sixty years for Frosted Flakes to follow. It retrospect, "how about we add frosting" seems obvious.

||

NMM to Hank Aaron

|>

I always assumed "Celestial" was some vague, dated reference to Asia.

I found this to be a rather odd way to contextualize Martin Gardner:

The original human transmitter's name is never revealed, but in Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery, from which much of the above is found, author Martin Gardner (who for many years wrote for Scientific American and other legitimate publications)

BTW, I highly recommend Gardener's writing on cults and pseudoscience. In particular I liked Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. He was all over the Hubbard stuff back when it was just Dianetics. James Randi's Flim Flam is also quite good.

It used to be just another snake self-improvement cult.

Commenting for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.

I was going to start drinking regular tea, but it's such a pain. You have to wait for the water to heat up in the microwave, then wait for the tea to leak into the water, then for the marshmallows to get soft.

Maybe I'll switch from brown tea to green tea to save the last step.

I think you're steeping Lucking Charms.

At least now I know where the camera in my kitchen feeds to.

Maybe. You're quite a good dancer, too.

I made regular tea with just milk and more I want a sandwich made with cucumbers and thinly sliced bread.

And some Chipotle.

I know.

Everybody knows that much.

Damn. Did not know that. Having spent significant parts of my childhood hanging out in natural grocery cafes in Boulder, that is really disappointing.

10: I know, right?!

Wait, Celestial Seasonings is racist?! Now I'm REALLY angry about Chappaquiddick!

I love the Skinny Malinky books, Heebie!

Using water heated in a microwave to make tea is an atrocity.. Traditional teas, black, brown or green have to be made with BOILING water that is still rolling when it meets the leaves, whether they're in a bag or loose. Otherwise it's not fit for human consumption.

I'm going to be honest and admit that 14 was mostly trolling. The internet said I could troll British people by saying to microwave the tea water and I was checking to see if it was true. (I did in fact heat the water in the microwave and make tea, but that's a different matter.)

I tried microwaving tea but the staple on the tea bag makes it spark.

I did heat the water to a fresh boil right before putting in the tea bag. It was still bubbling.

I'm pretty sure we have a kettle, but I don't know where.

I make my tea in the microwave every morning. I drop a tea bag in a mug of cold water and microwave for 2 minutes. It's inelegant but pretty efficient. (The teabags I use currently don't have staples, but I've used the stapled kind in the past with no difficulty.) I drink supermarket tea so it's not especially good to begin with, and if the quality suffers further from the manner of preparation my palate isn't refined enough to notice.

26: my tea instructions always say that green and white tea should be made with water that is a little cooler than boiling. But, I'm not an expert.

White tea seems like it shouldn't exist, so I put a bit of milk in brown tea.

I am an expert.

It's possible that it wasn't me who invented putting tea in mild in milk.

This phone sucks.

I was stunned - and probably in my 20s - when I first had tea with milk and realized how nice it is.

Add the milk after you remove it from the microwave.

Adding it while it in is hazardous.

This phone sucks.

I thought you sold out? Get an iphone!

I'm thinking about that.

Mostly, I just like the swipe keyboard. Except not the one my phone has now.

Microsoft bought Swiftkey so now my phone keyboard has a mini Bing searchbar.

iPhones do swiping for keyboards, too, these days.