"Tea, earl grey. Hot."

If you're a normal person, the title of this entry means nothing. If you're like me, you know that is the favourite drink of Jean Luc Picard, captain of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek, The Next Generation.

I always wondered how a futuristic machine like that would work (a "replicator" that is). When all you had to do is walk up to it, tell it what you would like to eat, and *poof* it's there.

In the back of my mind, every time Jean Luc Picard would order his drink, i thought there was someone in the universe who had just made themselves a nice cup of tea, and just like a teleporter, it would disappear and be beamed straight up to the Enterprise.

Man I'd be pissed off if that happened to me.

Think about it. What if some jackass ordered "thanksgiving turkey with all the fixin's" and then a giant family in Nebraska just about to sit down at the table for a hearfelt "thankful" meal and BAM! .... it's gone.

no sir,
not pleasant at all.

couldn't someone have just bought him a little plug-in teapot with a whole assortment of earl grey teabags?