I'm Right Again!

I got hot tea with my lunch today.

See, I’m sick (bronchitis), hate coffee, and work in an office kept at meat-locker temperature levels. Not those sissy warm meat-lockers either. This one operates close to absolute zero. That's -273.15 C or -460 F or 0 K.

Ya gotta love Lord Kelvin, and not just because he would have you beaten if you didn't. No, people would say, "My lord (since he was a lord), it's cold today." And he'd respond, "You think this is cold, wait til I hit zero. Then that bastard Farenheit will really see something."

Ahh, thermodynamic humor.

But I digress. Back to my tea.

It was nothing fancy. No Earl Grey, my usual, or peppermint or anything like that. Just plain-Jane green tea. As I ripped open the outer packaging I noticed at the top, helpfully printed in white over green, it said: Microwave Safe.

Wow, how nice of them, I thought. Ya know, because most people don’t have access to hot tea-temperature water and so use the microwave to bring tap water up to the proper brewing level.

But then I paused.

Microwave Safe?

What exactly does this suggest of my usual teas which don’t say “Microwave Safe” on the outer packaging? Are they non-microwave inspected? Does this mean that I’m creating hostile chemicals in my otherwise caffeine free teas? Am I poisoning my body by combining those deadly little waves with water and herbs shoved into an E-Z-Flo baggie? Or am I, perhaps, mutating the tea via radiation ala Godzilla?

Could a green lizard the size of the Tower Record building even now be lurking in the luke-warm water of my cup waiting to rampage Tokyo?

Good lord, consider the implications!

Then, of course, I took hold of myself. My paranoia checked, along with some oxygen from the local paramedics as they carried me out on a crash cart, when I realized this was nothing but marketing! That’s right, fear-induced marketing from clever little men with pony-tails and button-up women with useless Communications degrees.

Unless my tea bag is made from some hyper-explosive plastique filaments, cast from Uranium 235, or has really sharp, rusty corners, there’s practically no danger of mishap once I put my mug, water and tea bag into the microwave, or when I take that potential Molotov Cocktail back out again.

I say practically because, even as we speak, somewhere, out there, someone is heating a tea bag past the plasma stage just to prove me wrong, and in so doing, they've caused their microwave to crack, thus sterilizing themselves and anyone stupid enough to be around them while they attempted this experiment.

You see kids, trying to prove me wrong is just silly.

And so, once again we see that marketers are a wretched hive of scum and villainy. More importantly, we see that I'm right, which is what blogging is all about.